If not, let’s explore the possibilities of Group By!

Here’s a few things to play with:

I almost always have Group By set to File Type.  It separates out my paper from my elements and allows me to quickly minimize folders.

Here’s another one, I selected all the folders that contain my purchases from 2008.  Sorted them by author and I can quickly browse and view all my recently purchased kits but still keep them “separated.”

Or if you have a collaboration kit and the designers named the files with their name first.    Select the whole kit and group by filename.  It will group all the files by each designer in their own section.

And another tip for you, if you click on the bar above each group type, it will select all images in that group!

Have you found a good use for group by?  Comment and let me know.

First, let’s optimize.  It’s kind of like cleaning up ACDSee’s messy desktop in a way. 

• Optimize your ACDSee Database

Let’s set the backup reminder if you haven’t already done so.

• Database Reminder: Set the database reminder to remind you to backup!

And then backup!

• Backing up ACDSee Photo Manager Database

And if you haven’t done so already, make your ACDSee backup disk with your license and trial version:

• Create own backup disc of ACDSee Photo Manager  

Your Categories & Authors:

• Look through your categories?  Do you have categories you don’t use?  Right click on them and delete.
• Look through your authors?  Are some misspelled?  Here’s how to fix:  I have a misspelled author/designer name. How do I get rid of them?

Lastly, where do you save all your downloads that you have already unzipped and organized.  Have you deleted them recently.   I know I put mine in "Done" folder and then periodically delete them from there.  How full is your "Done" folder?

Yes, back by popular demand (ok a couple of requests…lol) here are five more favorite ways to customize ACDSee Photo Manager.

5. Let’s start off with fonts again.  Or at least my favorite way to find my system’s installed fonts.  It used to be a dig through my C drive and Windows folder but I created a shortcut in the favorites pane.  Now it’s right at my fingertips.  You can also add a shortcut to your ‘new downloads’ file to make it easy to keep up with unzipping and tagging new downloads.  Have a go-to file of favorite elements or a favorite designer you search for a lot?  Add a whole folder to your favorites or individual files from all over your collection and create a folder to put them in.  Here’s a tutorial showing you how to do it!

4. Get rid of those Auto-Categories you never use.  That’s right, you don’t have to scroll endlessly through that long list of auto categories.  Just right-click on one of them and then click on the ‘Remove from Commonly Used’ option that pops up.  I decided to only keep Author and Keywords in the Commonly Used list since I actually use those and I keep the Photo Properties set collapsed.  And don’t worry, the information is still there in the properties pane and can be restored to the Auto Categories lists by right clicking on them in the properties pane.

3. Customize your workspace.  I like to keep the Preview Pane closed…with PM10, the pop-up preview is all I need.  If I want a closer look than that I double click to see it in the viewer.  I like to have my file tree go from the top to the bottom of the screen and I close the Image Basket to tag and browse and only use it when I’m pulling stuff together to create a page.  With ACDSee, there are lots of panes to choose from so seeing your images clearly and the tools you use the most often is easy to do.  And anything you want to see that you closed is available in the View menu…you can even Reset Layout to return to the default workspace layout.  Each pane has a stick pin icon in the corner that lets you auto-hide that pane when you’re not using it and the little drop-down arrow next to that allows you to float panes so you change where they are docked.  (I keep my calendar pane on the left under the files, favorites, and search panes.)

2. Set up your default editor.  I have used a variety of scrapbooking programs and am currently using ACDSee Photo Editor Beta 2 for most of my scrapping.  But it’s not the only editor on my computer.  Go to Tools|Open in Editor|Configure Editors… and then you can add editing programs, set the default editor, and check the box if it supports opening multiple files at once.

1. The most important customization this week: Set your database to remind you to back up weekly!  You can set it for other time spans such as monthly or yearly but why would you want to do that?  Take it from a veteran of computer crashes, you can’t back up too often!  Just go to Tools|Options and find the Database options in the list.  Check the reminder box, and pick a time interval…that’s all there is to it!

I hope you have fun this week playing with getting your workspace set up nice and comfy and get your back-up habit going.  Don’t forget to check our calendar to the left…and sign up for our newsletter if you haven’t done so already.  We have some big chats coming up that I know you won’t want to miss!

Happy Tagging!

I’ve been playing with setting up my categories, my preferred desktop layout, and other goodies in ACDSee Photo Manager and thought I’d share my top five ways to customize ACDSee.  So let’s get started!

5. Changing the font display text:

4. The minty-fresh background of my PNG thumbnails:

3. Speaking of thumbnails, I love my custom thumbnail information display:

Just click on Tools | Options and find the Thumbnail Info option under File List.  Click on Choose Thumbnail Info… then customize it to your liking.  I like mine with designer and kit names…of course, you have to fill in that information when you’re organizing.

2. Generated file listing details.

It’s the same options settings dialog we just looked at…just use Details View instead.   Generate a listing of your Image Basket to make giving credits easy.

1. My number one favorite thing to customize is setting up Photo Manager to start where I want it to start:

Yes, same box…Tools | Options again…click on Browser then pick a starting folder or have PM start wherever you left off last time you were using it.

Once you get your workspace all set the way you like it the tagging, searching, and crediting all goes pretty fast!  So what about you…what’s in your ‘Fave Five’?  Post a comment here and tell us what customizations you like best.

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.

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.

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!

Last Monday ACDSee launched their newest product for digital scrapbookers & crafters. ACDSee Photo Editor 2008 is a user friendly software that offers many great features. You can try the beta until July! We have a list of the new features & how to videos

We decided to include some templates by well-known designers to help everyone get started.

Andrea Gold is a designer from Go Digital Scrapbooking. She’s well known for her templates!

She created designs for scrapbooking pages in a number of sizes and some are landscape also.

She also created some fun craft related templates such as a calender grid that can be personalized and candy bar wrappers for those special occasions.

Maggie LaMarre owns Dragonflaire Studios and is an awesome hybrid scrapbooker & card maker!

She created four cards for us. Here are a couple of them completed in her amazing style.

We hope the templates will motivate you to get creative!

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.