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.

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.

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

I can finally share the most exciting news! As you know, ACDSee has been listening to what digiscrappers want. Many love using ACDSee Photo Manager for organizing their supplies. We started with ACDSee 9 and after listening to the feedback, ACDSee added new features to make ACDSee 10 more helpful to us. ACDSee 10 can view abr brushes & extract zipped files within ACDSee.

Now ACDSee is inviting YOU to help build ACDSee’s digiscrapping software! It will have many new features that digiscrappers will love. Many of us scrap in ACDSee Photo Editor 4 because it doesn’t have a high learning curve & it has some great features that make it user friendly. Existing features that make it 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 will include:

• 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

So how can you try out ACDSee Photo Editor 2008?

• On February 25th, you will be able to download it.
• We will post a link here on the blog
• Post your feedback in the ACDSee forums (link will be provided)

ACDSee will be gathering the information & using it as they create the final product.

Heidi will be creating videos on the new features. The ACDSee team will be providing tips here on the blog. You’ll definitely want to try the new version of ACDSee Photo Editor 2008. And ACDSee wants to hear what you think!

Hi everyone! This is Liz and I will be helping you get to know our Photo Editing Program- ACDSee Photo Editor. Every week either Kristi or I will be presenting you with a different tutorial and challenge. Because I still have a lot to learn as well, I will be participating right along with you.

When I first tried ACDSee Photo Editor, I had already been using ACDSee Photo Manager 9 for a while to organize my supplies, and was very happy with it. I started digiscrapping with Photoshop 6.0. It was an old version, even in 2006. I loved the concept of digiscrapping, but was having a very hard time with the learning curve of Photoshop, and an even harder time with finding help for my version. The program would crash if I had other programs open, and was just a frustrating experience in general. When I found out that ACDSee had a scrapbooking program, I was definitely intrigued. I jumped on the forums at DigiScrapInfo and bombarded Heidi and Connie with question after question. Once my new 160GB hard drive came in, I downloaded the trial, found the tutorials and started reading. I was able to create 2 pages that night, with no troubles at all. I was hooked from Day 1.

Many people already have a program that they use for scrapbooking. That is ok. But I would love for you to try this program out and see how it compares. Every day we discover something else about this program that we love. If you don’t currently have this program, feel free to download the trial and play with it for 30 days!

Today we’re going to focus on selective photo recolorization. I recently learned this from the tutorial and was amazed at how easy it was to recolor part of a black and white photo. The results are very elegant, and a stand out technique.

Here’s the link to the tutorial that we will be using:

Color Isolation in Photos using ACDSee Photo Editor

Post back your results with a link to it in the comment section of this blog. Feel free to make a layout with it, like I did, or just show me the picture by itself. And since we’re constantly trying to improve things for you, I’d love to hear some feedback from you as well as far as how easy it was, if you have ever tried it on another program, etc.

Here’s what I came up with using this tutorial: (Image is also linked to my gallery for credits)

Notice the hydrangea is colored while the rest of the photo is black and white. I also reduced the opacity on the top layer to 85% for a softer effect. I’m really pleased with how it turned out.

I can’t wait to see all the fabulous photos you come up with! Then, check back next Thursday for a new tutorial!

-Liz

In my last tutorial, we learned how to create a brush from simple image file.  In my examples I used some cookie cutter shapes that come with Photo Editor which are a great creative tool already at your fingertips.  But now you might be interested in utilizing the brush files you already own or plan to purchase.  ACDSee’s Photo Editor can convert any type of brush file that you can view using Photo Manager.  So let’s learn how to convert them in Photo Editor, your cross-platform creative tool for creating and using brushes!

First, let’s review the basic three steps you used to define a brush: double-click on the thumbnail, CTRL-A to select, then Saved Brushes|open the fly-out menu|Define Brush.  Now let’s open an ABR file as if it’s a regular image file.  You can use CTRL-E from Photo Manager or just browse to your file location using the Add Images button on the image basket.  I have Swish Two by Lori Wiley open in my Photo Editor.  (Important note: open it from the file menu, image basket or directly from PM.  Do not attempt to load brush in the brushes menu.)

1. When you open the file you’ll notice all the brushes are on separate object layers and the images are reversed so we need to invert them.  So select all of the objects in the object palette and go to Adjustments|Color|Invert.

2. Working one object at a time, do your three-steps to define each brush.  Double-click on the thumbnail, select all (CTRL-A), then choose Define Brush. 

3. Once each brush is defined you can click on the eye icon to hide that object (make it invisible) as you work your way through all the images.

4. Be sure to save the set when you are finished so you can load them from the Saved Brushes fly-out menu the next time you want to work with them.  (Important note: all brushes visible in the Saved Brushes menu will be saved in your new brush file so you may want to delete the default brushes from the list.  Just use that fly-out menu and choose Delete Brush from the menu.)  And don’t forget to tag your new PE brush file in Photo Manager!

This procedure works on any type of brush file that you can view using Photo Manager.  Simply open it from the image basket, convert each brush image, then save as a new brush file for easy loading later.  It’s important to recognize your photo editor brush files since they have the ABR file extension but are different from other program ABR files.  I like to name my converted brushes with the filename of the original and add ‘_PE’ at the end but any system you choose to designate your PE-type brush files will work fine.

Well, I’ve been having fun discovering lots of creative tools in Photo Editor and I thought I’d show you how to create your own brushes.  So let’s get started!  The first thing you need is a png file you would like to turn into a brush.  I have a simple heart shape open in photo editor and I’ve selected my brush tool in the toolbar.

1. In your object palette, double click on the thumbnail of your image.

2. Select the entire layer using CTRL-A or go to Image|Selection|Select all Pixels.  You should now have ‘marching ants’ around your image and crop marks in the corners.

3. Click on the Saved Brushes button on the toolbar for the paintbrush tool.  Notice the small menu button on the right side?  Click on that to find the brush menu.

4. Choose Define brush from the fly-out menu.

You can now make, save, load, and delete brushes. 

You can always return to the default set that came pre-loaded by choosing ‘Reset Brushes’. 

One important note: you can only use the ‘load brushes’ feature with .abr files created in Photo Editor.  Not to worry, though…we’ll cover how to convert your other .abr files next!