ACDSee Gemstone Photo Editor 15 Is an AI-Powered Photoshop Alternative

May 07, 2025

Jeremy Gray

A blue app icon with a stylized white fox head and tail appears centered over a sunlit forest with tall trees and ferns, with warm sunlight streaming through the trees in the background.

ACD Systems released the first version of ACDSee Gemstone back in 2021, ushering in a new AI-fueled standalone photo editing app that aims to take on Adobe Photoshop. The company recently released the latest version of Gemstone, adding new cutting-edge AI features, better masking, and more.

Unlike ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2025, which is an all-in-one photo management and editing application akin to Lightroom, ACDSee Gemstone Photo Editor 15 is more like Photoshop. It features a layer-based workflow, extensive RAW file support, and many features targeted at photographers and graphics designers.

Many of Gemstone’s new features rely on advanced artificial intelligence, including ACDSee AI Super-Resolution to enlarge photos, non-destructive AI object masking to easily select and isolate objects in an image, AI Sky Replacement to quickly swap out a dull sky for a new, exciting one, and AI Face Edit to easily retouch portraits.

A comparison image shows an elephant spraying water with its trunk in a river; the left side is dull and faded, while the right side is vibrant with bright colors, illustrating an enhancement or improvement.

New and existing AI tools rely on local GPU power, ensuring that the user’s content remains secure while delivering superior AI performance compared to using a computer’s CPU.

Side-by-side comparison of a man, woman, and dog outdoors, showing color range masking on the left (colors are vibrant) and luminance range masking on the right (lighting and brightness are adjusted).

There are new tools that don’t rely on AI as well, including new non-destructive color and luminance range masking, new mask refinement controls, more advanced color correction tools, and robust photo merge functionality for creating panoramas and HDR photos.

Aerial view of a blue car parked on concrete, with organized camping gear laid out beside it. The image is split down the middle, showing the left side in muted colors and the right side in vibrant colors.

“With ACDSee Gemstone Photo Editor 15, we’ve introduced more AI-driven tools to make complex editing tasks more accessible and efficient,” says Frank Lin, COO and CTO at ACD Systems. “ACDSee software is all about making life easier.”

For users unfamiliar with ACDSee Gemstone Photo Editor, the latest version includes some of the same great features as prior versions, including a tabbed multi-document interface (like Photoshop), non-destructive RAW photo editing, and repair and restoration tools (including heal, dehaze, denies, and more).

A photo editing software shows an astronaut on a transparent background on the left and the same astronaut overlaid on a star-filled space background on the right, with editing tools and layers visible.

Unfortunately for Mac users, ACDSee Gemstone Photo Editor 15 is not available on macOS — it is Windows only. Mac users can opt for Photo Studio for Mac 11, which is, like Photo Studio Ultimate 2025 on Windows, a Lightroom alternative rather than a Photoshop one.

That said, for Windows users, Gemstone Photo Editor 15 has a nifty trick up its sleeve that Photoshop doesn’t — a lifetime license. ACDSee Gemstone Photo Editor 15 is available now for a one-time fee of $69.95. There is also a free trial available to download directly from ACDSee’s website.

Image credits: ACD Systems