Piwigo vs ACDSee
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Piwigo
Manage your cloud-based photo gallery from your mobile device. Organize albums, edit photos and videos, upload new media with detailed metadata, and share your creations. This app complements the web-based Piwigo software for a seamless photo management experience.
- Browse and manage albums
- Edit, download, and delete photos/videos
- Upload media with metadata
- Organize photos into albums
- Share photos and videos
- Set album cover images
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Piwigo for iPhone/iPad/iPod supplements the photo gallery software in the cloud Piwigo (v12.0 or higher): • Browse your albums, • Create, delete, move and rename albums, • Search, edit, download and delete photos and videos, • Copy and move photos and videos between albums, • Add and remove photos and videos from your favorites, • Set a photo as album image, • Upload photos and videos: - of modifiable size and quality, - with description, author, tags, EXIF metadata, - with or without GPS metadata. • Share albums, photos and videos. Piwigo empowers you to create your own photo gallery on the web. It includes many powerful features such as albums, tags, geolocation, many levels of customization, upload by visitors, privacy, calendar or statistics. Piwigo is free and opensource. Piwigo is also compatible with the following extensions: - Community: allows users to create albums and add photos - rotateImage: enables you to rotate images - Share Album: allows to share private albums with people who do not have an account - piwigo-two_factor: adds two-factor authentication (2FA) - piwigo-videojs: adds video support Feedback or questions ? Piwigo offers free support at https://piwigo.org/forum and we'd love to hear from you.
ACDSee
This app empowers users to capture, enhance, and share professional-quality photos. It offers advanced camera controls, a powerful nondestructive photo editor, and a convenient collage maker for creating stunning visual content.
- Manual camera controls
- Nondestructive photo editing
- Real-time effects and adjustments
- HDR and Flash Fusion
- Collage maker with 100+ layouts
- Skin smoothing and lightening
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Capture, perfect, and share your photos with ACDSee. ACDSee combines a professional grade camera and photo editor with all the tools you need to produce stunning photographs. Camera Harness the full power of your device's camera with specialized shooting modes, manual controls for exposure/focus/white balance, real-time effects and adjustments, HDR & flash fusion, separate exposure and focus points, dual-axis level indicator, and more. Edit Perfect your photos with a powerful, nondestructive photo editor. Apply adjustments and special effects including exposure, shadows & highlights, contrast, white balance, saturation, vibrance, sharpness, softness and skin tune. Collage Convenient collage maker for sharing your memories. Quickly combine multiple photos into a single image for easy sharing. Choose from over 100 layouts. — CAMERA FEATURES Manual Controls Precisely control exposure, focus and white balance, including a custom white balance preset. Real-time overexposure and underexposure visualization. Shutter Priority Mode Set the shutter speed and ACDSee Camera Pro automatically chooses the ISO for proper exposure. Selfie Mode Look your best with skin smoothing and lightening, plus a front-facing torch/flash for low-light situations. Real-time Effect Filters Choose from 24 effects, including high-quality black & white, Orton, film grain, halftone, and various color tone filters. Real-time Adjustments See brightness, contrast, vibrance, sharpness, clarity, skin tune and vignette adjustments in real time and add additional noise reduction during capture. Exposure Bracketing Capture three exposures at once at different exposure levels. HDR Fusion Combine three shots taken at different exposures to create a single high-dynamic-range image, with manual override of composition parameters. Flash Fusion Combine a naturally-illuminated capture with a flash-illuminated capture. Video Mode Capture those special moments with video and apply filters and adjustments in real-time. Flash Modes Choose from six flash modes: Off, On, Auto, Torch, Torch & flash, and Flash Fusion. All modes work with either the rear-facing or the front-facing camera. Focus and Exposure Touch to select focus and exposure point. For more precise control, independently select focus and exposure points. Lockable AF, AE and AWB Independently lock focus, exposure, and white balance. Cropping modes Crop before you shoot to square, 4:3, 3:2, and 16:9 aspect ratios. Independent settings for front and rear cameras, still photo and video modes. Level Indicator Compose your shots with precise alignment using a dual-axis level indicator. — EDITOR FEATURES Image adjustments, including: - Shadows & Highlights - Exposure - Contrast - Fill Light - White Balance - Saturation & Vibrance - Sharpness - Softness - Skin Tune Effects Apply a variety of creative effects to your photos, including film, halftone, and more. Focus Bring your subject into focus. Simulate a shallow depth of field by blurring the background. Vignette Add a vignette effect around the edges of your photo. Geometry Crop, rotate, straighten, and mirror your photo. Filter Splash Creatively splash on effects such as selective coloring to draw attention to your subject. Stickers & Frames Decorate your photos with fun stickers and attractive frames. ACDSee is a trademark of ACD Systems International Inc. and may be registered in Canada, the United States, the European Union, Japan, or certain other jurisdictions.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Piwigo at Free against ACDSee's $1.99. Piwigo also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 10) and update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 2 months). ACDSee's advantage is rating (4.9 vs 4.6) and chart position (#175 vs unranked). On review sentiment, ratings volume, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Piwigo is free to download; ACDSee costs $1.99 up front. ACDSee sells 10 one-off in-app purchases. Piwigo asks for nothing beyond the download.
ACDSee holds the better App Store score, 4.9 against 4.6. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 182 and 233 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 69% of Piwigo's written reviews are positive against 64% of ACDSee's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Piwigo ships an update every 3 weeks, ACDSee every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on September 24, 2026 and September 25, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Piwigo | ACDSee |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $1.99 |
| Rating | 4.6 (182 ratings) | 4.9 (233 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 68.9% of reviews — better | 63.8% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 182 | 233 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks — better | Every 2 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Best chart rank | — | #175 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.5 — better | 15.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 43 MB | 78 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Pigolabs | ACD Systems International Inc. |
Customer experience
Piwigo
ACDSee
User reviews
Piwigo
From 182 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Great for photo sharing control
- 👍 Free and awesome
- 👍 Best for self-hosted pictures
- 👍 Sync feature is great
- 👍 Flexible photo organization
Room to improve
- 🐛 iPad app connection issues
- 🐛 Uploaded photos not showing
- 🐛 B&W images render blurry on iPad/iPhone
- 🐛 Pictures only display momentarily
- 🐛 Uploads have stopped
ACDSee
From 233 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Easy to use
- 🚀 Powerful photo editing tools
- 💡 Good camera features
- 👍 Intuitive interface
- 🚀 Smooth performance
Room to improve
- 💰 Expensive in-app purchases
- 🐛 Crashes and stability issues
- 🚫 Limited free features
- 🚫 Lack of support for older iOS versions
- 🚫 No option to save original photo
Bugs and requests
Piwigo
Reported bugs
35 issues- iPad app connection issues
- Uploaded photos not showing
- B&W images render blurry on iPad/iPhone
- Pictures only display momentarily
- Uploads have stopped
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- Severe bug: deleted photo reappears
- Live Photos not uploaded with 'live' portion
- .MOV files fail to upload
- Images stuck uploading for hours
- Auto-download toggle deactivates
- Crashes constantly on iPad
- Permission errors on iPad
- App needs auto upload camera roll
- Users cannot delete their photos
- Images no longer load
- Cannot download original size photo via iOS app
- Uploads hanging after update
- Doesn't connect to custom domains
- Crashing since last update
- Album images layout issues
- Thumbnail size adjustment ineffective
- Uploading from cloud photos problematic
- Uploads fail or resize to tiny images
- Interface bugs, selection issues
- Not compatible with iOS 8
- Freezes on password entry
- Cannot see existing albums
- Album creation silently fails
- Cannot upload photos
- App not updated, upload issues
- Stopped allowing photo uploads
- Cannot select multiple pics at once
- Freezes during upload
- Uploads freeze after first photo
- Doesn't upload geo info from exif
Requested features
13 requests- Ability to browse in Photos and open in Piwigo to upload
- Double tap to zoom
- Auto upload camera roll
- Search capability
- Support for multiple accounts
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- Better album image layout
- Ability to see and add comments
- Video support
- Nextcloud integration
- Download original size photo via iOS app
- Support tag editing on upload
- Cache photo galleries for offline viewing
- Upload geo info from exif data
ACDSee
Reported bugs
3 issues- Continuous photo capture bug
- Saving edited photos not working
- Video recording without audio
Requested features
5 requests- Add text editing capabilities
- Implement cloud integration
- Improve video recording and editing
- Provide more customization options
- Add support for RAW file formats
In-app purchases
Piwigo
No in-app purchases
ACDSee
- DeluxeFree
- SunglassesFree
- Crazy ShadesFree
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- GlassesFree
- HatsFree
- MoustachesFree
- Moustaches 2Free
- WigsFree
- Wigs 2Free
- Pro Pack$4.99









