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Author Topic: ACDSee vs ThumbsPlus for large collections  (Read 11800 times)

JeffK

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ACDSee vs ThumbsPlus for large collections
« on: July 16, 2005, 04:57 PM »
In the review it is indicated that ThumbsPlus is a good choice for large graphics collections.  Does anyone have an opinion if it is better than ACDSee for this purpose?

I bought SmartPix Manager some time ago and one of the reasons was it enable viewing of thumbnails acrosss many directories.  Are ACDSee and ThumbsPlus good at this?

Thanks,

Jeff

mouser

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Re: ACDSee vs ThumbsPlus for large collections
« Reply #1 on: July 16, 2005, 05:06 PM »
acdsee is great at viewing thumnails accross multiple arbitrary directories - it basically has checkboxes and lets you toggle on and off various directories to view simultaneously.

i don;t know if thumbsplus is so flexible, but you can easily say, show me every image in this folder AND ALL SUBFOLDERS.
one of the reasons i say its good at huge image collections is its ability to let you ask it to catalog/database thumbnails for huge directory trees on demand, which can be really useful when you have 10 thousand images and you want them scanned while you go have a meal.  i couldnt find a way to do this in acdsee (though it may be there), which means there is an initial delay the first time you visit any folders.  thumbsplus is designed to queue up such operations and show you nice progress, etc.

but there is only one real answer:
install trial versions of them and play with them and see :)

nudone

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Re: ACDSee vs ThumbsPlus for large collections
« Reply #2 on: July 16, 2005, 05:59 PM »
you can 'catalog' files with ACDSee but you may not immediately spot the option as it's under the 'database' menu.

i've not got anything i can really test it on at the moment as all my files are already in the database (i suppose i could delete it and make another).

there appears to be quite a good choice of what you can do when selecting how you want to catalog folders but, to be honest, i can't remember if i've ever done it through this manual setup method - i've always pretty much just let ACDSee extend it's database automatically when it encounters new images (maybe if i had a folder with thousands of image files inside i would be able to tell you if this auto method is time consuming or annoying. i don't think it will work as a background process).

if you want to try it for yourself then here's what to do:

from the 'Database' menu, select 'Catalog files...'

choose which folders you want to scan through

there are a few 'advanced options' you can select: import Exi data, build and include thumbnails, catalog only image files and also, include contents of archive files.

after this you can also automatically add a few details such as the a caption, author, various dates and notes. these will be applied to all the images in the current scan.

i hope this helps.