I’m getting my first PC with Windows 7 as the OS. For years I’ve used and loved ACDSee for photo editing, and am currently running Photo Manager 2009 on my XP machines. It appears from online research that ACDSee hasn’t yet made its software truly compatible with Windows 7 – sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, according to comments in various forums.
I suppose I could wait for ACDSee to get their Photo Manager 2010 out, but who knows how long that will take? Meanwhile, one purpose for getting the new computer is to migrate much of what I do on my current main PC with XP over there, to work in parallel with and eventually in place of the old system, when I feel comfortable with making a wholesale switch to Windows 7. I don’t want to have to wait Og knows how long to get photo editing software up and running.
So, if I’m going to get a different photo editing software, what should it be? It needs to be intuitively easy to use for editing and printing; organization and sharing features aren’t as important to me, and I don’t do video work. The tools I use most often in ACDSee are crop, shadows/highlights, sharpen, straighten, repair, and resize. I don’t do a lot of techno-tricks with my images, or overlaying of text. A quick and easy watermarking tool would be nice.
I do have a suit of software that came with my Canon Rebel XTi that I could try, although I got it almost a year ago, so it’s probably not Windows 7 compatible out of the box. Also, I tried editing with it and quickly said the heck with it; too complicated and hard to figure out, even reading the instructions.
A couple I’ve been reading about online are Picasa and Serif PhotoPlus. There’s always Adobe Photoshop, of course, though I was under the (erroneous?) impression that it’s not as easy to use as other softwares. There’s a whole lot more out there, and I don’t know which would be a good choice.
Suggestions? Experiences? Warnings to run like hell? Help, please!