I’ve been using selection tools and my delete key to do extractions but sometimes I get frustrated with deleting too much and having to undo then redo so much of the work.  So I decided to explore Photo Editor’s automatic object mask feature.  And wow, has that made a difference in my extractions!  Let me show you what I love about object masks.

Here’s a picture of my house from when we first bought it.  I decided to do something fun with it but I wanted to remove the sky and the foreground grass so I could put my house someplace more interesting.

1. In the object palette, next to the thumbnail of the photo is a white square…that’s your mask.  Double-click on that white square so that it has a double-lined frame around it.  Then make sure you have a paintbrush tool selected and the color black is on your color picker’s top square.

2. Begin ‘painting’ the area you don’t want to show up anymore.  You aren’t deleting it, just masking it.

3. Feel free to zoom in and vary your brush size, hardness, roundness, and angle to get into the nooks and crannies of your extraction margins.  I like to start large and use smaller and softer brushes as I reach the edges of my masked area.  When you paint over the edge, just reverse the colors on the toolbar using the small color swap icon and ‘paint’ with white to reveal the part you didn’t mean to mask.

Have fun playing with your object masks and see how easy it is to correct your mistakes.  Here’s the layout featuring my extracted house as well as an extraction of an x-wing fighter from our trip to the Star Wars exhibit in Ft. Worth last year.

Credits can be found by clicking on the layout.

Here is an update to ACDSee Photo Manager.

Some of you have had issues when creating Photo Discs and not seeing the organizing on them.  This should fix the problem.

I am pleased to announce a class offering of Getting Organized with ACDSee Photo Manager.  I have joined with Jessica Sprague and will be offering my class at JessicaSprague.com.   Here’s Jessica’s opinion of ACDSee Photo Manager, "ACDSee Photo Manager by ACDSee Systems changed the way I approach digital scrapbooking. Getting organized with my digital supplies has helped me see new possibilities, complete pages faster, and get great use out of my digital stash."

The class will be two weeks long.  The class starts on Monday, March 31.   The week will start off with a PDF guide and some video tutorials.  (Some things are just so much easier to show than to read about, but I wanted you to have something to refer back too.)    At the end of the week, which is the following Monday, April 7, I will host a live session showing my ACDSee Photo Manager and the users can ask questions live.  The same day, the second week of material will be available: another PDF guide and a few more videos.   On Monday, April 14, there will be a second live session to ask more questions.    Throughout the guide, videos and live sessions you will hear tips and helpful hints.   At the end of the session you will feel comfortable moving around in ACDSee Photo Manager, understanding how you should organize and how to keep up and maintain your organizing!    This is a class for starting out organizing, if you already feel comfortable organizing then you may want to wait for other advanced classes (that if all goes well will be offered.)

How does this class differ from what is on our DigiScrapInfo website?    Connie and I setup this website to be a self-serve find your own information.  We do have a forum where you can ask questions and we help point you in the right direction.  In the Getting Organized with ACDSee Photo Manager class, I will guide you step by step through the organizing process.  I will demystify the organizing process by providing simple instuctions that you can use immediately.   I have taken what I have learned in the last year of helping people and put all the information together into a package that’s personalized for you.

Here is all the information at Jessica’s site about the class and how to register:  Getting Organized with ACDSee Photo Manager

I am so excited to get this course going!  

Last week there was discussion at DST about  Organizing with ACDsee..anything you wished you had done diferently?

One of the topics that came up was previews.  Some of the people thought organizing their previews was extremely helpful and some thought it was a waste of time. 

I personally love seeing all my previews at a touch of button and being able to narrow them down.  But I am also a kit scrapper, I mix and match a little bit, but primarily use elements/paper from one kit.    I have been recommended starting with organizing your previews since its an easy place for beginners to start

So  I am curious on what you think: 

Do you find organizing your previews helpful?

You can answer quickly with just a yes or no and if you wish you can expand/comment or give a reason.

You need more, right?

You’re addicted to fonts, yes? Then you need to go here for 1200 free fonts

Go get some more & remember that …

ACDSee Photo Manager 10 makes it all manageable.

We’re going to explore a few different ways to blend a picture into the background using ACDSee Photo Editor 2008. I was amazed to discover how easy it was when I learned how to do it. Ready?

1. Start with a solid background paper with some texture. I used the black solid from Tangie Baxter’s new “Timeless Masters” kit.

2. Drag and drop the image you want to use into your work area. We’re using a picture of my daughter from her dance recital.

3. I went ahead and reduced my opacity to 80% on the image, but this is optional.

4. Next to the opacity, click on the pull down menu next to Transfer. You will have the following options: Normal, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, Darken, Lighten, Difference, Burn, and Dodge. Play with each of these and select the option you like the best. For this example, I used soft light.

5. I did this first with the image uncropped to see what the effect would be. I will show you some other options as well.

6. I didn’t do this to this image, but you can also apply a vignette and manipulate that as well. Try playing with the vignette option by itself, as well as with the transfer option.

7. I didn’t end up liking the look of the uncropped image- the black didn’t blend in as well as I thought, so I decided to extract my daughter out of the background.

8. If you extracted your image, drag and drop the image onto your background.

9. We’re going to apply a slight gaussian blur to soften the image a little. From the adjustments pull down menu to the right of your workspace, select gaussian blur.

10. Adjust the slider bar at the bottom until you’re happy with the result. Remember to go for a very slight blur- just to soften the edges.

11. Repeat Step 4 to blend the extraction using the transfer menu, and adjust the opacity to your liking.

12. That’s it! Here’s my finished layout:

I also ended up blending the ballet dancer jpeg into the black background as well.

13. Have fun with your blending! Remember that it’s a very broad field, and there are many different effects you can use to achieve the look you want. Play with it and experiment with different methods to find one that works best for you.

I went through and updated the photo book printing and sizes and browsed to see what is new. Here is what I found:

WHCC now offers books in 3 sizes:

8.5 x 11, 10 x 10 and 11 x 14 with multiple cover options.

The pricing of their cute little proof books went up a few cents per page.

For more information on prices, sizes and reviews: WHCC

Walmart has added more photo books and now print 8 x 8 and 12 x 12.

For more information on prices, sizes and reviews: Walmart

Viovio, I blogged earlier about, added a 12 x 12 photo book size.

For more information on prices, sizes and reviews: Viovio

Picaboo has added custom image covers to their series of 11 x 8.5 and 8 x 6 books.

For more information on prices, sizes and reviews: Picaboo

Photoworks has added 7 x 7 soft & hardcover books

For more information on prices, sizes and reviews: PhotoWorks

Photobook Memories: prices have increased

For more information on prices, sizes and reviews: Photo Book Memories

Kodak added new 5 x 5 pocket books

For more information on prices, sizes and reviews:Kodak

and here is there current sale:

Heritage Makers you can now make books with smaller number of pages (21) and larger books (up to 99 pages).

For more information on prices, sizes and reviews: Heritage Makers

Shutterfly has started a new online book gallery so you can view other peoples books!

For more information on prices, sizes and reviews: Shutterfly

Shutterfly’s current sale’s:

Unbelievable- this is the 10th week we have been working hard on our Photo Manager Organizing. I think we have covered about as much as we possible can do. At this point, we should have a decent dent on our digital clutter. Even last week, we had more “clean up tasks” rather than large tasks.

Our Homework:
1. Back up and Optimize.
2. Go through your folders and remove “repetitive” tags.
3. 15 minutes a day to work on that stash!

All in all, I think that it is time to wrap this series up. However, while the series might be finishes, that does not mean our time organizing is done. Just like laundry, tagging is never completely over. Keep up your “maintenance” plan, with 15 minutes a day of tagging, weekly back up and optimizing, and go through some of the other challenges as you need them. I hope that all of you were able to get some help moving in the right direction from these challenges.
Have fun and happy tagging!

Ever wanted to make a custom text path yourself? Easily??? Well ACDSee Photo Editor 2008 Beta does just that. Let me show you….

First let’s learn the easiest way to draw paths…

1. Change your colors to Top Color: No color and Bottom Color: Black
   1. How to Choose No Color for Top Color:
2. Then select the Smooth Polygon Tool for curved paths.
3. Then to use the tool: click in your work area, move slightly click again and continue drawing to get a desired path.
4. Tip: When you the edit drawing mode, you can click the Selection Tool and adjust any of the blue points as needed.
5. Important Tip: Do not connect the end of the path with beginning of the path.
6. When done, click on Done or Esc key.
7. Select the shape in the work area, right click and choose Make Text Path
8. 

Tip: You can also use the Polygon tool for straight lines. Just remember not to let the start and end point meet otherwise you got yourself a shape and not a path.

Now Let’s use your new text path:

1. Type in your text.
2. Select your text and choose Path
3. 
4. In the Text Path box, scroll down to find your path and which way you want your text to go (look at the arrows.) Select your path and set your Pen size to 0. Click OK
5. 
6. 

Tip: To delete text paths. When you are in the Text Path box, right click on a path and choose Remove.

I have our ACDSee team busy making you some layouts to show you this feature. So examples will come soon!

I have asked our team members and friends to gather and create a slideshow of their layouts done ACDSee Photo Editor.  Check this out….

and if you are interest in trying out  ACDSee Photo Editor 2008 Beta

Layouts by Connie:

Layouts by Petra:

Layouts by Chris

Layouts by Kristi

Layouts by Heidi

Layouts by Sue Cummings ~ Designer at Oscraps.com

check out ACDSee Photo Editor 2008 Beta!