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.

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.

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!

Doing Quick Pages with ACDSee Photo Editor isn’t totally straightforward, but it is easy!

1. Open up your APD file:
2. Select all image objects.
3. Choose Adjustments | Light | Threshold…
4. Change the Threshold to 100 and click OK.
5. You should now have black pictures on your layout:
6. Select all objects and choose Object | Convert to Image (Render)
7. Select the Magic Wand.
   1. Change the settings to Tolerance 1 px and uncheck “Select Color Through Image”
   2. Click on first black image.
   3. Hit delete
   4. Click on every other image square and hit delete.
8. And you are left with a Quick Page with no images.
9. Save as a png file.

Note: The one time you may have issues with this method is if there was a black thing next to your photos. Then in the threshold step, change the threshold to 0, to get white blocks to delete. And hopefully you don’t have pure black and white elements next to your images. Then this method may not work.

I’ve had a lot of requests to explain my speed tagging system and include screenshots so here it is. Of course, all the credit goes to Heidi and Connie for providing this site where I learned all these tips and tricks…this is just how I’ve combined them to make organizing my digi supplies a fast and fun process.

Step 1. Select a range of folders in your file list. Try not to bite off more than you can do in one sitting. In order to include sub-folders you need to expand your file tree…highlight the parent folder above the ones you want to work on and use the asterisk * key to open all of the sub-folders at once…hit it again if you still have plus + signs showing. If you have alphas mixed in with other files, separate them into their own folders first.

Step 2. In the center pane just above your thumbnails click the drop-down boxes to Group by ‘File Type’ and then Sort by ‘File Size’. This places JPEG’s together, previews on top, paper below. The next group is PNG’s and small files like staples are on top while the largest ones, usually quick-pages and overlays, are near the bottom of the group. Layered PSD files are in a separate group as are ABR files. Be careful when you’re ready to work through your PNG’s, to select kit folders but skip the alpha folders.

Step 3. You can tag by selecting multiple thumbnails such as all the quick-pages and dragging the thumbnails to the category in the Organize pane, the category to one of the selected thumbs, or by checking the box next to the category in the Properties pane (make sure it’s on the Database tab)

Step 4. Highlight only one designer’s folders, click inside the center pane and use Ctrl I to select all images, then assign the designer’s name to the Author field. Select only the folders belonging to a particular kit and use Ctrl I again then add the kit name under Caption. You can see that I changed my ACDSee thumbnail display options to show author and caption instead of filename. I can also choose for the Generate File Listing function to include these fields and easily handle credits.

I had several starts using several types of organizing systems and this is what ended up fitting my style. There are many ways to use ACDSee Photo Manager and it’s flexibility is part of what makes it such a powerful tool for digital scrapbookers, professional photographers, or anyone with a lot of media files to organize.

The yummy kits featured in this tutorial are from the 4 Seasons CD which is only available with the purchase of ACDSee Photo Manager and/or Photo Editor
And be sure to grab the 20% off discount code on our Birthday Celebration page here at DSI! Happy Tagging everyone!

Did you know that you could view PDF’s right inside ACDSee Photo Manager?

Here’s what they look in the file list section in ACDSee Photo Manager:

And when I double click on one to view it in the ACDSee Viewer, it looks like this:

To get this to work, you need to install a simple pdf viewer called Ghostscript:

Visit Ghostscript for more information and to read about it. I suggest downloading the latest one, GPL Ghostscript 8.60 released 2007-08-01. To save you time, I will link you to the exact latest exe to download: gs860w32.exe The link is from this page: Ghostscript at Sourceforge but sourceforge isn’t the easiest place to maneuver.  Updated!!  One user informed me that latest ghostscript didn’t work.  You may want to try this version instead if you have problems:  gs854w32.exe

• Once you download ghostscript run it and let it install.
• Then go into Tools | Plug-ins | Plug-in settings
• 
• Find the ID_PS.apl plug in and select it.
• Click on Properties and you should see that GhostScript has been detected on your system if all went well.
• Click OK
• Then make sure the ID_PS.apl plug-in is checked.
• Click OK

You should now be able to see pdf’s inside ACDSee Photo Manager.

Selective coloring in ACDSee is SO easy now! Before ACDSee 10 in order to achieve this I had to use masks in ACDSee Photo Editor.

Watch how easy this is to do in both ACDSee 10 & ACDSee Pro 2!

• Open your photo in ACDSee by double clicking on the thumbnail.
• Use the pull down menu on the Palette Icon & choose Edit Mode

A new pane opens on the left

• Click on Selections
• With Freehand Lasso tool selected, draw around the item
• stay fairly close, but it doesn’t have to be exact.
• when you get back to where you started the selection will be made
• Click on Invert, Click on Done if you’re satisfied with your selection

Click on the Color - in the left pane & this is when the magic happens!

• Move the Saturation slider to the left to desaturate the background

To make up for the area around the image, on the top

• Move the slider for the Feathering to the right.
• Decide what looks the most natural.
• Click on Done

This will bring you back to the Main Menu of the Edit Panel

• Click on Finished Editing at the bottom
• And your photo is finished!