Profiles
"I've tried every software there is. ACDSee Pro is the only product that handles all my needs in one single application. I never have to use another program. I can batch rename photos, get instant full-screen file viewing, and seamlessly create slide shows of my work to show clients on site. ACDSee Pro is an all- encompassing program and I simply couldn't work without it."
If you're talking wedding and event photography, Neal Clipper has done it all. He has built a reputation for delivering the highest quality event photography to his customers, and ACDSee Pro is an indispensable tool for his workflow.
At an event, Neal is constantly transferring photos onto his computer so he can show clients photos as the event transpires. Recently he's incorporated a WIFI wireless transmitter into his workflow to transfer photos to ACDSee Pro, where he creates slide shows to instantly present photos on site.
As photographs are captured, the Sync to folder option in the Viewer allows him to send files directly to a folder. With a just a couple of clicks he creates slide shows that play with Auto-Advance in the Viewer, and the Sync to Folder feature automatically refreshes the screen so photos appear instantaneously as they are captured.
"ACDSee Pro is the only product I know of that does that. I open my first image, use the Sync to Folder feature, create an auto advancing slide show and my photos are ready to go. This is a powerful direct marketing tool for my business. I can instantly display my work to the client, see which ones they like, and project them on a 6x9 screen in slide show format for dramatic effect. When people see the photos so quickly and in a creative way, they just love it."
ACDSee Pro also allows him to print handouts on site that he can pass around with his business contact information. When a shoot is over, he instantly batch renames his photos, cleans them up with quick editing tools, and drops them into their proper folders and categories.
"It's important for people to understand that with ACDSee Pro you really don't need any other programs to get the work done. You can do it all in this one application. ACDSee Pro is user-friendly, reliable, and does everything I need it to do almost instantaneously."
"ACDSee accomplishes the most essential photo management task of all: it delivers my best work, from the camera to the client, with simplicity and speed."
Don MacGregor's award-winning photography reflects his keen eye for composition and visual balance. Specializing in wedding and portrait photography, Don is a Master Photographer and Photographic Craftsman for the Professional Photographers of America, and a Master of Photographic Arts for the Professional Photographers of Canada.
Don is also involved in professional development programs and photography schools, and is a popular speaker at conventions and conferences. ACDSee figures prominently in his presentations and his studio's workflow.
"With ACDSee my clients can view and select their photos, right after the shoot. It's an essential tool for our studio. Without ACDSee, we simply wouldn't be as productive."
Because he uses two cameras at a wedding or portrait session, Don needs to synchronize the entire photo session into one timeline. This is easy to do in ACDSee. He acquires the photos, sorts by the image capture date, batch renames all of the files, and then archives them to DVD, all within the program.
Once the photos are acquired, Don is able to quickly view the photographs to identify and tag the best shots. At the same time, he deletes the photos that are not worth keeping. He quickly re-orders the thumbnails, simply by dragging and dropping them into place, so that the best photos are displayed first.
To instantly present these selected photos to the clients right after the shoot, Don relies on the Auto Slide Show feature, accessed on the Tools menu. "The slide show creates a sense of excitement with the client. It certainly heightens the studio experience. They look forward to the photo selection process that comes next."
Together with the client, they review the photos via a data projector connected to the computer. The shots are viewed one at a time, using ACDSee's full screen viewing mode which displays the image only, without toolbars and menus, at full resolution. "Advancing to the next photo is always an instantaneous, smooth experience in ACDSee, even with large file sizes."
Once they have selected their preferred shots, Don will make use of the Image Compare tool to display any similar photos at once, for easy comparison on one screen.
Don then uses ACDSee's editing tools to make changes to the selected photos. He will convert to black and white, and crop to show a finished view to clients. ACDSee's zoom tools allow Don to project the exact final size images to the client.
From there, it's easy to burn to CD and DVD. Don can also print contact sheets, ensuring color accuracy with ACDSee's color management and support for ICC profiles.
"ACDSee saves time because of its easy to use interface for viewing, sorting and presenting photos to clients. I've tried other software programs, and didn't find that they had the necessary tools for my studio's workflow."
"I love ACDSee. Its speed and power lets me view and manage the thousands of photographs taken by our assignment photographers. I couldn't do my job without it."
Darrell Perry is the Photography Director for the Wall Street Journal, and ACDSee is an invaluable part of his daily workflow.
"Our readers demand the most essential and relevant information, and that includes photographs. Selection of the top images is critical to maintaining the quality and brand value of the publication. That's when the speed and functionality of ACDSee comes to the rescue, week after week, deadline after deadline."
Darrell can receive as many as 200 photographs on CDs from each assignment photographer. With several assignments per week, Darrell needs a streamlined workflow to view and select the best ones.
Darrell is able to view photographs quickly and automatically in ACDSee, batch rotating if necessary. He makes use of both ACDSee's Browser and Viewer modes to help him review and choose the best photographs. He uses the Browser mode to review the entire shoot at a glance, adjusting the size of the thumbnails using the Slider if necessary.
If he wants to examine a photo more closely he clicks on the thumbnail to bring up a preview of the image onto his computer screen. To view the photo at its actual size, at full resolution, he simply double clicks on the photo to quickly load it into the Viewer Mode. From there, he simply presses the spacebar to advance to the next photo.
"Even large sized photos load quickly in ACDSee, and that's a real time saver when you're working under a deadline."
Once he has tagged his preferred photographs, Darrell copies the images to a new folder for review by the art director. "Our photography department must get the best photos in front of the art director and editors, and ACDSee is the fastest program that accomplishes this. When I present the photos, people are blown away by how quickly the pictures load in ACDSee. I can find any photo fast, and get it into the hands of anyone that needs it."
The IPTC metadata displays alongside each photo, in ACDSee's Properties pane. If Darrell needs to, he can enter a caption for any of the selected photos, so that the information remains with the photograph, and can be viewed if opened in other programs that also support IPTC. He can also batch enter IPTC field information such as keywords and photographer credits, to a group of photos at once.
Darrell credits ACDSee's straightforward interface, including its context sensitive toolbar, as a major reason why he is able to view, select, and deliver photos.
"ACDSee is user friendly, with helpful icons, tools, and drag and drop functionality. I don't have to go digging for functions that I need. ACDSee intuitively brings them forward for me, helping me get my job done faster."
"I use ACDSee every day as part of my photo management activities, and it is a tremendous task helper when it comes to managing thousands and thousands of photographs at work and at home."
Roger Ritchie is an accomplished professional photographer as well as a Communications Director specializing in aviation, maritime and "people" photography. He has dozens of aviation magazine covers to his credit, including Aviation Week, Business / Commercial Aviation, and FLIGHT International.
Roger is busy with frequent photo shoots and all the images end up on his computer, where ACDSee's tools are counted on to keep things in order.
Upon returning to New York, from possibly anywhere in the world, ranging from Athens to Antarctica, Roger uploads the photos to his computer from his compact flash cards. He uses ACDSee's Acquire wizard to speed him through the process. He batch renames his photos and organizes them into folders. This entire process takes only a few minutes.
"I let ACDSee do the work while I'll go away for a cup of coffee, and when I return it's done."
Roger selects the size of the thumbnails in the File List mode, using the Thumbnail Slider to comfortably browse through the images. He can quickly select some of the photographs to edit, print and review his results. These photos are frequently a part of the initial presentation to the client.
Now Roger is ready to burn a selection of his images onto a CD. He assembles his choices by dragging and dropping his desired images into the Burn Basket. He can also assemble a CD selection by picking photos from a variety of folders and dragging those into the Burn Basket, for media submission or for responding to a public relations request.
"The Create Disc Wizard speeds me through the process of duplicating the images onto disc. I can have the photographs immediately burned onto a CD and ready to overnight to various destinations, such as clients or aviation media. Being able to easily select and burn photographs straight to disc all within ACDSee is invaluable."
Roger also uses the Image Basket to gather and hold images from different locations, so that he can use any of the tools in ACDSee to edit, share, or view those files. In Roger's case, he relishes the ability to easily create index sheets for "Fed-exing" to contacts, and to send photos in outgoing emails.
"The selection of images to be attached to outgoing emails is made easy by ACDSee's presentation."
When Roger needs to print index sheets of his selections, he uses the Print Contact Sheet function in ACDSee. The feature allows him to include captions and header text that print alongside the photos on the contact sheet.
Roger then files his edited and original photos into separate folders. When he needs any of his photos, he can quickly search for them by date or folder name.
Roger credits the overall user friendliness of ACDSee as to why he's able to efficiently manage his large inventory of photos. "The application integrates nicely with my workflow as a graphics professional. In fact, ACDSee was the first application installed in my new laptop. Quite simply, a day without ACDSee is like a day without sunshine!"
"ACDSee Pro is deeply integrated with my daily photography workflow. I don't even think twice about using it. It's flat out the easiest to use, fastest, and most natural application for the work I do. When it comes to quickly organizing, renaming and viewing my photos so I can share them with clients after a shoot, ACDSee is the best tool for my digital photo management."
Serge Timacheff is a highly successful sports event photographer based in Seattle, Washington. Over the years he has carved himself a niche in this competitive field as an internationally renowned fencing photographer. ACDSee Pro is an integral part of his everyday photography workflow.
"Typically after a photo shoot I will have anywhere up to 1600 photographs on various flash cards or a portable drive. After I download them onto my hard drive, the next thing I need to do is organize, rename, and review my photos quickly, and ACDSee Pro is the natural choice."
Once all his shots are on the computer, he begins the task of organizing them. Because he will be making multiple changes to photographs as he moves through his workflow, it's essential he have an archival folder of traceable original images in case he needs to use them later.
ACDSee Pro makes this easy by automatically creating an original image folder that isn't deleted or overwritten when changes are made to the original shots. In this way, Serge can use ACDSee Pro to create archival folders and DVDs that he trusts will not get lost, and are instantly searchable whenever he needs to view them.
When he's viewing and selecting photographs, he doesn't have to click on the images he wants to see. Instead, ACDSee Pro saves him valuable time by allowing him to mouse over photographs, click on the ones he wants, and instantly copy images to a designated folder."
It's essential that I be able to quickly take 1600 photos and boil them down to the ones I can send to their various destinations, like my clients at Corbis or my online galleries. With ACDSee Pro I can rename, select, and then quickly copy photos to their proper folders. There is no other program where I can do this so easily. ACDSee Pro gives me optimal access to all my photos, and allows me to tag and name them in a way that useful to both myself and the client."
Serge uses the quick renaming and batch renaming functions to categorize his photographs into specific, easily searchable categories. For example, he'll rename images by athlete's name, date, event category, and medal bout (e.g., Gold/Silver/Bronze), and add keywords and metadata tags like IPTC metadata to further differentiate his thousands of shots.
When he needs to find photos based on any of these criteria, he uses the Quick Search bar to instantly retrieve the desired shots-across folders and categories.
"It's all about the familiarity. With ACDSee Pro you always know you're getting a quality product, and while the versions might change, there's never a steep learning curve involved."
