ACDSee Pro 6 review

The previous version’s noise-reduction algorithm struggled to cope with extremely noisy raw files, so we’re pleased to see that it has been revamped in this version. The results were significantly better, and maximum settings could tackle the noisiest of photos. However, it still lags behind Lightroom in its ability to suppress noise while maintaining details.

It’s also much slower to apply, taking a couple of seconds to update the preview for a 16-megapixel photo on our Core i7-870 PC. Having applied noise reduction to an image, we had to wait while it was reapplied each time we adjusted any setting – not just for changes to noise reduction but for colour correction tweaks too, and even when zooming or panning across the image.

Noise reduction is better than before, but Raw files processed in the previous version might need to be reprocessed to look their best

We were dismayed to find that images we’d processed in version 5 had the newer noise-reduction algorithm automatically applied. The software used identical numerical settings but this gave significantly heavier processing, obliterating both noise and details.

This is a serious flaw for anyone who has processed thousands of photos with previous versions and who expects to be able to find their photos exactly as they left them. Updating non-destructive editors’ image-processing engines is a tricky task, but Lightroom shows how it should be done with an option to switch to the newer processing engine on a photo-by-photo basis.

There are various other niggles that make this software slightly annoying to use. When we tried to import photos using the Import From Disk command, the software tried to copy the entire 300GB collection to My Pictures. The only way to avoid this is to select Tools, Database, Catalog Files – not the most obvious place to look.

Searching by metadata is often restricted to preset values; it can show all the ISO 100 or 3200 shots, but not ISO 80 or 6400 shots, for example. It can filter to show Raw files from specific manufacturers, but Panasonic and Samsung are missing from the list. Selecting Sony Raw inexplicably produced no matches.

It’s impossible to use the excellent Calendar panel and the Catalog to filter simultaneously by date and other metadata. Raw files are displayed in the View tab using their embedded JPEG information, and only use the actual Raw data when zoomed in to 1:1 or after switching to Develop or Edit tab.

There’s a lot to like here, but very few features stand head and shoulders above the competition, and a few fall short. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 is the better choice.