DigiScrapInfo FORUM has been discontinued but you can still ask questions at ACDSee community forum.

I have decided the forum access at DigiScrapInfo will be discontinued.  There have been a few issues with the forum and spam.  If you have questions, I encourage you to ask at the ACDSee forums. I frequent the ACDSee forum and believe you will get as good of service there as you do here.   At DigiScrapInfo forum you had one person answering your questions and I don’t answer questions on the weekends.   At the ACDSee forum’s you will find there are other moderators as well as other fellow users.  Although many are using ACDSee Photo Manager for its intended purpose of managing photos and not organizing scrapbook supplies.  I would suggest when you start asking a question there, preface it with I organize scrapbook supplies.  It seems that us digiscrappers have our own sorts of problems unique to us! 

Thanks for understanding.

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ACDSee 12 – Default Editor Shortcut Key – reassigning back to CTRL – E and adding it to toolbar.

One of the biggest changes if you upgrade to ACDSee 12 from previous version is you will find that CTRL-E doesn’t take you to your default editor but instead takes you to ACDSee edit tab.  Many of you want that functionality back so here is how:

If you would like Ctrl -E back you can change the assigned keyboard shortcut. The keyboard shortcut will only work in the Manage mode.

1. Go to View | Toolbars | Customize

2. Click on Keyboard tab

3. In Category, find Tools

4. In Commands, find Default External Editor

5. In the Press New Shortcut Key: enter in Ctrl – E and click Assign

6. It will warn you that this is already assigned, agree and let it override the assignment. (The default CTRL-E sends it to ACDSee’s Edit Mode Tab.)

7. When done it should like this and click Close:

You can also customize your toolbar in both the Manage mode and View mode. This has to be done twice for each toolbar.

Adding Default Editor to Manage Tab

1. Make sure you are in the Manage Tab

2. Go to View | Toolbars | Customize

3. Click on Commands tab.

4. Click on Tools

5. Find the Default External Editor and drag and drop that onto the toolbar.

Adding Default Editor to View Tab

1. Go to the View Tab (where you see your image larger)

2. Go to View | Toolbars | Customize

3. Click on Commands tab.

4. Click on Tools

5. Find the Default External Editor and drag and drop that onto the toolbar.

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Viovio Premium 12 x 12 photo books, The process: the cover

I love the full-wrap covers on my photos books.  They make them look like elegant coffee table books!

Creating them correctly is important!  Viovio provides some templates and highly recommend you use them.   The information can be found here:  Book Cover Specifications.

I download the 12 x 12 full-wrap guide from Viovio to start creating my cover.

Some hints:

• Don’t expect the spine to hit exactly where the template says.  The number of pages in your book affect your spine and spine placement.  I don’t try do anything special to the spine (such as label the spine with text.)
• Don’t put anything close to the edges, especially text so it doesn’t get cut-off.

I open up the guide in my editor and and then design my cover using the template.

When I have it as I want, I hide the Viovio template and save the image as a jpg.

You don’t need to upload the cover to Viovio just yet.  During the photobook process, it will ask you to upload the cover and do it then!  We’ll start creating the photobook next!

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Viovio Premium 12 x 12 photo books, The process: uploading images

Since I last tried Viovio, they have added some new products.  Namely their 12 x 12 premium photo books that come in softcover, hardcover, die-cut or just loose pages.

Premium photo books means they are using Commercial-Quality, Acid-free, 100# Futura coated photo book paper with a 7-color electroink process.    They describe it as more colors mean more detail and accuracy.  Thicker paper givers you heavier weight paper with more professional feel.   To most users that doesn’t mean much until you see the printed quality of the book.  So when I receive the book, I will let you know!

In addition, they have added a new online tool called the Viovio Book Designer.  This allows you to easily drag and drop your images into the book and order your pages and get it exactly like you want.

Let’s start from the beginning to see the process…

One of the things I love about Viovio is the ease of getting my pictures to my account.

After you login, you will have a menu from your dashboard. That’s the quickest way to navigate.

Begin by choosing Photos | Create Gallery

In Gallery, give it name and description if you wish.  I leave all the other settings as is except for the last one.  The last one controls the security level of the album.  I like my images to be private (not visible to public) so I change the last option.  When done click on Save Gallery.

Once the gallery is created you can click on upload pictures!

You can upload pictures one by one, but that is not the way that I recommend.   I recommend you gather all your images for your book and put them all in one zip file.  Then choose the zip file to upload.  That is the quick way!    A few words of caution:  The zip file cannot be larger than 500 MB.  The file I uploaded was 441MB zip file (46 12 x 12 pages at 300 DPI.)  In addition, your account can only hold 500MB.    If your book is larger, email support and they will help you with account size limit.   Make sure that Don’t Resize is selected.  The last thing you also should check in the security level again, make sure its set to what you want.  Then click on Upload Files and go have a cup of coffee or a nap!

Once done, you will see your photos in your gallery on your account:

The photos are now ready to be created into a book!  We’ll see how in the next few posts.

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Backup Service Announcement

I am posting this to remind you to backup your images and also periodically CHECK your backup to make sure it is working.

Usually, I work on my desktop and hard drive with my digital scrapbook supplies and images and backup to my EHD.  Twice a year, I take my laptop and EHD (which is my backup and identical to the what’s on my hard drive for digital scrapping stuff) and do a scrapbooking weekend with a few gals!  Last weekend, I started to digi-scrap and looking at my images on EHD.  I noticed a few images with corrupt thumbnails.  I browsed around and found I had corrupt images randomly throughout the EHD.    It wasn’t corrupt enough that I couldn’t work but I sometimes I had to skip a layout I had intended to do because the pictures I wanted were corrupt.  After returning home, I verified my images on my hard drive where just fine so its only my backup EHD that has bad images.   I am going to reformat the backup EHD and see if its salvageable (a reformat will mark places on the disk that is bad and not use them) and then re-backup.    I didn’t lose anything and if the reformat doesn’t work, I’ll just have to buy another EHD.  I am coming to believe a lifespan of EHD is 2 years and I treat them well.  (They sit on a shelf in my office and only move/travel twice a year.)

Some backup tips that I want to share:

• If you find a few corrupt images.  Thumbnails don’t display or images won’t load.  Randomly browse your collection and see if its just that one or multiple. Typically finding a few corrupt files is one of the first signs that a hard drive is failing.  I highly recommend backing up what is there (corrupt and all.)  It might be your only chance before it fails completely. 
• Periodically go look at your backup where you do it and make sure things are you expect them and everything is looking good.  Its not good to find out after the fact that backup wasn’t running or you weren’t backing up the right thing.
• You can never have too many backups!  I just bought a 1 TB hard drive and backed up all our data from all our computers on that hard drive.  Then I repacked it back up and sent it to a location 20 miles from my house (hubby’s office drawer!)  If the house was hit with a catashropic event, I will still have my data.  Periodically, I will ask him to bring it home so I can update the backup.

I feel very strongly about backing up!   With all this technology and digital images sitting on your computers, its all really very fragile.  It takes one event and your images might just be gone if you don’t have them backed up.   My digital files can be retyped/redone but my digital images can never be retaken. 

So go take the time from your busy schedule and backup – however you want.  Just backup and make sure the backup is good!

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ACDSee 12 is available

ACDSee 12 is now available!  I will point out some of the key differences…  To try it out yourself  visit ACDSee to get the trial version or purchase ACDSee 12

The main differences:

Modes:

ACDSee’s user interface has been broken into modes:

ACDsee has 4 modes:  Manage, View, Edit, & Online. 

• Manage is where the organizing gets done.  As a digital scrapbooker, I spend the majority of my time still in the familiar manage mode that is similar to the previous version of ACDSee. 
• View allows you browse your images larger.  The view mode is nice also when you want to see images larger.  There are few things you can do while viewing them large and I will share that later in another post.
• Edit allows you to do editing of your images.  The edit mode allows you to make changes to your image and it will automatically save your original away for safe-keeping.  If you decide you don’t want to keep the changes, you can right click and choose Restore to Orginal
• Online allows you to upload to ACDSee Online albums.

Multi-select & boxes in the Organize Pane

In the organize pane, they have made a new way to assign images.  The boxes are now for assigning a category (not for searching for a category.)  For those familiar it takes a little bit to get used.  I kept assigning images when I started to do a search and found a few mis-categorized images.  To do a multi-select, you use the arrows on the left side. To select categories to search for, you click on the category name or on the arrows on the left.  (Hold down ctrl to select multiple ones.)    For the organizers that like to check boxes to assign categories, they will like the boxes next to the categories.  I still like the faster way of dragging and dropping the categories onto the selected images to assign. 

Tagged flag

Tagged flag allows you to mark images at “Tagged” and then quickly recall all Tagged images in bottom right.  This can be used however you want.  In another blog post, I’ll share my use of the tagged flag.

Edit Shortcut

The keyboard shortcut to send your image to a default editor has been changed!   The all familiar CTRL-E now sends you into the Edit mode in ACDSee.   The way to send your images to your default editor now is CTRL ATL X.  I find this key combo incredibly hard to do so there is way to reassign this back to CTRL-E.   More on that, in another blog post too!

Windows 7 support

It is supported on Windows 7 if you have upgraded your operating system.

Share on Facebook

You can get your photos from ACDSee to Facebook.  It is using ACDSee online mode and uploading them to your ACDSee Online Albums from there you can share them to Facebook.

FTP support

If you ftp images or files to an ftp server, you can use Send to FTP Site… 

Image Basket is remembered!!!

In previous versions, once you closed ACDSee the images in your image basket would be wiped out.   This was quite a bummer for those that would use the Image Basket to collect all thing they need to do a digital scrapbook layout.  Now, whatever you have in the Image Basket is remembered upon close and when you restart they are still there!   Now I just have learn to periodically clean out my image basket after I finish my layout.

The price:

The regular price is $69.99.  If you already own ACDSee products, the price is $48.99

Visit ACDSee to download the trial for ACDSee 12

If you visit, ACDSee and look at the tutorials for ACDSee 12, you will find these tutorials to learn more about ACDSee 12:

• ACDSee 12 for new users
• ACDSee 12 for existing users
• Moving photos to another computer
• Tagging your images
• Emailing images
• Browsing photos by date or event
• Uploading your photos to ACDSeeOnline.com

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Some Sales going on in the printing world

Picaboo

Create a free photo book with Picaboo. Use code AFFLGB through March 31, 2010.

Kodak Gallery Sale:

25% off all Photo Books at Kodak Gallery with coupon code: BOOKMADNESS

HP Snapfish

March Promotion: Free Shipping on $30+ plus 50 Free Prints for New Customers, coupon code 30SHIP10

Viovio has a new 12×12 Imagewrap hard cover.

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Save 40% off ACDSee Photo Manager 2009

You can save 40% off ACDSee Photo Manager 2009.  Offer ends March 2.

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Current holiday sales going on

Hooray

Save 20% on Cards and Prints at Hoorray.com
Save 20% on Holiday Photobooks and receive 30 free prints at Hoorray.com

Snapfish

25% Off Photo Cards! CouponCode 25CARD2009 Offer Expires 1/31

Stamps.com

Get up to $45 in FREE Postage at Stamps.com use code COUPON1. expires 12/31/09

Photoworks

Get 25% OFF photo books with code: HOLIDAYBOOK! Hurry, offer expires 12/10/09! Click Here!
Get 30% OFF photo cards with code: HOLIDAYCARDS! Hurry, offer expires 12/10/09! Click Here!

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Sharing Categories with ACDSee Photo Manager

On the ACDSee Home Blog, I describe how you can share your categories with a friend.   If you have a set of categories that you would like to share at DigiScrapInfo, please email it to me and I will add it to our collection of Organizing Styles.

Sharing Categories from ACDSee Photo Manager

& if you have already organized those images (assigned categories, caption, etc), how you can share those images and the other user gets all the pre-organized information.

Sharing your images and categories with ACDSee 2009

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