ADCSee PowerPack 3.1 www.acdsystems.com Maureen Shannon, NJPCUG  ACDSee PowerPack 2.1 is a suite of three power tools for your digital images.  Version 4.0 was released right after I received this version. I am told by some that made the upgrade that it is such a small update that it isn't worth the expense of the upgrade. I can't say, I don't have it nor have I seen it. I installed the software without any problems or so I thought.  I noticed after installing the software that I know longer had my thumbnail previews as an option in my folders. I have my system set to view as an active desktop. I rely upon and use these thumbnails constantly. I went through all the settings that should have restored the thumbnails and nothing would fix the problem. I asked several people if they knew how to fix it and was told no. It had changed/corrupted something in the registry. I was very annoyed that my thumbnail previews had been removed. After weeks of searching and asking if anyone knew what to do and coming up empty, I decided to try one more idea I had.  The thumbnail preview is related to using IE so I downloaded an installed the latest version of IE….it fixed the problem and my thumbnails returned! The imaging software also set itself up as the default software for viewing and working on images when they are double clicked.  I had Paint Shop Pro set up as my image editor of choice. I do not like it when software automatically changes your settings and makes itself the default software to work with. (I not saying there's anything wrong with the image editor, I just don't like my preferences being changed without my being asked first.) The system requirements for the Windows version are Win95/98/Me or Win 2000/NT 4.0, 486DX with 32 MSB RAM, 10 MB hard disk space, 256 color or higher display adapter support. ACDSee 3.1 The ACDSee software is used to view, edit, or print images. It works very quickly. Features of ACDSee are: *        Preview 50+ image format *       Get images from a digital camera or scanner via TWAIN *     Files can be converted into 15+ image formats *      Photo editing tools such as crop, red-eye reduction, sharpen, resize, auto light adjustment *       Configure ACDSee with the photo editor of your choice *       Share images by email and the Sendpix photo server *      Create HTML photo albums *       Make photo contact sheets *      Add descriptions to pictures *       Search by author, title, keyword, and description *        Batch adjust images *       Tip Of the Day *        Create image archives in several formats and browse them like regular files The view window itself is broken down into three sections.  The first pane shows the selected drive and folders and contents, below that the selected image is previewed, and the large pane on the right shows views of a single column, two, three or four columns, or the entire contents displayed across the whole pane. The interface has both familiar and additional items you don't always see in viewers or image software choices - options for creating and printing a contact sheet, viewing the images as a slide show, creating an HTML album, creating an archive, etc.  You also have options to open the other parts of this suite, FotoCanvas and FotoAngelo.  The photo editor,FotoCanvas also has the option to select and use other editors of your choice.  I have added Paint Shop Pro to this list.  I like this option because if I want to use features or effects not included in FotoCanvas I can switch to Paint Shop Pro to edit the image.  ACDSee is a browser, image manager and editor. The view shows the open main view with the three panes, the email option with a selected photo attached to their email program, and a full screen view of the image.  From within the software, I can browse, view, edit, or otherwise manage the image or send it to someone through email. The images in the folders load very quickly and can be viewed easily without taking a lot of time to generate each thumbnail.  The third pane has the full and as mentioned earlier, the view can be adjusted to show a single column of images or a single list of items without the thumbnail views. The program is easy to move around in, understand, and use. FotoAngelo FotoAngelo is used to create slideshows/ presentations and screensavers.  The slideshows are great and very easy to create.  Images are selected, added, set the options such as random transition effects, background color, add sound, and play.  The slideshow shows full screen, runs smoothly, and can contain twenty or more images. The slideshow or presentation can be saved and then you can return to it and finish editing or adding items. Slideshows can be set to run automatically or manually. The slideshow can be easily shared with others by saving it in its executable format (.exe). The image to the left shows the FotoAngelo workspace.  The pane on the left is the folder where the images I want to use are listed.  Select the images to be viewed in the slideshow or presentation and add them to the pane on the right. It's all very intuitive and just clicking the button on the bar selects and moves all the images. If the images are not displayed in the order preferred, clicking re-sequence images opens the windows with the thumbnail views on the right side of the image.  Images can be dragged and dropped into any sequence you would like. I really like this application.  I wish there were a way to view the slideshow on a web site. It is one of the easiest slideshow applications I have worked with.  FotoCanvas FotoCanvas is the image editor in the suite.  Many of the tools found in larger, more expensive image editors are found in FotoCanvas although it is somewhat limited.  It is also limited in the selection of effects (filters) that are available. The effects that come with it are blur, sharpen, despeckle, red-eye reduction, emboss, sepia, negative, and colorize.  Sepia is one of the more popular effects (filters) in use today. It gives the image an antique reddish-brown or old look.  I have the sepia option in several other software packages and they have adjustable sliders to change the look. They don't always make the perfect tone I have wanted. I found this effect, that has no adjustments, adds and excellent sepia tone to an image. This is an effect that I like using and a good sepia tone is nice to find. There are a few less color tools and the color adjustment tools are split into two sections – Color and Adjust. I also found that there's no setting for converting an image to "Greyscale" but that there are two "Gray" color settings "16 grays" and "256" grays.  It seems to have a little different method of arriving at changing an image to shades of gray.  FotoCanvas has other familiar tools, selection mask tools, lasso and wand masks, text tool, fills, move tool, eyedropper, brushes, shape tools, pencil, line, and more. While there may not be as many options as in larger applications, for it's price, it has enough tools to do quite a bit of editing. It also will accept all the plug-ins that you have in other imaging software applications. I was able to add all my plug-in to FotoCanvas from my other plug-in directories. The ability to launch it from the ACDSee application is a nice feature. If you find that you need to do more editing than this application allows for, other image editors can be launched from the ACDSee application. You are not limited to one other application either you can choose to add several to the list on the Edit menu. Overall, I liked this package. It's medium priced considering that it has three applications. The image editor is basic but meets the requirements for image editing. It makes a nice package for anyone who wants all of the options available in the viewer/image manager along with a slide show presentation application and an image editor.  I wish I had the current version so I could see if there was any difference. I found that the separate items, FotoCanvas and FotoAngelo, had free updates but they will not update the suite versions but the PowerPack required an upgrade purchase of $39.  I considered purchasing the upgrade so that the review would be of the current application, which of course would help anyone interested in buying it, but I hesitated because I only had this version a few weeks and I didn't know if it would overwrite my thumbnail previews in my folders again. I don't know if this is a known problem, an occasional occurrence, or just one of those incompatibilities that my system loves to throw at me. Overall, I think this is a nice package for anyone who would like to work with the features this suite offers.