ACDSee DAM changes I’d like to see

I’ve been using ACDSee to manage my photos since before anyone used the term Digital Asset Management (DAM) and back then I used other products to do advanced image manipulation. Today I use ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate for everything I do with photographs. So it’s fair to say I like the product. In recent years I’ve seen new versions introduce more and more things I can use to change my images, but not so much with the less glamorous side:  changes that improve my workflow and my ability to track my images.

So, I’ve given up on waiting for the ACDSee developers to perfect their long-distance mind–reading abilities, and come up with my list of things I’d like to see – and why.

For the most part, I use DAM in two ways. Finding a photo for a specific purpose, and finding photographs which I need to process further. I think it will be useful to separate my lists of changes based on these two processes.

Finding a specific image

Inconsistencies between support for Keywords and Categories

• I can group by keyword, but not by category
• Conversely, I can filter by Category, but not by keyword
• I can’t select by either keyword or category (but I can group or filter and then fairly simply select multiple images with the same keyword or category.
• In Selective Browsing, I can change an option to include sub-categories when I select a parent category, but I cannot include sub-keywords when I select a parent keyword.
• In the Media tab, I can group by keyword but not by category
• In a collection, I can select by keyword, but not by category

Long ago, I looked to find some advice on when I would use categories and when I’d use keywords. Finding nothing, and liking what I saw in categories better, I decided to use them exclusively, I now find myself shut out of some of the features. I would like to see ACDSee change one of two things – either:

• Incorporate everything that I can do with keywords into Category options, and vice versa. Or:
• Decide how you think people should use categories and keywords, document this and decide which actions will be implemented for each.

I would prefer the first option. If that is not implemented then at least we need a utility that converts keywords into categories and another that does the reverse, but there will still be problems. My vote is option one for sure!

Missing features

• Ability to find only portrait or only landscape images (Filter, Collections, Selective Browsing)
• Ability to find seasonal images, like spring or summer. More generally, to find photos that fall into a “time of the year” range, regardless of the year. (e.g.  Dec 1^st to March 15^th, for any year) (Filter, Collections, Selective Browsing)
• Ability to also select all the children by (say) shift-selecting the parent in keywords, categories and folder selections
• Ability to hide similar images (such as those taken in burst mode) by stacking them
• Ability to find images cropped to a specific ratio (e.g. Facebook cover photo, Instagram etc.) (Filter, Collections, Selective Browsing)

Obviously, I would like to see all of these missing features added.

Finding images in different stages of a workflow

I won’t say that everyone has a similar workflow, but let me use mine as an example. I always import new photos into the same folder, and then I cull them, rate them, develop them, edit some of them, possibly re-rate based on the develop results, cull some more and then add categories, and finally move all the images to permanent folders, leaving the import folder empty. The problem is that all of this is asynchronous, and what ends up happening is finding that I have hundreds of images in various stages of processing and no quick way of sorting out which images still need which work.

A couple of things are simple – filter all unrated images and then rate them. Uncategorized images are a bit more challenging, because some images need multiple categories. (Or keywords, if that’s your choice, or both.) Where I find things more complicated is when I have a massive number of images to process. Then, for instance, I may want to develop any undeveloped images that I rated as “3” to see if they turn into a “4” or a “5”, but not look at any which are tagged (I tag images I think I want to delete).

I thought Collections would be my answer, but the implementation is incomplete:

• There is no way to specify NOT tagged (i.e. select “tagged is False”)
• There is no way to select only RAW, or conversely, only JPG. (I need this because if I filter all undeveloped, it picks the JPGs as well, even though I developed them before I went to EDIT mode.)
• There is no way to limit the result to images from a specific folder (although if you select a folder in the folder pane, and then filter by collection, that works, but is quite convoluted.

Incidentally, I think there is a bug: I create a collection with an “image developed is false” condition, and then next time I go to edit it, it says is “not false”. In fact, I think that each time I go into edit, it changes from “is” to “is not” and vice versa.

Also, I had a hard time with coming to terms with using collections, which led me to believe it was ignoring the folder I had specified previously. In fact what was happening was I would select a folder, then go to the collections pane and edit the collection. As soon as I did this, it “ran” the collection. When you use or save a collection that has conditions, it becomes the new controller of the image pane, replacing the folder selection. It took me a long time to realize what was happening here!

I would like to see the following:

• The set of conditions expanded to include file type (RAW, JPG etc.)
• The set of conditions expanded to include the folder name, with an option to include sub-folders.
• Any condition that sees if an attribute has one of a set of values must also include an “is not” option (so I can select images which are NOT jpg, are NOT tagged, or are NOT in a named folder and its sub-folders.)

With these changes, I can create a set of collections which each work on only my import folder, so I can have the collections pane open and then click once on a collection to find all of the images in that folder which fit the criteria for each part of my workflow. This leaves the regular filter available for further reduction where applicable, and is much faster that the multi-click: Filter | Collections | Edit Helpers | collection name that I would have to do otherwise. (“Edit Helpers” is the name I collect workflow collections under – or would if they worked the way I’d like.)

• The ability to include a collection within Selective Browsing

Other miscellaneous changes

IPTC Keywords

Although I don’t have the need myself, I am always hearing that people want to export their cataloging work to send photos to others who don’t have the advantage of using ACDSee. I would suggest the ability to import IPTC keywords to create either ACDSee Keywords or ACDSee Categories. [Edit: the reverse (copying ACDSee keywords and/or categories to IPTC keywords) can be done by creating two metadata presets – one for keywords, one for categories – and applying either preset to a selection of images. Thanks to Jodi Stammer for this hint.]

Named crop sizes

Similar to the way 1×1 has the word “Square” added, I’d like to be able to name custom crops myself. (For instance: Facebook cover, Instagram, HD Video still, etc.) Having named them it would be even nicer to then be able to select all images with a specific named ratio.

Auto Advance

If more than one image is selected, and some attribute (e.g. rating or category) selected then auto-advance should be suppressed for that instance and the selection maintained.

Facial Recognition

• Allow an option to exclude any image with more than “x” faces
• Allow an option to exclude any face with less than “y” pixels comprising the face
• Have a hot key or some faster way to quickly see the entire image (for context) without having to move the cursor to a tiny icon far away.
• Some way to mark a face as “unwanted” so it doesn’t keep cropping up (e.g. an umpire at a baseball game!)
• Some way to exclude photos with specific keywords, categories or folders (e.g. soccer games where you’re only interested in YOUR kids). Or old girlfriends.

All of these are intended to make the process faster – mostly by eliminating many of the images which won’t benefit from facial recognition.

Conclusions

I found it extremely valuable to document these thoughts. Not only because it may result in some changes that I’d find useful, but because I had to do a fair bit of research and experimentation to verify my assertions. In doing so, I found some things that I had misunderstood, misused or just plain never found before. I’ve mentioned my frustration in thinking that Collections always acted on the entire catalog. I also found that when reviewing faces, I didn’t have to put up with a single row of candidates at the bottom of the screen, I could drag up the boundary and see multiple rows. That has sped up verifying possible matches considerably.

I’d like to think others will find my list useful as well. My background as a long time ACDSee user and my career in IT should have equipped me to come up with a rational and well thought out set of change requests. I urge others to contact ACDSee with their lists as well. By all means borrow my ideas and improve on them. That way we all benefit!