All-In-One Alternative to Photoshop and Lightroom: ACDSee Releases Photo Studio Ultimate 2018

Since Adobe adopted a subscription-based licensing system, many users have started looking at other alternatives. While ACDSee had attractive solutions until now, their latest creation, ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2018, seems to be a serious contender to Photoshop CC and Lightroom. Even better yet, you can process your raw files and then edit them within the very same software, no need for round trips.

ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2018 is a complete photo editing tool including raw processing and layered editing with GPU accelerated layers. Improving on the previous ACDSee Ultimate version I reviewed a few months ago, the 2018 release includes features that may have a few photographers wonder why they are still using Adobe solutions.

The previous version already included most tools a digital artist could need, and the new one is one step closer to having everything. Liquify has been added along with Smart Erase making retouching and altering unwanted objects and shapes easier than ever. It also comes with the possibility to record actions in a library which is pre-filled with over 125 recordings. Better yet, ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2018 comes with a frequency separation tool making portrait photographer retouchers’ workflow more efficient than before. Those like me who rely heavily on color and luminosity masks will be glad to learn a new feature called Pixel Targeting has been added and simplifies both of these selection processes. Finally, let’s not forget about mobile. Thanks to ACDSee Mobile Sync, it’s now possible to send and receive photos instantly from your mobile device to facilitate your workflow if you work a lot with your smartphone.

Looking at the specs, ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2018 is all about workflow efficiency and saving time. Having everything in one place was already the goal of the previous release, but they went even further and added the tools that makes retouching just that much easier, faster, and better.

ACDSee offers the choice of a lifetime license for $149 USD or a yearly subscription of $69. While the software is only available for Windows, the press release specifies "currently only available for Windows." One can only wonder if they plan on releasing a Mac version as well soon. Let’s hope so.

For more information and to discover the full list of new exciting features available in ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2018, please visit ACDSee’s website.