ACDSee versus Bridge

[cheska99]

I've been so disappointed with Bridge lately that I'm thinking about buying ACDSee, but it would be madness to do so if I had to keyword every image all over again. Does anyone know if ACDSee reads the keywords stored with Photoshop images? In other words, can I import that images into ACDSee and voila! like magic, my keywords are there?

[anke]

I am pretty sure you can't. I could be wrong, but I don't think so... Why don't you like Bridge? I was just thinking about starting to use it

[champsarahjoy]

You can also use Picasa, which is free. I have just started using it and have been really happy. I previously used Shoebox and it picks up those tags, so maybe it would also pick up your tags from Bridge?
It's free, so you wouldn' t have anything lost if it didn't work out for you.

[cheska99]

That's a good point about Picassa being free. It certainly won't hurt to try.

As to why I don't like Bridge, it's kind of a sad story. This software is woefully underdocumented. It seems to be the neglected stepchild of Photoshop. When I had to do a clean install of my system (yes, weep for me), I tried to find out how to restore my keyword list and discovered that no one seems to know how to do it. It's not a simple process, apparently, but I wouldn't mind that if there was just some good documentation on how to do it. After weeks of working on it and getting help everywhere I could (including from Heather here), I seem to have it almost restored, but I have a feeling it will never be completely restored. I hoped Lightroom would do the trick, but LR doesn't catalog .png files. I hoped PSE 8 Organizer would do the trick but that software doesn't recognize the keywords already embedded in PS files (which I guess is because they're taking a whole new approach to the thing, but, I mean, really! Couldn't Adobe have made it compatible with their own organizing program?) I don't think ACDSee is going to let me do this without re-keywording approximately 100 gigs of files, which I am not nearly fanatic enough to do). So either I stick with Bridge and hope I don't have too much more to do to make things the way they used to be or I try Picassa or I. . . ? Got any ideas?

[anke]

trying it out as we speak.....

[mhowe]

One really cool thing about Picasa is that it reads the actual name of the file. For example you have a file named "KPertiet tan frame 1" because Picasa has such a fantastic search engine you can search your data base for tan frame and it will pull up all items with tan and frame. The only problem is that the designer must have actually named the item using descriptive terms. So I say all of that to tell you that you don't actually have to tag everything in Picasa because it is very easy to run a quick search. I also really like the way you can easily view all your folders in Picasa.

I use both ACDSee and Picasa. I love ACDSee and use it for almost everything but I do occasionally use Picasa. Good luck.

[LisaD]

i bought acdsee (was just using pse organizer before for photos). I love it. I plan to use it for my photos & for my digi elements. although so far I've only tagged DD's stuff, but when I get a spare minute to actually put a page together, I can gather my supplies quickly.