SEATTLE & VICTORIA, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ACD Systems International Inc. today announced two photo editing and management products which provide the richest combination of capabilities and value available. Both ACDSee Pro 5 and ACDSee 14 incorporate the company’s patented technology and user-focused design which have made ACD the products of choice for over 50 million users worldwide.

    “The declining cost of digital cameras has enabled better image capture, however the cost of software has not fallen dramatically”

ACDSee Pro 5 is the most complete solution for the enhancement and control of image production for professional photographers. Pro 5 is the only solution that allows photographers to carry out the essential elements of the photography creative process and distribution in one place. The standard version, ACDSee 14, gives sophisticated amateurs the high end tools they need to produce professional quality results and easily manage their library of images. Both products provide professional quality features normally found across multiple traditional products such as Adobe Photoshop, Bridge and Lightroom, at a much lower cost. They also offer users the ability to share images via social media networks and on the company’s free online photo sharing service, ACDSeeOnline.com.

“The declining cost of digital cameras has enabled better image capture, however the cost of software has not fallen dramatically,” said Doug Vanderkerkhove, Founder and CEO of ACD Systems. “While great cameras are more accessible to both pros and amateurs, the second part of the process—enabling more creativity, better control and accessibility of the photos taken—has lagged far behind for everyone but the elite. ACD Systems is striving to change that. Democratization of quality photography tools is something that we feel very strongly about. ACD System’s commitment to this has engendered incredible loyalty around the world. These new products symbolize a renewed dedication to both professional and amateur photographers, and to the art of photography.”

Both ACDSee Pro 5 and ACDSee 14 new features include:

    Customizable color labels – a new, powerful way to help photographers track an image through the various stages of multi-step workflows.
    Drawing tools – mark up an image—draw arrows, lines, circles or highlight to draw attention to certain aspects of your photos or add subtle or dramatic drawing effects.
    New special effects – easily modify images. Apply popular effects without needing to go through a cumbersome, technical, multi-step process. Create collages in Polaroid-like frames. Indulge in the art of Lomographic photography, or apply the Orton softening effect to portraits and landscapes.

ACDSee Pro 5, the newest Pro product, offers new editing and management features, including:

    Dodge and Burn – the traditional darkroom effect can be used to digitally apply saturation and vibrancy, as well as darken and/or lighten certain areas of photographs.
    Split Toning – the easiest way to selectively adjust the saturation of specific hues in your photograph’s shadows and highlights.
    Advanced sharpening tools -- available via a new Mask slider-based interface that allows you to easily control the amount of sharpening applied to areas of texture and detail. This allows the photographer to mask out areas with little detail helping to avoid applying sharpening to noise in areas of low detail. This is especially useful for RAW conversion workflow.
    Remove Metadata – With this feature, you are able to protect the details of your photos, such as location, camera setting and equipment choices. To ensure that images are socially safe, photographers can remove and edit metadata to keep sensitive information private prior to sharing photographs with others or online.

ACDSee 14 gives dedicated amateur photographers pro-quality tools including:

    New map view and geotagging support – For security reasons photographers can strip out geotagging information automatically added by their camera.
    A new metadata panel that includes custom metadata views for improved control over viewing important data.
    The ability to upload local files conveniently using Sync to Web folders.

And Pro 5 and ACDSee 14 will continue to provide industry-leading features including:

    Full control of where images reside. Users never have to import or export images into a vendor-controlled database resulting in a virtual view. Unlike other solutions, ACDSee allows you to edit photographs in real-time, directly from the source – whether it is an external hard drive, local file system or network accessed folder.
    Editing can be seen in real-time and previewed in full screen, instantly without waiting for image rendering.
    ACDSee’s catalog-based technology stores key identifying metadata for each image, including date, location, and equipment used. This makes it fast and simple to perform tasks such as powerful search according to keywords, dates and other important information using the Quick Search, Organize Pane and Saved Searches features.

The company also announced today that its online photo sharing and storage site, ACDSeeOnline.com, is now free, so anyone can create beautiful photographs then use ACDSee Online’s cloud-based environment to store and share images. ACDSee Online users can easily archive any file format (including RAW formats), email photo albums, post albums on Facebook and Tweet links to albums. ACDSeeOnline.com is safe and secure and does not require purchase of any ACDSee product.

About ACD Systems

Founded in Texas in 1993 by imaging visionary Doug Vanderkerkhove, ACD Systems is one of the largest and most respected independent digital editing and management companies in the world. Doug foresaw the importance of the convergence of analog and digital (print, photos, scans, video and metadata).

The company’s products include ACDSee Pro 4, ACDSee Photo Manager 12, and Canvas 12 +GIS, which helps Fortune 500 companies enhance, manage and disseminate their valuable digital assets. Customers include General Motors, Caterpillar, Boeing, The New York City Fire Department, NASA, CNN and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Today ACD holds six patents and millions of ACDSee products are in use throughout the world. In fact, ACDSee products are so popular in Asia that they are second only to Louis Vuitton in product piracy.

ACD Systems can be found online at www.acdsee.com, on Twitter at @acdsee, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/acdsee.