Connie May 14th, 2008

In the first post, I highlighted Katharine’s beautiful, abstract of Peacock Feathers created with ACDSee Photo Manager. In this post, I’ve invited her to share how her creative use of ACDSee Photo Manager has evolved, resulting in a variety of gorgeous works of art!

Katharine explains how she got started:

My first venture into “altering” my photos was with the “pixel explosion” effect and I have to admit, I went a little pixel explosion crazy! It was just so much fun to “explode” an image and then increase the contrast and play around with the hue adjuster to change the colors.

“Gallery Dancing Peacock” is an abstract created by using “Pixel Explosion” as well as the “Mirror” effect and then intensifying the contrast and coloring.

Then I started playing around with the effect called “Colored Edges” and I loved the textured appearance it gives. I don’t think this effect works well with most photos, but for some, it is the perfect touch.

“Southwestern Recollections” is a combination of “Pixel Explosion”, “Colored Edges” and “Mirror” effects with some dramatic changes in contrast and color adjustments. I loved how the Colored Edges effect gave the texture and appearance of a sand painting.

“Contours” is another effect that I have a lot of fun with sometimes, it’s great for creating posters. It took me awhile to find anything I liked using the “Furry Edges” effect on but when I finally did, I was beyond ecstatic! It was the perfect finishing touch to one of my all time favorite abstract creations, adding just the right amount of texture.

“You Tell Me” is probably one of the images I’ve had the most fun with. It was also my first experience using the “Furry Edges” effect. Who would have ever thought the finished version started from a weed growing out of the sidewalk!

“May I Have This Dance” is a combination of the “Mirror”, “Colored Edges” and “Furry Edges” effects, an example of how I use a little bit of this, that and everything.

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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

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