This is probably the mostly frequently asked question.  The first answer is no ACDSee Photo Manager or Photo Editor doesn’t run on Mac. 

There is a way though and it might be worthwhile to look into, especially if you have other software that doesn’t run on Mac. 

Parallels allows you to run both Mac and Windows at the same time.

It requires you to do buy 2 pieces of software and be running an Intel-powered Mac:

• Parallels Desktop for Mac - Free 15 day trial version! Download now!
• A copy of Windows Operating System (XP or Vista)

Parallels has an excellent user guide on how this works:   Parallels Desktop for Mac User Guide

The cost of Parallels is $79.99. 

As for the future of ACDSee software running on Mac.  They are listening and know you are asking for it but it looks like you just need to be patient. 

Well, if you’ve been following my series on using brushes in Photo Editor then you’ve been playing with making brushes from simple shapes and converting your ABR files from other software programs.  Let’s do something a little more creative and make a brush from one of our own photos.  The beauty of this technique is that you can make a totally fabulous brush from a not so great photo. 

So the first thing you want to do is choose a photo.  You’re going to be doing an extraction so find one where the background isn’t too complicated or with some simple outlines for the subject.  Here’s a great tutorial for doing an extraction.  I like to use the polygon lasso tool.

After you’ve cleared out the background and cropped your subject you’ll need to make three adjustments to your picture. 

1. Convert it to gray scale by going to Adjustments|Color|Gray Scale. 

2. Increase the contrast.  You might also want to increase or decrease the brightness depending on the photo.  Go to Adjustment|Light|Brightness/Contrast and adjust the sliders to that you have a crisp picture without losing too much detail.  See how much clearer the differences between the highlights and shadows look before and after my adjustments? 

3. The last adjustment is called Posterize and you can find it under Adjustments|Color|Posterize.  Set your posterize adjustment to 5 or 6 levels and click OK.  Now you’re ready for the magic!  We’re going to do our 3-step process on your newly adjusted extraction so select your paintbrush tool and let’s go!

1. Double-click on the thumbnail in the object palette

2. CTRL-A to select all (or use the menu option Image|Selection|Select All Pixels.)

3. click on Saved Brushes|open the fly-out menu|Define Brush.  Grab yourself an empty canvas, choose a paint color, and have fun playing with your new photo brush!  Here are some layouts I created using my photo brushes:

So your Thursday challenge is to create a brush from a photo and then post a layout using your brush.  I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Artwork credits for Viva Las Vegas: paper by Deanna Tafoya; alpha by Tamara Burwick and for Stitches: Paper, chain, and gems by Gisella; glass frame by Liz Pike; glass bubble by Jennilyn; and antique textiles by myself.

Can you all believe we are at week eight already? I feel like I am really getting a lot of stuff accomplished. And I can tell because it takes me less time to tag my incoming kits and files, and way less time spent looking for what I need, as I am scrapping. With the regular backing up and optimizing, Photo Manager has been running like a dream.

Tasks for last week:

1. Back up and Optimize Done!
2. Work on organizing brushes. About halfway done.
3. If you still have more time, tag your stash- 15 minutes a day! Mostly done- there are a few things that need to get taken care of from last weekend’s Treasure Hunt at DST.

I have a lot of brushes, way more than I realized. Since I am about halfway though my brush files, I am going to use this week to finish them up. You can use this week to work on brushes or fonts if you still have any of those left floating around on your hard drive(s). I collect and use brushes very often with I scrap with PhotoShop. But I would like my brushes top be ready for the ACDSee Photo Editor 2008B Beta. You will be able to use abr files in a variety of ways in this program, and that has me very excited. There is a three month free trial for Photo Editor 2008, - just click here and try it out. And try out your brushes in there too!

Since this week has a lot of new things happening in the scrap world, such as the release of Photo Editor 2008 and the ASDR 3 race starting off with a bang, we will keep our homework to a minimum. The last thing we want to do, is to get overwhelmed with everything and fall behind with organizing, scrapping or both! So baby steps is the key- remember that!

Tasks for this week:

1. Back up and Optimize
2. Continue to work on organizing brushes.
3. If you still have more time, tag your stash
4. If you’d like, try out ACDSee Photo Editor 2008 here

Announcing ACDSee’s Digital Scrapbooking Software

Friendly, Fast & Powerful!

Download it HERE!

We are so excited about all the new features. Many are specifically for digital scrapbookers!

Here’s what Anna Aspnes of Digital Scrapbooking Magazine thought after a sneak preview at CHA:

ACDSee are also preparing to release a new version of their Photo Editor later this year which could, dare I say it, rival the capabilities of Photoshop Elements.

We have complete details about the new features & videos here

And ACDSee wants to hear what your ideas are. This is a beta which means that it’s not the final product. You will be able to try out the software for an extended period of time. We hope that you will provide ideas & feedback. These will be incorporated into the final product. You can post your ideas at the ACDSee Product Forums.

Existing features that make ACDSee Photo Editor unique are:

• layers are not complicated
• text on a path that is really easy
• grouping objects simplifies many tasks & items can be adjusted within a grouping
• vignettes create soft blended edges around your photos & papers
• not a memory hog (as all ACDSee products are lightweight)

In addition, ACDSee Photo Editor 2008 includes:

• Advanced journaling & text curving options
• Simplified process for using your favorite papers & photos in templates
• Artistic effects can be added, modified & deleted at any time
• Advanced printing options to ensure that your project turns out as you expected
• Use of abr brushes and create brushes from png’s and any image you choose

Download it HERE! and tell us what you think

Hi everyone! Liz is back with another challenge for ACDSee Photo Editor. I’m going to utilize some of the tutorials we already have here at DigiScrapInfo so we can get to know this program better.

First off, did you see this post?

ACDSee invites you to help build ACDSee Photo Editor 2008!

I’m so excited- we’re all going to be able to give input! So if you don’t have ACDSee Photo Editor yet, you can wait until the 25th and you can download the beta, or download a 30 day trial of our current version. Then we’ll post challenges here every week so you can work your way around the program. Isn’t that exciting! The good news is, you’ll be able to play with it for 90 days!

Anyway, let’s move on to the challenge. If you currently have ACDSee Photo Editor, please feel free to jump right in. If not, wait until the 25th and download it then so you can play along!

We’re going to focus on drop shadows today. They are an integral part of a digital layout. My goal is to make my digital layout look like it was done as a paper layout. A good way to help with that is drop shadows.

I LOVE shadows in Photo Editor. They are done on a separate layer, so you can manipulate them as much as you want! I think they look realistic, but I admit, it took me a few layouts to get a good groove going. So I’ll share the settings I use at the end.

Here is the tutorial we will be using:

Drop Shadows with ACDSee Photo Editor

Here are some examples I’ve done:

A few tips that I’ve learned. I am by no means an expert on this, and I’m sure most of you already know this, but we cater to everybody- new user, or very experienced, so I’ll post it anyway.

When working with drop shadows I have used this tip as a general guide. The closer you want your element to appear “attached” to the paper, the smaller a shadow to use. For example, I put a very small shadow on pictures, background paper, and small elements, but use a larger shadow for things like flowers, ribbons, and frames. Here are some excellent tutorials regarding shadows from Digital Scrapbook Place.

Digital Realism: The Shadow Knows

Shadows and Perspective

These helped me tremendously when starting out.

Anyway, I want to see some layouts with some cool shadow tricks. Post a link in the comments section to your layout, and feel free to let me know what settings you used, any tips and tricks you discovered, etc.

Here are my settings:

I almost always use the same shade, and vary the opacity. Unless I’m working with a dark background, I will usually go to R48, G48, B48 or 303030, which is a dark gray. If I’m using a dark background, I will usually use black. I adjust the opacity down to between 60-80%, depending on what I’m using it for.

For Photo mats, photos, background papers, and small elements such as glitter, buttons, etc:

Offset- 8-12, Blur- 4-5, Opacity- 80%

For frames, cardboard, etc:

Offset- 13-16, Blur- 9-10, Opacity- 75-80%

For Ribbons, flowers, and big shadows:

Offset- 17+, depending on what I want, Blur- 11+- again, depending on what I want, Opacity- 60-75%

Feel free to play with them and come up with your own! I admit, I haven’t played with them a lot, but it is fun once you get the hang of it. I’m pleased with how mine turn out in print. They look realistic enough to me.

Thanks for playing! See you next week!

Are we all caught up? That low-key week was very helpful and very much needed for me. After my dental “issues” last week, if I had more to do than just the alphas, it wouldn’t have gotten done. So let’s look at our homework:

1. Back up and Optimize: Done
2. Clean up alphas- so that only one letter or contact sheet/preview comes up in a search: Done!
3. Create sub-categories and tag Alphas: Done!

Yes, even in pain and on pain meds, I was able to work on the laptop to work on organizing. Priorities, right? LOL

This week we are going back to what I had planned for last week: Organizing your brushes. Abr brush files can only be seen in Photo Manager 10 and Pro2 so if you are using another version of Photo Manager,you won’t be able to do this challenge. Or, you can download a free 30 day trial for Photo Manager *winks* You’ll be totally hooked, so be warned.

This will be similar to how we organized out Fonts. However, I don’t tag my fonts, but for some reason I do tag brushes. I am not really sure why I do that. It could be that fonts can usually be put into one folder or category, but brushes, because of the way that there are usually several brushes in one file, fit into several categories. Looking more closely at what I do, I put the brush into broad folders: Collections by Designer, type of Brush (e.g. Stitches, Doodles).

From there, I look at the brush files. To see all of the brushes in one files, double click the files, and it will open up into the Browse window. All of the individual brushes will show up on the left side.

In looking at the files, I can tag the brush with multiple categories.

Steps:

• Create a main folder for your brushes. I keep the default Photoshop brushes in the Adobe presets folder. All of my other brushes, I keep in my scrapbooking folder, just as I would keep my elements and papers.
• Create Sub-Folders based on the system you want to use. You can either use Move To Folder (Alt M) or drag your brushes from the first folder to the new brushes folder.
• Create categories and sub-categories in the Properties pane.
  

TIP: To do this, you Right Click on Categories, type Brushes, click enter. To create sub-categories, right click on Brushes, and type in your sub-category names.

• Working through your files, tag the brushes with the sub-categories.

TIP: As you go through tagging your brushes, add in a designer name or credits if you have them.

• If you want to make a contact sheet to see all of the individual brushes, select the files. Go to Print|Contact sheet. Adjust the thumbnail settings to fit as many thumbnails as you wish on one page. Print and store in a binder for easy viewing!

To use brushes in Photoshop, drag the abr file onto your Photoshop workspace. Select the Brush tool, and they will load into the Brush Tool Box.

For lots of good way to use brushes in Photo Editor, Kristi is running an excellent series on the DigiScrapInfo Blog.

For a great video tutorial on using brushes: Brushes in Photo Manager 10

Tasks for this week:

1. Back up and Optimize (You all knew that was coming,eh?
2. Work on organizing brushes.
3. If you still have more time, tag your stash- 15 minutes a day!

I was so excited when Heidi told me that Jeanine Baechtold & Jen Reed were going to be at CHA! We looked for them & later used the internet to track them down under their new business name of Kristy Valshan. Once we found Jeanine she explained that together they created a new business under a new name using their middle names.

Jeanine - Heidi did warn you that the photo would probably show up on our blog!

Jeanine & I have been following each other for quite awhile. She said she stalks us - well I admitted to stalking her too. We laughed about Facebook (something about throwing cows). For some reason she blames me for that addiction. It was great to meet her in person!

These girls have taken their digital designing skills to a new level! Their gorgeous designs decorated many items around their booth (including the curtains!).

Jen Valshan Reed and Jeanine Kristy Baechtold are the artistic duo behind Kristy Valshan, Inc. Working together since 2005, the two women actively promote and brand their popular digital artwork under the Kristy Valshan licensing label.
The artists’ bold color selections, intricate patterns and unique style are the signature elements found in each of their distinctive collections.
Kristy Valshan products are now available at Archiver’s, Costco, Sam’s Club and other fine retailers near you. KV’s digital scrapbooking line and coordinating virtual products are also available at http://www.kristyvalshan.com.

Check out their website & sign up for their newsletter. They’re offering a free digital kit …

And you can visit them on Facebook

Congratulations on your new enterprise!

Heidi & I were excited to realize that we’d attend CHA. CHA stands for Craft & Hobby Association & is the trade show for all things crafting. You know when your craft stores have their bi-annual ‘The boss went to market sale’? That’s where they’ve gone to. The local scrapbook store owners can view the new products and order inventory.

Heidi & I went with some others from ACDSee. I’ve been to library conventions before so the 3,200 exhibit booths and the 20,000 people wasn’t daunting. Anaheim CA was a nice location when you live in Minnesota! We had great weather & enjoyed the sun during our walks to & from the hotel (ok, well we may have commented on the 90 degree difference from back home a couple of times).

It was quite interesting meeting with editors from various scrapbooking/craft magazines. I demo’ed ACDSee Photo Manager 10 & ACDSee Photo Editor for them. We’re inviting everyone to try out ACDSee Photo Editor 2008 which will be available on February 25th.

The highlight of CHA for me was the people. If you’ve been with our blog for awhile, you know that I like to connect with others. And it was really exciting to meet people in real life. We came back with some new ideas & look forward to sharing them with you!

Join the ACDSee team for an ACDSee chat at DivineDigital.com, February 26 at 9 pm EST.

Divine Digital

Chatroom 

We’ll be answering lots of questions & it’s always fun! ACDSee provides software for door-prizes. Hope to see you there!

Chat with the ACDSee Team at DivineDigital.com

Feb. 26 9 pm est