ACDSee 18

[Andrew B.]

I upgraded to ACDSee 18. It is about as stable as ver. 17. For me that means I had to disable the thumbnail database to keep ACDSee from crashing all the time.

My main reasons for upgrading are improvements in the viewer.

1. It allows me to lock the zoom level. Which means I can scroll through some images partially zoomed in. Might sound crazy, but it helps me focus on an area of a photo set.

2. It has a popup navigator that shows a thumbnail of the photo, so I can jump to the spot I want to view.

3. It has a magnifier that I can float or dock when viewing photos. I can set this to display actual size or a specific degree of zoom. There are other things it can do but I dont want to fire up ACDSee right now refresh my memory.

There is another feature that was there before version 18, but I just discovered it. If I activate the hand tool I can click it to toggle between zoomed-out-to-fit and full size. Other things too. This fits well with the new features, and actually works better for some scenarios.

As for peeves, I wish ACDSee was smarter at knowing when to release a file. Sometimes I try to drag a zip and it refuses to move it because ACDSee is using it. This includes cases where there is no preview or thumbnails from inside the zip showing.

I assume their pro version includes these changes too.