Archive for November, 2007

Tim and Debbies travel itinerary (at a glance)

Tim November 30th, 2007

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Nov. 28 th Calgary to Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dec. 2nd, Buenos Aires, Argentina to Punta Arenas, Chile.
Dec. 3rd – 6th, Torres del Paine National Park, Chile
Dec. 7th, Punta Arenas, Chile to Ushuaia, Argentina.
Dec. 8th, Tierra del Fuego
Dec.9th- 19 th, Ushuaia, Argentina to Antarctica via the ship Polar Star
Will be exploring various areas of Antarctica.
http://www.polarstarexpeditions.com/antarctica/antarctica_home.htm
Dec. 21st, Ushuaia, Argentina to Buenos Aires
Dec. 22nd, Exploring Buenos Aires for a day

Dec. 23 rd, Return to Calgary

Popularity: 34% [?]

About Pro Stars

Dale November 30th, 2007

Table of contents for Pro Stars

  1. About Pro Stars

This is the start of a new section in the ACDSee Blog, it is a place where the pro community will be able to share their stories, travel journals and photos from around the world.
The first “Travel Journal” will be from Tim Schumm. Tim and his girlfriend Debbie are on a one month trip to South America including Argentina, Chile and an 11 day excursion to Antarctica Penninsula on board one of the Polar Star Expiditions ships.

You might recognize Tims photography from our ACDSee Pro 2 box and the many places his photos appear on the ACD web site.

tim A brief Bio of Tim…

Tim Schumm is one of Canada’s foremost visual artists, exhibiting his large scale landscape paintings throughout Canada and the western United States. Tim’s interest in photography and painting was sparked in his early 20’s when he spent most of his days in Banff as a rock and mountain climber. The drama of the landscapes he was experiencing led to his desire to communicate the excitement of extreme environments. He continues to travel to unique destinations not frequented by the average tourist, seeking the world’s most expressive subject matter.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Use ACDSee Pro2 & manage/create videos to share

Marco November 18th, 2007

Did you know it is possible to manage and or create/mix videos using ACDSee pro2?

As a parent who loves taking pictures and videos of my kid at soccer or hockey games, now that digital cameras are able to produce better quality videos, I found ACDSee has made it more fun to record a game and post to a video hosting site for my parents to enjoy overseas.

One of the challenges I faced with out ACDSee was that although it was very easy to create a single video with all my many shots from a game, I had a really hard time deciding which ones to keep and which ones made it to the final cut.

Sure, you can use the tools your Operating system provides for creating videos, but I was already very comfortable and used to working with ACDSee.

This is my very first post to a blog, so bare with me and I hope it helps you with your own workflow to make and manage your own videos.

Preparing ACDSee Pro 2 for action:

If you installed ACDSee Pro 2 with the standard default settings, you will already have ACDSee associated with multimedia files and whenever you select a multimedia file your preview pane in the ACDSee’s browser will display your video ready for playback.

I found this takes away from performance for what I needed to do, so I disabled the preview and added more details to my file list pane.

Then I opted for creating an entirely new workspace that allowed me to only see what I wanted my layout to display for dealing with videos. You are able to save as many layouts as you want with ACDSee and go back to the original layout using the workspace feature from the View menu.

Workspace&details

Once you create the workspace, you can select what details are shown in the file list pane. I chose Filename, Size, modified date and length as the main items to keep in my file list pane as these are important to the final file size on my video. Some sites allow files more than 10 minutes in length and 100 MB In size, but others limit your choices.

That is where the length and size columns really came handy.

Properties

Working with QuickTime to make your videos

If you have QuickTime Pro, it is really easy to then decide what videos to piece together as you are able to drag and drop from ACDSee to QuickTime Pro and save these files as a single .mov file or export it to a different video format ready to upload to a video hosting site.

makingVideoQT

Here you can see the duration of the video and decide how long you want the video to be. If you want to add another video, all you have to do is drag and drop from the ACDSee file list pane to the last video in your sequence.

makingVideoQT-DropingFiles

makingVideoQT-saveas

Working with the ACDSee feature: Create Video or VCD

If you don’t have QuickTime, no need to worry. ACDSee also comes with the tools you need to get your videos ready for the web.

you can read more about the Create Video or VCD feature on the ACDSee help file, but here are a couple of steps to get you started:

  • Select your videos from the file list and click on the Create menu; there you will see the Create Video or VCD feature.

makingVideoVCD

From here you select the Video option.

makingVideoVCD1

  • Now you will see the length of time that your selected videos will include. You can always add or remove videos from your list using the Edit show feature. Notice how mine is only just over 4 minutes.

makingVideoVCD2

  • The Create Video feature in ACDSee will also help you resize your video so that it is optimal for distribution on the web (320×240 at Frame rate of 30fps). You can choose these and your preferred encoding format once you choose the next button.

makingVideoVCD3 

makingVideoVCD4

You are now ready to prepare your camera made videos of your kids favourite activities using ACDSee Pro 2.

Popularity: 60% [?]

Using ACDSee for Selective Coloring

Connie November 13th, 2007

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.

This can be done 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

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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

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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

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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!

redDaylilyColorized

Popularity: 83% [?]

Better Vignettes with ACDSee

Connie November 10th, 2007

I’ve written a lot of tutorials, so I always appreciate those made by others. JD generously posted a link to his tutorial on Creating Vignettes with ACDSee. He  posts under the username ‘TherealJD’ in the ACDSee Product Forums.

On his blog, CadGFX, JD says:

Acdsee is an excellent image manager. And for quick photo editing, it’s an excellent tool. Pro 2 has added a selection tool to apply various effects to only selected portions of an image. I will be using this new feature to create some custom vignettes for an image.

In his tutorial, Better Vignettes with ACDSee Pro 2, step by step instructions are provided to create this custom vignette (the tutorial will also work in ACDSee 10).

If you’re not familiar with ACDSee Pro 2 or ACDSee 10, here are instructions for opening the editor.

And here’s a screenshot of the features that JD used:

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If you’ve created tutorials using ACDSee products or are interested in writing some, please let me know at cbensen@acdsee.com  The blog is a great way to share them.

Other tutorials that you may be interested in

Before & after photo

Shadows and Highlights Tool in ACDSee Pro 2
ACDSee rescues lost photos

Popularity: 59% [?]

Opening Edit Mode in ACDSee

Connie November 7th, 2007

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

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This opens a new pane on the left with the icons described. And now you have access to the Selections tool.

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Popularity: 66% [?]

ACDSee Developers Rock!

Connie November 5th, 2007

I have the BEST job! I get to introduce you to all the great people at ACDSee.

Last week I started dabbling with adding audio to blog posts. What do you think?

developers10-07

Click on the photo for a larger view.

Popularity: 26% [?]

ACDSee Listens to its Customers

Connie November 2nd, 2007

Listening & gathering information is a large part of my role as Community Manager for ACDSee. Reading Jason Dunn’s post this morning made me smile. I know that we’re listening but to hear it so passionately expressed by someone truly exemplifies ACDSee’s commitment to building better products!

Yesterday I joined a phone call with one of our long time users, Jason Dunn. He has incredible insight into our products & here are his thoughts on the call:

…they let me open up my brain and dump all the ideas, fixes, improvements, and concepts I had for how I thought ACDSee could be made even better.

I feel very passionate about computer hardware and software that I use, and am always looking for opportunities to improve it. That’s partially out of a desire to have a better tool for my own needs, but it’s also because when I pick a product I tend to stick with it - I have a very strong sense of loyalty, like a sports fan to his home team, so I want to see the product I’ve picked “win” in the market.

Jason, we really appreciate your enthusiasm & your feedback is invaluable!

The folks at ACDSee are great - they listened intently, engaged me on many levels to drill down into my ideas, and were genuinely enthused to listen to me talk about how I’d like to see the product improved. The next version won’t have everything I asked for of course, but I bet I’ll see quite a few of the little things addressed.

Improving the product for what the customer’s want is a total win-win situation.

Any company that’s willing to engage deeply with their customers is a winner in my books - more companies should do it, but most are afraid of their customers and try to keep them at arm’s length.

ACDSee is committed to that effort! I’m not able to post a comment on your blog, so I’ll say it here - thank you, Jason, for your considerable thought in regard to improving ACDSee products. Everyone will benefit!

If you have ideas for improving ACDSee products please feel free to share them. You can email me at cbensen@acdsee.com

Popularity: 26% [?]