I quit using ACDSee when they decided to change to a less intuitive format for the 2008 version for some stupid reason. For quick and dirty, I use Picasa 3, which is compatible with Windows 7, and is free. The only annoyance with Picasa is the clunky resizing method.
Yes, ACDSee 2008 had some drawbacks, all right, but Photo Manager 2009 is a much better, easier to use product, with a wider selection of tools. It gives me everything I normally need for the simple sort of image editing I do.
Of course, the Windows 7 compatible version that’s promised might bollix up ease of use if they go too crazy with the updates.
I have yet to keep any freeware/shareware that I’ve tried.
I’ll just stick to Adobe stuff. I do like my Nikon NX and Transfer for file management (Canon’s stuff was very useful, too, when I was shooting EOS), but it’s PhotoShop all the way for anything else. I have 3 different versions, use Elements for probably 75% of my work, even the simple stuff. Check Adobe support sites for plug ins and specials.
I <3 Lightroom and Photoshop, but I’ve used them since almost their inception (BarneyScan, anyone?). They do far more than you need, but Photoshop Elements does, too, but is much cheaper and has a pretty neat photo organizer and other useful things. And if you learn Elements, you’ve got a small piece of how to use the bigger versions, if that interests you.
I use Digikam on both Windows (from KDE on Windows) and Linux - workflow and tagging are brilliant. It has some basic editing functions built in, and you can use an external editing program: I use The GIMP.
My wife understands enough about it to tag photos for printing projects at various sizes, I can then export the tagged photos onto a flash stick and get them printed. It also handles direct export to picasa/flashbook/flicker/online printing services…
Simple, powerful and worth looking at.
Si
Well, I took the plunge and installed Elements. This will definitely require some study. So far, with a good deal of at-first fumbling about, I’ve been able to do all the editing I normally do, and the results are good. I don’t like the way downloading photo files into the software automatically sorts themby date taken, since that is not how I order my downloads, but that can be worked around by creating folders in My Documents to download the camera into.
We’ll see, in a few months when ACDSee 2010 comes out, whether I’m still frustrated enough to go over to its comforting familiarity.