False advertising promises

[Framon]

Framon
I'm not sure why the question is asked, but I have paid for licensed ACD products ~2007 through today. In my mind, using unlicensed copies of any software is thievery and should be prosecuted without exception.

It was only a question. Don't be offended.
Sometimes disabling the anti-virus is necessary to make unofficial versions operational.
And I agree with you for the prosecution of hacking.
Personally, I don't experience excessive slowness on my PC but I understand that 32 seconds to start Ultimate is really long...

[Greyfox]

It would be great if ACDSee could investigate some of these slower PC's and find out why, and then give out some specific tips/recommendations for the general PC setup needed to make the ACDSee expecrience enjoyable.

I'm not sure how practical that task would be. The speed of software on any particular PC can depend on so many different things and combination of things.

In terms of hardware there are the obvious, the type and characteristics of the CPU (speed, single core, multicore, hyperthreading), the main board chipset, bus speeds, the available amount and speed of PC memory, the graphics processor, the type of drives in use, and the type of network connection (Ethernet, wireless) to name a few. But with older PC's there is also perhaps the less obvious, the gradual increase in read/write times when available drive space starts to run low on mechanical hard drives, or when they have become badly fragmented. The automatic throttling back of chips that can occur because over time the cooling has deteriorated due to build up of dirt, or because the thermal paste has dried right out.

In terms of the operating system, again the obvious, the OS version and what updates have been installed (Microsoft patches that were issued to overcome security issues with early Intel processors were known to reduce performance), virtual memory settings and the condition of the registry. Sadly one of negatives of the Windows operating system is how the registry seriously bloats with time. It is not uncommon for those wanting the best performance from their PC to do bare metal clean install of Windows and all of the current software every 12 months or so.

Other factors that can effect performance are the overall amount of software installed on the PC and the quality of the housekeeping.

In terms of a program's startup time, some software uses splash screen "up time" to do on line registration checks, to check for updates, and to send out analytical data. How much effect any "on line" component of that nature has on startup time depends on exactly what the software is programmed to do during start up, and the speed of the network and internet connection at the time.

In terms of Photo Studio, the size of the image collection and where it is installed, the size of the database, where it is stored and how well the database is maintained. Other items are the user option settings, what other software is running at the same time, what background processes are taking place, and what effect anti-virus and anti-malware software is having on Photo Studio operations.

I will qualify the 2.35 seconds startup time I posted earlier for U2021. This is on a desktop PC that is less than 3 months months old, it has an Intel i7-10700 Gen10 CPU, 32GB RAM and a GTX1660 6GB GPU. The operating system was a completely new installation of 64bit Windows 10 Pro v2004, and the registry has not yet had time to significantly bloat. The operating system is on a M.2 NVMe SSD and the bulk of the photos and the database are on another M.2 NVMe SSD (regularly backed up onto external drives).

I opted to start a completely new database when I installed U2021 on this PC, and then read the metadata into it from the metadata embedded in the images (Catalog process), rather than transferring and converting the older U2020 database I had on the previous desktop PC.

That older desktop PC is approximately 11 years old, with an i7-2600 Gen 2 (Sandy Bridge) CPU, 16GB memory with a GTX 1050ti 4GB graphics card. It has 64 bit Windows 10 Pro v1909 OS on a SATA SSD and the U2020 database and majority of images are on a local 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7500 RPM SATA hard drive)

Obviously there has been an improvement in speed between U2020 on the old PC and U2021 on the new PC, but the U2020 startup time on the old PC is still less than 7 secs.

Like GusPanella, I have face detection and Auto Index turned off, and I don't use 365, so the options for that are not enabled. I also have my home folder set to a specific work folder, rather than last used.

[alex-online]

I agree that the main motto for 2021 is a false advertising.
"Our Fastest Version Yet" — probably the full sentence was ... to come

Personally, I haven't noticed any visible performance difference in 2021.
Start-up about 10 sec — on par with previous versions. Not the most important metric.
Opening images to edit 2-5 sec — the same. Very important delay.
Fortunately, face recognition can still be turned off completely.

Batch renaming is better, but not the main part.
Color, tone wheels — very subjective improvement.

If it's worth updating 2020 to 2021, I can't give a positive answer to myself yet.
I really wished and hoped we would see old times fastness on basic operations, but no.

[Trevor]

I'm not sure how practical that task would be. The speed of software ,....

Thanks for giving this some thought.
Since a few people have complained about generally slower performance of U2021 it seems to me like it would be in ACDSee’s own interest to investigate. Especially since ACDSee’s marketing people are claiming that it is the faster speed that is the key selling point of this new version.
I’m sure their experts could find an approach to do that in a practical way. Yes, this can be complex but no reason for them to give up before they start.
A lot of the points you mentioned speak of a general and a gradual slowing down of a computer over time. Yes, that happens, but that would not explain why different versions of almost the same software, with practically the same photo database, behave differently on the same machine.
Other points you mention might be more to the point like you measuring the performance on a completely new, more or less empty, high end PC. Maybe, as you begin to add other “normal” things to your PC, then ACDSee will also degrade to the performance that others are already complaining about?
It would be nice if the experts at ACDSee can let us know what “external” things are known that slow ACDSee down.
I’m thinking along the lines of some unwanted interference of other programs with this version of ACDSee like anti-virus protection or the newer anti-ransomware software etc etc. or something else. If anti-virus or anti-malware programs are slowing it down, I want to know about it. I also want to know if I must make some particular settings in those programs so that ACDSee is not slowed down.
Why are different versions of ACDSee affected in different ways by these external things?
Specific examples would help.

By the way it is not the start-up time that is a real problem, it’s more the sluggish way it works while developing an image. what is causing that that, I'd like to know. some hints from ACDSee where to look would be appreciated.

The RAW images I process are the 45MB images from a Nikon Z7

My desktop PC also has a i7 processor, but it is gen 3 (i7-3770K 3.5GHz). If ACDSee tell me the problems would all disappear with an i7 gen 10 processor I’d buy a new PC tomorrow. But not sure if that would be good for sales of ACDSee, if you need to buy a new PC to make it work OK.

I have 16GB RAM, Win 10 Home ,64 bit . The ACDSee software and the photos and the database are stored on SSD drives.
The graphics card is an NVIDIA GTX1080. I also use CCleaner regularly to do “housekeeping” and I make sure no unwanted programs are in the autostart.

I have face detection turned off and Auto Index turned on (but only if idle for 5 minutes), and I don't use 365, so the options for that are not enabled.

When I changed to U2021 I converted my existing database, because I want to keep the files I have tagged still marked as tagged in the new database. I optimised the old version before conversion. Also optimised again afterwards. Since then I have also done database maintenance

Although I'm a busy man, if the ACDSee experts want to work with me on this I'd be happy to cooperate with them.

[GusPanella]

It was only a question. Don't be offended.
Sometimes disabling the anti-virus is necessary to make unofficial versions operational.
And I agree with you for the prosecution of hacking.
Personally, I don't experience excessive slowness on my PC but I understand that 32 seconds to start Ultimate is really long...

Not offended. But public forum requires clarity.
The fact that slowness can be turned on/off may be interesting. That switch is the firewall on/off for the connection to ACD homebase.
ACD starts in under 5 seconds (probably under 3) in my 5 year old laptop. This suggests that unless the PC is low end, there should be a hardware concern.


On the otherside, I don't avoid face detection or indexing because of performance. I avoid them for other reasons. They may or may not slow things down. I have no idea.

I do know, given the right conditions, the following does impact performance
* The link between the computer and ACD homebase
* Antivirus ... including the default Windows Defender... the official version is all I know.
* a database that is not compacted maintained weekly (old tech database engine)

The performance related to the firewall switch is merely an added annoyance (joining old database engine, face detection, indexing, focus/exposure stacking, unusable control dials, and advertising practices)

[MBangert]

I compared Ultimate 2018, 2020 and 2021 on my 5-year-old laptop. 2021 is really faster than the old versions.
But - unfortunately only a little. A database query takes exactly the same amount of time in all three versions. Other actions are a little faster.
An alternative image management program is many times faster on the same laptop. So it's not because of the hardware.

Unfortunately, advertising promises something completely different that is not observed in this way. This is very annoying for a long-time user.

[bmcnich]

I've also been struggling with slow startup and mode switching. I took the advice from this thread and disabled both facial recognition and facial detection. My startup speed went from 33 seconds to 11 seconds; switching between modules is also much faster and no more hanging. While I don't think its faster than 2019, it's at least usable again. For context I'm using a PC that is over 10 years old (AMD FX4100 and 16GB RAM), so it would seem that unless you have updated hardware its best to stay away from face detection features.

[Trevor]

This post seems to have been buried without any comments from ACDSee :-(

[WolfgangB]

I actually have the impression that ACDSee doesn't care about this forum or the German-speaking forum. The company shouldn't care about its customers either, as there is no reaction. In fact, I have already given up hope and are now using Affinity Photo and Luminar again to edit my photos. I'll do the administration with ACDSee U2021 until I find something suitable. It's a shame, because I need several programs again.

Incidentally, I am not concerned with the startup speed (I only compared), but with the portability in general, when switching from Develop to Edit or when changing filters. But even that would still be bearable if the program ran stably. ACDSee keeps crashing with the familiar message "... has encountered an operational error ...". This has never happened to me with other image processing software in recent years.
By the way: I deactivated the indexer and face recognition from the start ...

Elsewhere I wrote “don't want or can't ACDSEE?” Meanwhile, I believe ACDSee doesn't want and can't!