ACDSee 5 has been designed for those with the electronic equivalent of several shoeboxes stuffed full of photos cluttering up their PC. Capturing the moment is all very well but as any snap-happy digital photographer will testify, managing your collection of holiday snaps can quickly become a mammoth task.
With ACDSee 5 at your disposal, however, you have at least a fighting chance. You can import, archive, manage, browse and share your photos.There is a selection of basic imaging tools too, so you can flip, rotate, resize or adjust the exposure of images before committing them to hard disk.
At first glance, the main screen looks confusing, with three separate panes and endless buttons but ACDSee is actually pretty straightforward to use. To make archiving and retrieval easier, you can date-stamp your snaps, tag them with a brief description or assign them to customisable categories.
Meanwhile, the calendar function - a new feature in version 5 - allows you to select a year, month or day and view all of the images associated with that date. It is also possible to sort your snaps alphabetically or by file type, file name or file size.
Users of previous versions of ACDSee will be pleased to see a greater degree of customisation on offer in this version, allowing you to change the look and feel of the browser and toolbars to suit your needs.
Bundled with the PowerPack CD-ROM is ACD Fotocanvas 2, for more advanced photo editing. Simple tools allow you to adjust the exposure, brightness and contrast of your images and you can alter individual colour levels.
Also included on the disc is ACD Fotoangelo 2, a simple package that allows you to turn your photos into slide shows. It's intuitive to use and you can build up a slide sequence simply by dragging and dropping image thumbnails onto a storyboard and choosing different effects from drop-down menus.
ACDSee 5 PowerPack is a comprehensive package that offers a good range of digital image-editing and management tools. It will not only bring some order to your computer but will also help you make the most of your digital photos.
Contact: Guildsoft 0800 289041
www.guildsoft.co.uk
