One great thing about working with RAW files in Develop mode is that it yields a large range of possible outcomes from the same source image. If there’s already a way to do this natively from the ACDSee Pro interface, please let me know. However, I've found no straightforward method for saving these variations that doesn't have some serious functional drawbacks.
Some people have advocated using Snapshots to achieve functionality along these lines. However, Snapshots seems to have been built more as a save your place/backup type mechanism, not so much for creating variations. The only indication an image has snapshots seems to be a tiny icon on the image thumbnail. Snapshots results are not shown as separate thumbnails within the ACDSee interface and don't seem to be searchable, meaning they are difficult to locate and will likely become forgotten and unfindable.
Saving a copy will not save the Develop settings, but rather create an image export with the Develop settings already baked in. They cannot be developed any further from that point and there’s no explicit linkage back to the original image.
I would like a way to develop multiple different sets of settings from the same RAW image that then become represented in the Manage tab. This might be the concept of stacks (not to be confused with image stacking) but with the alternate possibility of displaying variants as separate images. I think this could be an evolution of the existing Snapshots functionality where a Snapshot right-click context menu choice could be a flagged setting to “Display Snapshot in Manage”. Any snapshots marked this way would appear in the Manage tab as a Thumbnail rendered from that snapshot’s Develop settings and with the Snapshot icon. Any snapshot variants opened to Develop from the Manage view automatically open the original raw image have with the snapshot’s Develop settings loaded into the Develop tab. ACDSee should also make “is snapshot” a searchable/filterable parameter.
Some people have advocated using Snapshots to achieve functionality along these lines. However, Snapshots seems to have been built more as a save your place/backup type mechanism, not so much for creating variations. The only indication an image has snapshots seems to be a tiny icon on the image thumbnail. Snapshots results are not shown as separate thumbnails within the ACDSee interface and don't seem to be searchable, meaning they are difficult to locate and will likely become forgotten and unfindable.
Saving a copy will not save the Develop settings, but rather create an image export with the Develop settings already baked in. They cannot be developed any further from that point and there’s no explicit linkage back to the original image.
I would like a way to develop multiple different sets of settings from the same RAW image that then become represented in the Manage tab. This might be the concept of stacks (not to be confused with image stacking) but with the alternate possibility of displaying variants as separate images. I think this could be an evolution of the existing Snapshots functionality where a Snapshot right-click context menu choice could be a flagged setting to “Display Snapshot in Manage”. Any snapshots marked this way would appear in the Manage tab as a Thumbnail rendered from that snapshot’s Develop settings and with the Snapshot icon. Any snapshot variants opened to Develop from the Manage view automatically open the original raw image have with the snapshot’s Develop settings loaded into the Develop tab. ACDSee should also make “is snapshot” a searchable/filterable parameter.
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