ACDSee Photo Manager 10

If you want to organize, find and share images quickly, ACDSee 10 is the perfect solution. Use keywords, categories and your own Windows filing system to instantly locate the right image. Easily correct or improve those less than perfect photos. Share your favorites by email, on your free online album or as high-quality prints. Version 10 allows to see your photos on a virtual calendar, upload your photos to Flickr, add effects to selected areas of your photos, and create Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

Note: This installer includes an optional installation of Yahoo Toolbar for Internet Explorer.

The latest version of the well-established ACDSee Photo Manager offers easy uploading to Flickr, virtual calendar integration, the ability to create PowerPoint presentations, and localized effects to help bolster the expansive suite of tools. Other features include a convenient built-in burner, file transfer, a long-awaited tool for creating movies and VCDs, batch editing, and plenty of new editing gadgets, filters, and effects.

The installer still asks for an e-mail address to unlock the 30-day trial, but now lets you opt out of the developer's offers and newsletters. The program itself retains its attractive and functional interface. We found it easy to control the size, the exposure, the color, and other aspects of an image (or a batch of images). Though the array of panes and buttons might seem intimidating, the help file is thorough and well written. Naturally, you can use ACDSee to share your images via e-mail or the Web. You also can export image data to text or database files--a particularly useful feature for design houses. Beyond that, the database feature lets you catalog images to reduce load time.

The search tool, however, could stand improvement. Given a fragment of a filename, it did a good job finding files but a poor job locating subfolders. That flaw aside, ACDSee's power and professionalism elevate it well above most of its competitors.