Archive for the ‘Tutorials - ACDSee’ Category:
Selective Coloring in ACDSee 10
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!
Subscribe to the comments for this postAdvanced Editing Mode in ACDSee
Here’s a quick tutorial for opening the Advanced Editing mode.
You’ll find it in both ACDSee 10 & ACDSee Pro 2.
Under the palette icon’s pull down menu, choose Edit Mode
This opens a new pane on the left with the icons described. And now you have access to the Selections tool.
And more to come on what you can do from here!
ACDSee 10 makes it easy to upload to Flickr & Smugmug.
In blog reading tonite, I came across this contest that Digital Scrapbooking magazine is having for National DigiScrapping day. To enter you simply upload your layouts to Flickr.
Did you know that in ACDSee Photo Manager 10 you can upload your layouts & photos to Flickr & Smugmug without ever leaving the software? It’s quick & easy.
Go under File -> Upload to
Sign in the first time & your username will be remembered. After that you can quickly upload your photos! And the ability to upload to more services is coming with future updates!
So what are you waiting for, go upload your layouts, Saturday is soon here!
Undock your panes to see more in ACDSee Photo Manager
I periodically see comments, I wish that I could see more of my categories in ACDSee Photo Manager. And we digiscrappers have categories don’t we??
Well there is a way. If you undock your pane, you can create a much larger area for you categories in your organize or properties pane. Rather than try explain, I created a video for you!
For more info, go to Help, click on Getting started, and browse through “Using the Browser”
Hybrid projects using ACDSee Photo Editor
Julie Ann Shahin had invited me to be a guest on her creative team at her Everyday Digital Scrapbooking Blog. Have you seen it? It’s a treasure trove of projects & tutorials. You can learn so many things there. And I like how her categories make it very easy to find things. By clicking on ACDSee Photo Editor you can find both of my tutorials.
I enjoy using my paper scrapping supplies & mixing them with my digital scrapbooking. When planning the project I keep in mind that I can’t print larger than 8.5 x 11 and that keeps everything in perspective (& I can print too! :) ). ACDSee Photo Editor has a 30 day trial if you’d like to try it.
Here are the two projects that I did for my stint at Everyday Digital Scrapbooking.
Timeless Treasures - materials & instructions
I love doing heritage type of projects & this one was fun!
Halloween Placement - materials & instructions
Do you enjoy doing hybrid projects? Link us to them
Using ACDSee to backup your digital kits to CD/DVD using a system
You can keep browse and organize digital kits with ACDSee and you can make backup CDs/DVDs with ACDSee. Unfortunately, ACDSee doesn’t provide a way to keep track of what digital kits you have burned to CD/DVDs. So I am going to provide a method/system to use to keep track of what is burned. As we go along, I am just going to say DVDs since that is what most of us are using but this would work the same for CDs.
First, to learn to burn DVD’s, this is the tutorial for you: Creating Photo CDs/DVDs. During this tutorial, I need to make a comment on one option. If you are creating a backup DVD of digital kits, you do not want to check this option: “Add the created disc to ACDSee as a Photo Disc” What this option will do is add the contents of the DVD into Offline Media and you will get duplicates returned when you search (a file on the hard drive and a file on the DVD.)
So here is the process:
For all your existing digital kits:
- First, let’s get your Burn Basket open, to do that do View | Burn Basket
- Start going through your digital kits in a methodical process, top to bottom in the folder pane is the easiest.
- Select a bunch of digital kits and drag & drop them into the burn basket. As you can see here, I dropped all my recently downloaded digital kits in the burn basket but I added too many so it saying that in the bottom of my burn basket. My estimated size cannot be larger than my media size. (click on any images to see them larger)
- I recommend adding digital kits until it just starts turning red, like this:
- Then burn the DVD.
- Now, for whatever digital kits you put into the burn basket, select them up above where the folder thumbnails appear and assign the keyword “BackedUp” to the digital kit folder. The reason why I am using keywords instead of categories, is because I assign a keyword to a folder and a category can only be assigned to images. It’s just a little easier and cleaner.
- Repeat the above process and keep burning DVDs for all your digital kits.
For bringing in new digital kits
- I would recommend as you unzip a new digital kit, you immediately assign it the keyword “NeedToBackup”
- Then when you are ready to burn your next DVD, do a Quick Search at the top for “NeedToBackup” and it will return all digital kits that need to be burned.
- Drag and Drop them into the burn basket until you have a full DVD.
- Burn the DVD.
- Afterward, select all digital kits that you put into the burn basket and change their keyword from “NeedToBackup” to “BackedUp”
- Repeat the process the above process if you have more digital kits that fit on DVD.
So there you go, one system of keeping track of what you backed up. This can obviously be customized to meet however you backup. I remember one reader saying they want to make 2 DVDs of everything. She added a third keyword “BackedUpTwice”.
Some tips:
If you add digital kits to your burn basket, the burn basket can be saved from session to session. So some people as they download new digital kits, put them in the burn basket at the same time and when it is full, burn the DVD. The disadvantage of this, is it is hard to go find those digital kits and assign them the keyword “BackedUp” to signal you that they have been backed up.
What happens after you start this system and you encounter a folder that has no keyword on it? It could mean 2 things. You backed it up and forgot to add the keyword “BackedUp” or it hasn’t been backed up and wasn’t even assigned “NeedToBackup.” The safest thing is back it up again. So if you are burning a DVD then, do it then and add the “BackedUp” keyword or just add “NeedToBackup” and at your next backing up session, it will be backed up.
What is working for you?:
I know some of you have come up with your own method. What is working for you to backup your digital kits? Come visit this thread and explain your method: How are you backing up your digital kits & photos?
And here is a little about my process:
I myself don’t burn DVDs of my digital kits and choose to backup to a second EHD. It’s not ideal but I don’t want to burn that many DVDs. Maybe if I would have started when my collection was small. I do make DVDs of my photos but my process there is slighly different. I take the recent photos and put on DVD and keep going back in time until I fill up the DVD. This allows me to backup my photos multiple times. For example. My December 2006 photos are are my January 2007 backup and they are also still fit on my July 2007 but I wouldn’t expect them to fit on my December 2007. I make DVD backups every few months but in addition they are backed up to EHD drive also. If your computers are sitting only on your computer, I recommend making a CD monthly to get them backed up. For more information on backing up in general, visit this page: Wondering how to backup your digital kits, photos and layouts
Using Favorites for frequently accessed folders
Ever wonder what you were thinking when you miss the obvious? Do you have folders that you frequently browse inside ACDSee Photo Manager? Why not just make that a favorite folder and use the Favorites pane?
First, let me mention that you can easily setup the default path of where ACDSee’s folder pane opens to.
Setting up Default Start Folder:
- Go to Tools | Options
- Click on Browser
- Select Specific Folder
- Click on browse to the right of the box and choose the default path that you want ACDSee to start in.
- Click OK
I don’t use always have this option set because my digital images are not on my laptop. I store everything on a EHD. When I set this option to my EHD, it does work while my EHD is connected. If my EHD is not connected, when I start ACDSee Photo Manager it changes the default back to My Pictures. So I rarely go back and switch it back.
So another option is to use Favorites. And this can be in addition to changing the default start folder.
To make a Favorite Folder:
For any folder you visit often, right click on the folder and choose Add to Favorites.
To use Favorites:
- To view the Favorites pane, go to View | Favorites and it will show up where your Folders pane usually is.
- Just click on a folder in your Favorites pane and you will go to that folder.
- There are tabs at the bottom of that pane to switch between Favorites/Folders which I use frequently.
Some Ideas:
I have created Favorite Folders for:
- my Fonts folder (in C:\WINDOWS\Fonts)
- my main digital scrapbooking folder
- my layouts
ACDSee Photo Editor & our DigiScrapping How-to’s
My sister-in-law stopped by today & mentioned that she had seen my photos from yesterday’s post on Photo Walking. Isn’t that cool that she reads our blog?! *waving at you, Nancy!* She’s going with us on our scrapbooking retreat next weekend & is great fun!
She mentioned that she had downloaded ACDSee Photo Editor & was playing with it. She was excited that she had done some creative things. But she expressed confusion about some things. In talking to her I realized that she was using the How-to’s that it comes with. So I wanted to link her (& all of you) that are using ACDSee Photo Editor to our resources here that are specifically for Digital Scrapbooking.
Digital Scrapbooking How-to’s - installed directly into ACDSee Photo Editor
ACDSee Photo Editor Tutorials - Heidi & I have written all of these for you!
If you’d like to request something - please ask.
- Your First Layout in ACDSee Photo Editor
- Basic Steps to do Common Scrapbooking functions in Photo Editor
- Using Templates in ACDSee Photo Editor
- Color Isolation in ACDSee Photo Editor
- Photo Extraction in ACDSee Photo Editor
- Paper Tearing Templates in ACDSee Photo Editor
- Threading Ribbon through a Buckle in ACDSee Photo Editor
- Using Text with ACDSee Photo Editor
- Popping Images out of Frames with ACDSee Photo Editor (Out of Bounds effect)
- Recoloring Elements or Paper in ACDSee Photo Editor
- Drop Shadow with ACDSee Photo Editor
- How to blend two images in ACDSee Photo Editor
- Colorizing a brush (png file) in ACDSee Photo Editor
- Moving objects in ACDSee Photo Editor (blog)
- Make a Paperclip Look Realistic (blog)
Using ACDSee Photo Manager to keep track of images used in layout: A video!
So many people are publishing or posting their layouts and it is very important for them to keep track of all the images used in their layout so they can properly credit the designers.
We have suggested a few different ways to do this on our website, but using Favorites is probably the best method. Favorites allows you to save shortcuts to all your images or folder. To keep track of images used in a layout, you create a new favorite folder with the layout name and save shortcuts to images in there. Then later you generate a list that contains file information and organizing information.
Sound confusing? Well I made a video that will explain it all. It gives tips/hints/things to watch for while you use this method. Here it is: Tracking Designer Credits
As I make videos, I always think, okay this next one will be shorter. This last one ended up being one of my longest one yet! The longer they are the longer they take to make. But I so want to give you tips/hints/suggestions and not just “show” you how to do it. So I making myself a promise that the next one WILL be shorter.
If you have ideas for videos, please leave comments. I am thinking of doing either “Assigning Designer & Kit Name” or “Organizing Alphas.” Or maybe a quick one on using the Search Pane for advanced searching. Or making contact sheets (previews?) Or using batch resize or rename? What would you like to see?
Backup & Optimize your ACDSee Photo Manager database
My tip today is a repeat but it is so important. I recommend backing up ACDSee Photo Manager. What this means in backing up all the organizational info. This doesn’t mean backup your images which I would recommend doing to if you haven’t done it recently, especially the photos.
Backing up your ACDSee Photo Manager takes less than 5 minutes and it should be done on a regular basis.
Backup is really quick and easy, follow this tutorial: Backing up ACDSee Photo Manager
I recommend setting a reminder for ACDSee Photo Manager to tell you to do this: Go under a Tools | Options and click on Database. Make sure Display Backup Reminder box is checked and pick how often. I would recommend every week if you have done a lot of organizing and download kits frequently.
Optimizing is like cleaning up that office and filing system. All the “things” get put back into its place, junk paper is cleaned away, etc. This will help ACDSee Photo Manager run even quicker and smoother.
Here’s how: Optimize your ACDSee Database
What kind of tips would you like to see? I throw tips out in a random fashion. Either from questions I see users asking or some random thought of mine that says I should tell people about this. What would you like to have it do, that you can’t figure out how? Or is there a feature that you would like explained more? Feel free to leave a comment and let me know.