Hi Everyone,
I’m Dan, Lead Developer at ACD Systems. I don't usually write these kinds of emails, but there's something I've wanted to say for a while — and a pretty exciting offer felt like a good excuse to finally say it.
Over the past few years, AI has been reshaping what's possible in photography software. As someone who's spent countless hours building these tools, it's been genuinely thrilling, but it's also raised a question our team kept coming back to: whose side is the AI actually on?
Too much AI in this industry is powered by the very images it's supposed to be protecting, so we built ours differently. The AI in ACDSee software runs locally, on your machine. Your photos never leave your computer. They aren't uploaded to the cloud, and they are never used to train AI models. Not now, not ever.
I know that's not the easiest path from an engineering standpoint. Processing everything through remote servers would be simpler, but photographers trust us with something that matters; client work, personal memories, and a creative livelihood. We take that responsibility seriously.
One of the things I'm genuinely proud of is that after more than 30 years, ACD Systems is still a privately owned, family-run company based in Victoria, BC. That independence means our team gets to make decisions based on what's right for photographers and not what is going to make some "tech bro" more money. We focus on building software that holds up over time, rather than simply chasing trends.
To celebrate our privacy-first stance on AI-powered tools (and to say thank you for your support), we're making ACDSee Ultimate Pack 2026 available for $79 USD. That's the full bundle (a $795.41 USD value) with five applications covering digital asset management, RAW photo editing, layered image editing, AI-powered workflows, and video editing. Plus three installs per product.
