Learn More With ACDSee and Their YouTube Channel

For many photographers, the Adobe software suite is the main suite they use for editing and to manage their content. Over the last few years, however, many creatives have become dissatisfied with the monthly subscription model that Adobe has now opted for. For this reason, many photographers have been looking for a viable alternative. 

A great alternative to some of Adobe's software is the ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2019. One of the great things about this software is that there's no need to have a subscription if you prefer to pay for a lifetime license. You can purchase a monthly subscription if you prefer but it's not a requirement and this gives you a lot more flexibility. The software itself is extensive in how much it offers and in my use I've really enjoyed several features. One of my favorite aspects of the software is how well you can manage all of your files and catalog them. The cataloging features are extremely useful and probably the most intuitive from any software I've used so far. The only problem with any new piece of software is learning how to use it effectively. Fortunately, ACDSee has released a whole bunch of videos and tutorials on their YouTube channel to help make this easier. 

With their resident presenter and director of photographer Alec Watson, ACDSee has produced more than a dozen high-quality video tutorials. These tutorials start from the very basic features of the software and progressively cover more complex aspects. Personally, I found these videos extremely helpful while I was trying to learn how to use the cataloging features in the ACDSee software. Although the software itself is actually super intuitive, the additional videos and tutorials serve to provide that extra bit of help if required. 

One of the videos that I personally found really useful was the video that discusses the workspace. This is part 3 of the whole series and if like me, you prefer to jump right into the thick of things then I'd recommend you start here. 

This video gives you a great overview of the workspace and how you optimize it for your requirements. The folder tree in ACDSee is one of the tabs that I think is extremely useful because of the way it sorts all of your files and I personally like to have it open when sorting through images. Although the EXIF data is important, I prefer to have a wider view of all the files I'm working on and therefore I tend to have that collapsed down too. 

Another video that I think is extremely useful if you're trying to learn more about ACDSee is part 15. This video gives you a great breakdown of the differences between the Edit and Develop modules. one of the impressive things about ACDSee is the fact that it's far more than just a raw editor. Not only can you process your raw files similar to software like Lightroom, but, you also have the ability to perform detailed and more in-depth edits on your files through the use of layers and effects in the Edit module. 

Final Thoughts

Trying to move over to a new piece of software can be daunting especially because of the potential learning curve. This can be one of the main reasons many photographers tend not to explore other options because once you learn a particular way many of us tend to settle. Fortunately, ACDSee is one of the most intuitive software I've used in a very long time and this does prove extremely helpful when transitioning over. Add to that the fact that ACDSee has produced a large number of video tutorials and all available on YouTube makes learning and transitioning over to ACDSee super easy.

Check out their YouTube channel and all the content they regularly produce for the channel. 

Usman Dawood's picture

Usman Dawood is a professional architectural photographer based in the UK.

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1 Comment

As a long time user of ACDSee I can comment that they don't cater professional photographers. It takes ACDSee many months of not a year to add new cameras in their raw updates. In fact instead of putting out raw updates they wait a year and make you buy an upgrade just to get raw updates. I waited 8 months for them to update "pro studio 8" to even be able to view, let alone edit, raw Sony A7III files. No update. Oh now you have to buy pro studio 9/19 or whatever it's called just to view A7III files; something free programs like Microsoft photo and faststone can do. ACDSee "pro"? Hardly