ACDSee Photo Studio 10 for Mac - InDepth Review - A Love Hate Relationship

[@wernerschmidbaur2235]

I have been using ACDSee for Windows for many years and liked it very much. Yes - the MAC Edition seems to be the unwanted child, I am aware of that. But that one of the most basic functions of a photo organizer does not work properly is rock bottom! If you want to re-arrange/re-sort photos in a folder by dragging and dropping them to a new position before renaming the app behaves quite erratic ... - Very often you can not drop the photo on the exact position you want to - After a few re-arrangements some photos drop back to their old positions / sort-order - It is not possible to select multiple photos an move them to a new position - either they will not move at all or only some of them to quite an unexpected position In short - you never know what will happen next. Did anyone notice that?

[@Andyhutchinson]

Must admit I didn't notice that. I always sort by date and never manually arrange. I can see why it would be frustrating though!

[@TimothyBowers-wl9lj]

For asset management this seems to be the best option out there, even though the Meta Data is only stored in ACDSEE database. Would love to hear if there is another better Asset Management tool for Mac though.

[@Andyhutchinson]

If you haven't already - try Mylio and Peakto. Failing that there's always Adobe Bridge which can be used for free without a subscription. :)

[@fransboer]

Did you also tried the perspective controle. I did. I was surprised that the control only goes from the bottom or the top of the image. Other programs like on1 does it from the middle of the image. That is much better because the image will not get so much cropped

[@Andyhutchinson]

I didn't - seems like a lot of ACDSee - not finished.

[@DalsPhotography-Daniela]

It seems that the ACDC team is not very worried about developing this great program a bit more to compete with other apps. From my tests DXO is great for managing shadows, the best I have tried till now. Regarding highlights both LR and DxO are great!

[@Andyhutchinson]

DxO for the win. :)

[@TB-dt2ro]

ACDSee Photo Studio seems like the only REAL asset management software for Mac. Pitty the Meta Data is only saved in the ACDSee database. Would love to hear if there is any competing ASSET management software for Mac though

[@Andyhutchinson]

Mylio, Peakto and Adobe Bridge are all good alternatives. :)

[@HansBaumeister]

You mention that it can't read / display Fuji RAW files - that is odd, I have version 8 currently and that works with Fuji RAW just fine.

[@Andyhutchinson]

It only reads uncompressed RAWs on my X-T4, which are about 3 times the size and which I never enable.

[@glevumowl1122]

Absolutely spot on review which I wish I'd seen prior to buying ACDSee. Pretty much echoes my thoughts and experience exactly. Where's the AI stuff that Windows users enjoy? Performance sucks on an M2 Mini with lags on some tools and not on others. I can add another criticism: frequent crashes using anything relating face detection especially manual corrections or importing face data from an LR catalog. ON1 does almost everything better and seems to write meta data to sidecar files rather than locking everything away in its own database. DxO is still one of my go to tools for RAW processing (no, I'm not affiliated to either of them). I'm off to check out ACDSee's refund policy.

[@Andyhutchinson]

Yea, it's a shame because ACD-See has some fundamentally sound asset management tools, it just sucks for processing.

[@brendxn_]

When it comes to using ACDSee Mac as a DAM, still a couple of huge issues in my opinion: 1. All of the ACDSee metadata, keywords, ratings, are locked in a proprietary format, and not visible in other apps like Photolab, limiting it's usefulness as a piece of a larger workflow 2. Even if you manually edit metadata using the IPTC metadata tab, I found that most of these fields do not successfully update the XMP files. (Location fields, Person shown fields, etc). So essentially, anything done in Photo Studio will always stay in Photo Studio. I've inquired about the above issues in both the forums and by contacting customer service, and never receive any kind of response after a couple of months. Completely agree with you that the Mac app seems more like an afterthought vs a priority.

[@Andyhutchinson]

Thanks. Hopefully something they fix up for the next release, or perhaps in an update - but I'm not holding my breath.

[@Andyhutchinson]

It's hard to escape subscriptions - even so-called perpetual licences only guarantee updates for a single year. That said, DxO Photolab is hands-down the best RAW editor on the market. Grab the 30 day trial and take it for a spin. Works great on my Macbook - best Fuji demosaicing outside of Iridient.

[@cataloger1]

I tend to use (though not always) ACDSee for asset management, along with Pixelmator Pro for photo editing.

[@derekryder7902]

I could not agree more. Their proprietary metadata format can be very problematic, as I described above.

[@meyers.family]

If I am understanding correctly about the metadata issue, do people not use the batch processing feature where you can actually save the metadata applied in ACDSee to the actual file metadata? When I use this feature, the metadata can become searchable such as with Apple Finder or Windows Explorer. Having the metadata just stored in the ACDSee database was not helpful because I wanted anyone to be able to search our 40k+ family photos outside of the app.

[@RandyAllen-e4x]

If this is anything like the Mac 8 version I've been struggling with for a few years then avoid it at all costs! Slow and buggy and lacking, not to mention awkward to use. I guess I was spoiled coming over from LR6 while trying to avoid the Adobe subscription model. I guess I learned my lesson. ACDSee for Mac is not an alternative to LR's catalogue feature IMO. Not even to my old LR6 which still runs fine as well as much faster than Mac 8 (and if you ever used LR6 you know it was notoriously slow!). Stay away from this. I'm heading back to LR. I don't know if there are other alternatives but I'm tired of fighting the software when all I want to do is work on my photos. I've tried Mylio but forget it, That has to be the most non-intuitive bit of software I've ever tried using. Maybe it's just me? Hello Adobe. You were right, I'm back!

[@Andyhutchinson]

It certainly doesn't get the same attention as the Windows version.

[@inSurfersParadise]

I just quit Peakto. It spent hours doing all sorts of AI processing but couldn’t find a file by name. Then when I did find another file it failed being able to show it in finder. Just too stupid a fail to be bothered with. Cancelled subscription. So now ACDsee. Yep, I am here just for the asset management. Raw editing in DXO, Darktable or Affinity.

[@Andyhutchinson]

To search by filename click on 'All Sources'. Not sure why it doesn't work within specific contexts, but there you go. Looks like this: share.cleanshot.com/T9C29Pz7 . Not had any dramas showing files in Finder either. Was it a fresh install or an upgrade?

[@no_handle_required]

sucks on mac

[@Andyhutchinson]

Certainly nowhere near as fully featured as the windows version.