
That means you can't search for a particular camera between two dates, for instance. It's possible to filter by multiple criteria, but the Calendar and Folders browsers are separate to the other metadata filters.

There's no option to reveal a photo in Windows Explorer, for example, which is a feature we use regularly in other photo-management software. Photo management isn't without its frustrations, though. ^ There are lots of ways to browse and filter the photo library, but it might be a bit bewildering for casual users. The five-star rating system is extremely useful for filtering large groups of photos to pick your favourites. Keywords are easy to add, and make it quick to locate photos when you can't remember the date or folder location. Once the software is aware of them, photos can be browsed and filtered by a vast range of criteria including capture date, camera settings, camera and lens model, map location, user-defined keywords, ratings and labels. We like the ability browse to any folder on the hard disk without having to import photos into the catalogue actively. These can be removed, but we really don't expect to see such unscrupulous tactics in the first place. The company doesn't endear itself in its online shop, surreptitiously adding a rolling subscription to its photo hosting service (£23.47 per year) and something called download insurance (£10.22 per year) into the shopping basket. However, there are lots of people who shoot JPEGs and would benefit from ACDSee's photo management and editing facilities, which are a significant step up from free software such as Google Picasa. It can handle both JPEGs and RAW files but, from our point of view, the lack of non-destructive editing makes it unsuitable for working with RAW files.

ACDSee 17 forces you to commit to edits, either by overwriting the original file or saving as a new one. The key difference is that ACDSee Pro can perform non-destructive edits, letting you go back and tweak photos to your heart's content while always working from the original image data. ACDSee 17 is a photo manager and editor, and a cut-down version of ACDSee Pro 7.
