Connie October 30th, 2007

A Quick reminder:

There are coupons to upgrade to ACDSee 10 that expire October 31st. So now’s a great time to upgrade if you’d like to. Information on the new features for ACDSee 10 can be found here.

Download a FREE Trial of ACDSee 10 Photo Manager Today ! See below for a coupon of 25% off the regular price of $49.99

Already own an ACDSee product? Previous ACDSee Customers Get 30% off regular price of $34.99 (click on Upgrade from a previous version and look for coupons below to get additional 25% off $34.99)

and SAVE on the new version of ACDSee 10:
In addition here are some coupon codes, only 1 coupon can be used:

• New ACDSee Customers:
  • Get 25% off the regular price of $49.99: expired
• Customers upgrading from previous versions of ACDSee:
  • Get an additional 25% off the upgrade price of $34.99: expired

Codes for ACDSee in other languages:

French

Upgrade – expired

New Customer - expired

German

Upgrade – expired

New Customer - expired

The coupons are valid for the month of October only. They expire at midnight Pacific time on October 31. They are not valid in conjunction with any other offer, and are valid only online at the ACDSee website. They are limited to one use per customer.

Popularity: 33% [?]

• Promotional discounts
• Comments(2)

Connie October 27th, 2007

While I was in Victoria I had the pleasure of having dinner with one of our wonderfully talented ACDSee product forum moderators! There was no shortage of conversation that evening! We both love ACDSee products & had plenty to talk about.

Meet ‘Chippy’ as he’s known on the forums. He is a charming Victoria resident who hails from London. London is high on my destinations so we talked about that too! Another forum moderator, ‘Samdring’ is from London, so his ears were probably ringing. We also have Alice from the UK too.

Chippy has an amazing amount of legacy knowledge. He’s used every ACDSee product back to ACDSee 1.0 & is always willing to help people with older versions. He was telling me that when he’s helping the forums sometimes he has four to five products open at once. That’s a great resource to our customers!

Forum moderators are the unsung heroes. They help answer questions & sometimes have to keep the riff raff from ruining the forums experience for others. My team of moderators are fabulous! I’ve mentioned Samdring & Alice from the UK. And we have Tankred from Germany. From North America we have Chippy & Marc Sabatella. Marc wrote a RAW workflow for using ACDSee Pro 2. And my sister, Heidi does a stellar job with tech support issues. I’m there also & kind of moved in last March. There are also many ACDSee staff moving around there, but that’s for another blog post.

Chippy & I talked about the previous forums & the hurricane. The present product forums began in January 2006. The forums have a lot of information & are searchable. ACDSee held it’s first beta in the forums this past summer for ACDSee Pro 2. That signals a new direction in that we will continue to ask for customer feedback as we create new products. I presently am gathering information on what types of uploaders people would use. And there is a lot of interest in ACDSee 3.1, so I’m collecting information on a lightweight viewer type of product. ACDSee is listening to what customers want in their products.

I can’t blog without a quick example! ACDSee Photo Manager & Pro 2 have a feature where you can compare images. The photo on the left is the result of using the Highlights & Shadows tool in ACDSee Pro 2. Call it vanity but I just warmed up my skin tones a bit because my skin is so fair as seen on the right. (and I didn’t need to show that! but if you’re still reading, it’s worth a smile…probably a result of too much computer time!) Do you agree that the left is improved or no?

Popularity: 76% [?]

• ACDSee Team
• Comments(4)

Connie October 24th, 2007

In my previous post I had included a photo of flower sculptures that I had lightened in ACDSee Pro 2.

Thomas requested to see the before & after photos. The Shadows & Highlights tools is my favorite one in ACDSee Pro 2, so I’d love to show how easy it is!

I took this photo early in the morning when it was rainy & on the darker side. It’s not a bad photo but it certainly wasn’t what I saw when I took it.

After opening ACDSee, double click on your image. Click on the icon for the Shadows/Highlights tool (mousing over it will identify it).

There are two options in ACDSee Pro 2. I’ve been using the sliders in the Light EQ tab. I start with the top set which lightens the photo. Then I use the bottom ones to adjust the darkness. Click on Done when you’re satisfied & save under a new name to preserve the original.

A quick crop of the photo & I have a much brighter version of the original.

You can see two other examples of the Shadows & Highlights tool used:

Cat photo (an amazing example)

ACDSee Rescues Lost Photos (Use of Advanced tab)

If you’d like to try ACDSee Pro 2 on your photos, a trial can be found here.

ACDSee Photo Manager 10 has a more general version of the tool.

Popularity: 61% [?]

• ACDSee Pro 2 , ACDSee Tutorials , Photo Editing
• Comments(1)

Connie October 20th, 2007

Sue from ACDSee, got up early this morning to give me a ride to the airport & see me off. We were laughing because because neither of us had overly considered makeup considering the hour. But I convinced her that we were ok for a photo!

Sue is ACD’s tech writer. So if you’ve read the help file, user guide or how-to’s, you’ve seen her awesome work! I proofed the help file for ACDSee Pro 2 & Photo Manager 10, so I’ve seen ALL of her great work! While doing that I added some tips that I had noticed were common pain points for customers. Sue integrated them into her help files & I hope that they will help others.

I feel that a product really needs to have help files that are easy to understand & straightforward to use. This past week at a couple of meetings we wondered if people find the valuable information in the help files? The help files for ACDSee’s products have always been easy for me to understand & quite useful.Next time you have a question, take a minute to check the help files. And now you know who is behind them!

I love these big met flower sculptures outside the Victoria Airport! It was dark though when I took the photo, so I used the Shadows & Highlights tool in ACDSee Photo Manager to lighten the photo. More photos of the people from ACDSee are coming!

Popularity: 35% [?]

• ACDSee Team
• Comments(6)

Connie October 12th, 2007

I took the plunge into the DSLR world & bought a Nikon D80 with a

Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom-Nikkor Lens

Last fall I opted to pass on this camera because of the size & I was intimidated by the learning curve. But of all the DSLR’s the saleperson at Ritz had me try, this one felt the best for me. The options in cameras these days are staggering, but the experts say that they’re making DSLR’s much more user friendly.

Then I needed to decide on a lens. The feedback from our digiscrapping ladies is that the stock lens with the Canon Rebel isn’t flexible enough & I had read similarly about the Nikon’s package lens, so I decided to step it up. On the recommendation of a friend, I went with what he had purchased, but it caused me fear for 2 reasons: 1) size & 2) price. The camera body is larger & heavier than the Canon Rebel the way it is. And so I put it together with trepidation.

I’ve worked with 2 SLR’s - an Olympus OM-10 & a Minolta that’s in the closet with 2 lenses. But I really didn’t go beyond auto.

I took this rig outside yesterday to give it a try. The lens has vibration reduction (VR) which I thought was important because I have a bit of a tremble (the camera salesman noticed it). He suggested that using the viewfinder was to my advantage because I would cradle the camera & compensate for that. He was right! I never turned the VR on for any of these shots.

I have to say on first impression that the lens is TOTALLY worth it! The range is incredible - from macro at 2 feet to a zoom (which can be pulled in closer because of the 10.2 pixels). The DSLR is SO amazing because you do the rough focusing & the camera does the fine on the lens. It’s incredible! And after a dozen shots, I wanted to adjust the depth of field to my choice & control the focusing, so I switched the camera to manual! Then I went back & forth between manual & auto trying the same shots. Another thing that struck me was response time.

The one thing that intrigued me was the focusing that seemed to be moving around inside the viewfinder. I want to know how to choose from them. (So the camera has already challenged me to learn more). The clarity & rich color is amazing. I love it!

Here are my favorite first shots (clicking a photo shows more detail):

Awesome macro from 18″!

Furthest range of lens…

Zooming in…

In-between!

Sushi’s eyes are so blue!

manual allowed me to focus on the flowers

used Shadows & Highlights tool in Pro 2 to adjust this!

I have tried to do this with my point & shoot, but.. couldn’t.

My first experience was very enjoyable. The camera didn’t seem too heavy at all. I didn’t mind using the viewfinder. Next week I’m travelling to the ACD offices in Victoria, BC so you may be seeing more photos from this new camera!

So what do you think? I’m open to suggestions & criticism. I’m just beginning on this adventure!

Popularity: 30% [?]

• Cameras
• Comments(5)

Connie October 7th, 2007

Take a look at the slide show on the right under the About box. I’m going to show you how it easy it is to do.

You can create a Sendpix album in ACDSee Photo Manager 9, 10 or ACDSee Pro 2 to share your photos with family & friends. And it also creates an html code to create a slideshow on your blog or website.

Create an Album -> Next

Enter a name for your Album -> Next

Browse to your photos or layouts

select & add them

multiples can be added at once

Next -> Send (uploads your album)

An email will be sent to the email address you had given & there will be an html code in it.

You can copy & paste that into your blog to create a slideshow of your photos/pages. If your blog uses widgets then it’s really easy to create a text widget with the code. Please ask if you have questions on how to do that.

And link us to your slideshows - we’d love to see them.

Popularity: 71% [?]

• ACDSee 10 , ACDSee Pro 2 , ACDSee Tutorials , Photo Sharing
• Comments(2)

Connie October 3rd, 2007

Browse by date

* Browse and find photos intuitively on a virtual calendar with the new Photo Calendar option.

Here is a link to video to see it action:
Photo Calendar in Action

Popularity: 73% [?]

• ACDSee 10 , ACDSee Pro 2 , ACDSee Tutorials
• Comments(0)

Connie October 2nd, 2007

There are coupons to upgrade to ACDSee 10 that expire October 31st. So now’s a great time to upgrade if you’d like to. Information on the new features for ACDSee 10 can be found here.

Download a FREE Trial of ACDSee 10 Photo Manager Today ! See below for a coupon of 25% off the regular price of $49.99

Already own an ACDSee product? Previous ACDSee Customers Get 30% off regular price of $34.99 (click on Upgrade from a previous version and look for coupons below to get additional 25% off $34.99)

and SAVE on the new version of ACDSee 10:
In addition here are some coupon codes, only 1 coupon can be used:

• New ACDSee Customers:
  • Get 25% off the regular price of $49.99: expired
• Customers upgrading from previous versions of ACDSee:
  • Get an additional 25% off the upgrade price of $34.99: expired

Codes for ACDSee in other languages:

French

Upgrade – expired

New Customer - expired

German

Upgrade – expired

New Customer - expired

The coupons are valid for the month of October only. They expire at midnight Pacific time on October 31. They are not valid in conjunction with any other offer, and are valid only online at the ACDSee website. They are limited to one use per customer.

Popularity: 56% [?]

• Promotional discounts
• Comments(5)

Connie October 1st, 2007

ACDSee Photo Manager 9 is a powerful, flexible photo organizer & has great photo editing capabilities! But the latest version, ACDSee 10, has all of that plus so much more!

In this series, I’ll show you all of these new features. My sister has created videos to showcase some of them in action!

New Features for ACDSee Photo Manager 10

We’ll be taking a look at each of these over the next few days.

Sharing made Simple

• Simplify online photo sharing with integrated uploading to sites like Flickr and Smugmug. Post a photo widget on your website or blog, powered by your free ACDSee SendPix online album.
  • Take a look at the slide show on the right! I will show you how to create them.

Browse by date

• Browse and find photos intuitively on a virtual calendar with the new Photo Calendar option.

Instant Previews

• Preview larger versions of your thumbnails instantly with ACDSee 10’s new Pop-up Previews.

Advanced Image Editing

• Apply corrections, adjustments, and creative effects to a selected area of your image with the new Selections tool, giving you complete technical and artistic control of every aspect of your image. With ACDSee’s advanced red-eye tool, get natural-looking results with custom eye colors to replace red areas.

Photo Presentations

• Create Power Point® presentations right inside ACDSee, including notes, captions and more.

Unzip & Go

• Unzip files and start viewing and organizing archived items right away, without leaving ACDSee.

Popularity: 56% [?]

• ACDSee 10 , ACDSee News
• Comments(4)