Serge June 27th, 2008

I’ve been traveling lately across the Western U.S., mostly in Nevada and California. Due to recent wildfires, there’s a tremendous amount of smoke and haze in the air that’s blocking some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. Some useful ACDSee tools, along with a few photography tips, can help “cut” the haze so that you can still get good photos–and maybe even use the haze to your advantage.

First, you’ll want to shoot in the RAW format. Because haze adds a lot of white tonality to your image and blocks contrast, the increased amount of tonal control you have with RAW allows you to edit images much more easily. Editing various feathered areas of your image will appear smoother and more seamless when working in RAW than JPEG.

Second, shoot with a haze filter, although this most likely will be insufficient to cut out significantly hazed scenes. You can also use a polarizing filter and experiment with it to see if it helps block some of the unwanted airborne particles. Make sure you shoot a little darker exposure than usual; only using an automatic setting on your camera may expose it more for the haze than for the subject!

I took a photo of some hikers in Yosemite’s Tuolomne Meadows, a high-altitude scenic spot in the California Sierra Nevada mountains. The mountains and trees in the distance were very obscured by haze, as you can see in the original image:

This is a problem you can spend a lot of time tweaking to your satisfaction, but there are some quick fixes. First, using the edit panel, do an overall auto-exposure for the photo. Do not adjust for color — just contrast. And make sure your “strength” setting isn’t too high, or else it will distort the image too much. Just use between a -49 and -45 level.

Next, using the Selection lasso tool, select the upper-regions of the image, where (at least in this example) the biggest haze problem is evident. Then, using Exposure/Levels, and feathering the image to at least 50 - 60 percent of the slider’s capacity, adjust your midtones and highlights until the hazed area looks better.

You’ll then want to select yet another horizontal area just below that where additional haze may still be evident — looking like a low-layer of fog. Adjust this in the same manner, but to a slightly lesser degree.

In this image, a little haze doesn’t hurt and can actually add to the effect, making the photo look like an early morning shot (which it wasn’t!).

Remember, haze will increase its effect on your image as the distance increases — a telephoto shot will have much more haze than a close-up or “normal” image. While you can’t entirely get rid of it, you can use it to positive effect in some cases.

You can see in my final example below that there are still areas I can work on, or, depending on my artistic judgment, I can leave them as they are. Either way, the image is significantly better than it was as first shot.

Popularity: 18% [?]

• ACDSee Tutorials , Cameras , Photo Editing , Photography Tips , Workflow
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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

From here you select the Video option.

• 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.

• 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.

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

Popularity: 60% [?]

• ACDSee Pro 2 , ACDSee Tutorials , Workflow
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Marc Sabatella August 24th, 2007

Using Your Image Catalog

Hopefully, the process of entering your images into your system has made it clear how you might then be able to browse or search for images effectively. This essay is not intended to be a full tutorial on using ACDSee Pro. I am only trying to show you how you can use the tools to organize your image collection. What you then do with your collection is up to you! However, certain steps we took in our workflow were taken to facilitate some specific tasks, and I want to make sure it is clear how to take advantage of this.

Working With Your Catalog When Your Primary Disk Is Not Present

If, like me, your main computer is a notebook, then it is likely that you will often want to access your images when the external drive containing the buckets is not present. ACDSee Pro in general allows you to browse around even when you images are not present, and it will still show thumbnails for the missing files, but it will complain if you try to access the images represented by those thumbnails (for instance, to view them full screen, to edit them, or to print them). This is why I generate proofs and keep these on my local drive. When my primary external drive is not connected, I can set Filter By->Categories->Proof to hide the originals, so I do not even have to see the thumbnails for the files that are not present. Again, for most of the kind of work I might want to do with my images, these proofs are actually sufficient – the only time I need to access the originals again is to make large prints. But of course, you do need to turn off the filter when it comes time to import new images into your catalog.

Viewing Your Catalog On Another Computer Running ACDSee Pro

The external disk on which you keep your buckets can obviously be attached to another computer, but unless you take specific steps to transfer the database information, then even if the other computer is running ACDSee Pro, it will not be able to see any of the database information. It will be able to see the IPTC keywords and other fields, which in many cases may be good enough. But if you are trying to recreate your work environment on the other computer, then you will want to recreate the entire database.

If you export database information for your files into each bucket, then when you attach the external drive to the secondary computer, you can immediately import the database information for any buckets that have been added or changed since the last time you accessed them from this computer. When you do this, ACDSee Pro may complain that it cannot find the files – the pathnames may not be the same on the secondary computer as they were on the main one. But it will also allow you to tell it where the files are.

Instead of exporting and importing the database, you can try to recreate it by reading the information in from IPTC (via Tools->Batch Set Information, using a template that reverses the operations you performed when exporting the metadat). For proprietary RAW files, you will also want to import RPP files (via Database->Import->RPP Files) to recreate you RAW processing (this is not necessary with DNG, because the parameters are stored in the itself). When you recreate your database from the image files themselves, ACDSee Pro will not be confused about where the files are. However, ACDSee Pro may not always be able to recreate the database Category hierarchy correctly. It will help if you also periodically export the category hierarchy from your main computer (via Database->Export->Database) and import it on the secondary computer. But even if you do this, ACDSee Pro will get confused if you have multiple categories with the same name within your hierarchy.

Because of these issues, you may find you are best off relying on keywords as opposed to categories for representing any metadata you may wish to access from another computer. That is, if you are trying to decide whether to use a keyword or a category to indicate that a particular image is of a particular subject, keyword information is going to be easier to access when not on your main computer. This is certainly going to be true when accessing images from a computer that is not running ACDSee Pro. If you upload your images to a photo sharing site, or submit them to stock agency, or otherwise make your image files available to others, then the IPTC fields such as Keywords are going to be the only metadata that is available.

Conclusion

ACDSee Pro is an ideal tool for implementing Digital Asset Management. Adopting the workflow I outline will almost certainly require significant changes to your usual methods. But the reward will be an image catalog that is extraordinarily well organized and safely backed up. By using metadata such as the ACDSee Pro database and the IPTC fields of the image files themselves, you make it easy for you or anyone else with access to your images to search your catalog for images of interest. By adopting a consistent naming file and folder naming strategy, you make it easy to identify, locate, manage, backup, and (if necessary) restore your images. If you shoot RAW, ACDSee Pro allows you to quickly and non-destructively process your files, regardless of whether you are processing images individually or in batches. If you shoot JPEG, the workflow I outline provides a framework that makes it easy for you to edit your images without overwriting the original files. The ideas I present can also allow you to work with your catalog on multiple computers and to keep proofs of as many images as you like on an ordinary laptop hard drive. Throughout the process, use of ratings and categories in particular allows you to focus your attention primarily on your best images while ensuring that your other images are accessible as well. All in all, you will spend less time worrying about what to do with your images and more time enjoying them!

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• ACDSee Tutorials , Workflow
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Marc Sabatella August 24th, 2007

The Workflow (continued)

Generate Editable Copies (Optional)

This step is for those of you shooting JPEG and wanting to process your files as well for those shooting RAW but wanting to perform editing operations that cannot be done via RAW Processing and therefore must be saved as JPEG or TIFF (for simplicity, I will henceforth use the term JPEG to refer to anything that is not RAW). And here is where you have some decisions to make.

I think the easiest way to keep yourself organized if you are going to be editing JPEG is to make editable copies (or conversions from RAW) of all your images in a new folder. You can then confine your editing to those copies. This way you don’t have to worry about remembering to do a “Save As” to avoid overwriting your originals. Furthermore, you know your “best” versions of all your images will be together, whether they in fact required editing or not.

The alternative is to either generate copies/conversions of only the files you will be editing. You can either do this before you begin editing, or you can be sure to do a “Save As” any time you wish to make changes to a file. If you choose the latter, you might consider making all your originals read-only (now that the metadata has been exported) so that ACDSee Pro will not let you accidentally overwrite your file.

Whether you generate these editable files for all your images or just the ones you actually intend to edit, you will also want to use categories to help you keep straight which version of your files are which. I suggest having a category called “Versions” with subcategories called “Original” (for the original version), “Master” (for the best edited version you create), and perhaps other subcategories as necessary (for instance, if you make lower resolution proofs to keep on your local drive as described below, or versions sized for the web, or black and white versions). Start by assigning all of your originals to the “Original” category (this can actually be done during high level metadata entry). Any editable copies you generate will get the “Master” category. If you do not in fact generate editable copies for all your images, then you may want to assign the “Master” category to the original copies of the files that do not have editable copies. That way, if you at some point wish to browse the best versions of your files, you can filter on “Master” and it will automatically show you either the edited or original copy of each file as appropriate. Unfortunately, ACDSee Pro does not provide the sort of built-in version control facility that could make this process easier, which is one reason you might find it more convenient to generate editable copies of everything – it is easier to manage the version categories on this basis than on an individual file basis.

As mentioned, I suggest placing the editable copies in a separate folder. You can put this underneath the current folder if you like. In The DAM Book, Peter Krogh suggests appending something to the names of the the files you generate, to help keep straight purpose of each copy. You might add the letter “m” (for “master”) to these copies. This is easily done using ACDSee Pro whether generating the copies for a group of images at once using Tools->Batch Processor or one at a time using “Save As.” Be sure to check the options to preserve database information and embedded metadata.

Before deciding on how you want to work with your editable copies, you might wish to read what I write about proofs below, and decide if working with proofs instead full size editable copies makes more sense for you. Some of you may use full size editable copies but not proofs, some may use proofs but not full size editable copies, and some may choose to use both.

Edit Copies As Necessary (Optional)

Once you have editable copies, or have prepared yourself to only save copies of the originals, you can begin working on any images you wish to edit at this time. You can use presets to some extent to help you apply work done on one file to other files. You will find the process of going through many images to be much more cumbersome than it is for RAW Processing, because the facilities for editing JPEG files are not non-destructive, do not include the handy right click shortcuts for copying settings from image to image, and require you to explicitly save your changes every time you move from image to image. This is why I encourage you to use RAW if possible, if most of the processing you tend to is is the type that can be done via RAW processing (exposure, color, sharpness, and noise reduction primarily, also crop and rotate).

You may decide that the capabilities of the ACDSee Pro editor are not sufficient for what you wish to do. Fortunately, ACDSee Pro makes it easy to invoke external editors via Tools->Open in Editor. Other editors you may wish to consider include ACD’s own Photo Editor, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements., and Paint Shop Pro. Personally, I do not often find the need to do the sorts of things that require external editors, but when I do, I am generally happy with The GIMP, a free utility that works much like Photoshop.

Because editing JPEGs, whether with the built-in editor or an external one, is less convenient than processing RAWs, you will probably find you do not want to do much of it at this stage. Certainly, there is no reason to edit your your images until there is actually a need to do so, such as before actually printing an image or posting it to a web site.

Generate Proofs (Optional)

Once you have all your images looking the way you want, you may wish to generate proofs – lower resolution and/or more highly compressed copies of your images. The advantage of these proofs is that they can be significantly smaller in file size than the originals or editable copies. I do not have room on my notebook hard drive for the original version or an editable copy of every picture I have ever taken, but I do have room for proofs of them. I can elect to keep higher quality proofs of my high rated images and lower quality proofs of my low rated images, and can control the actual quality of the proofs in order to reduce the file size as much as necessary to fit comfortably on my local hard drive.

In fact, because I do most of my image processing via RAW Processing, I generally skip the previous two steps dealing with editable copies of my images. Instead, I generate proofs for all my images, and if I want to do further editing on any of the images (which is pretty rare), I do it to the proofs. The proofs I generate for images rated 3 and higher are of high enough quality to print at 4”x6”, and if I know I will be wanting to make a larger print of a given image, I will simply generate a large enough proof – perhaps full resolution, very little compression – to make this possible. If I decide later to make a large print of an image I had edited only via a lower resolution proof, I can always start over on the original image – which I probably would want to do anyhow, since I probably wasn’t being as careful with my initial edits as I would have had I known I was going to make a large print.

To generate proofs, I use Tools->Batch Processor. I have presets that do no actual processing except to resize the image to various sizes and apply different amounts of JPEG compression. For instance, you might wish to resize the images you have rated 3 or higher to be 1200×1800 (the minimum resolution necessary print at 4×6 at 300dpi, which is the most I would ever expect of a proof) at a JPEG compression / image quality setting of 85. You might wish to resize images you have rated 2 to be 600×900 (just enough to display full screen at acceptable resolution on most monitors) at a JPEG compression / image quality setting of 70, and you might decide that the thumbnails the ACDSee Pro keeps in its database are all you will need to keep on your local drive for images rated 1. You might also create a preset that does a JPEG conversion at full resolution and minimal compression, and use this for images that you know right away you will want to create large prints of.

If you think you will want to keep local proofs, you can experiment for yourself to find the right balance between image quality and file size for your purposes. As a point of comparison, if I have 10,000 images that in DNG format are around 5 MB a piece, that is 50 GB of space – about as much as I have available on my notebook hard drive. But if I reduce them to 1200×1800 at a quality setting of 85, they are over 10 times smaller. Meaning I can fit over 100,000 proofs on my notebook hard drive. Even if I make proofs this size for every image, this will probably last me until I get a new computer with a larger hard drive, but to be even safer I can go with lower resolution proofs or no proofs at all for my low rated images.

I assign all of my proofs to a category called “Proof”. This allows me to filter my future browsing and searching so that I view only the proofs. The proofs can be the version you use for most everyday purposes, such as creating slideshows, posting to the web, or emailing to others. If you decide you want to then access the original as well, you can simply turn off the filter. Depending on how you arrived at the file for which you want to view the original, you may also need to do a Quick Search on the the filename to locate it. Note that since we have already exported the metadata, this information will not be incorporated into IPTC unless we do another export. You can do that now if you wish, but since the proofs will be stored in a separate folder (see below), it would be easy enough to recreate this information later if necessary – for instance, if you copy these proofs to another computer to access.

The proofs I generate all go into a folder called “PROOF” that lives on my local drive. I create subfolders under this that correspond to the names of the buckets for the corresponding originals. The files themselves have the letter “p” appended to their names. Because these proofs are so much smaller than the the originals, the proof folder corresponding to a given full (around 4.4 GB) originals folder will of course be nowhere 4.4 GB in size. Thus, for example, your proof folder DVD_PRF_023 may have only 400 MB of images in it when your originals folder DVD_ORG_023 reaches 4 GB in size. So rather than backup your proof folders to individual DVDs, it probably makes sense to combine them. When you generate a set of proofs, you should check to see if these proofs combined with the other proofs you have generated since the last DVD was create have reached 4 GB in size, and if so, back them all up to DVD.

Move Files To Archive Buckets

You are now done processing the images, and it is time to move them to their permanent home in the bucket system. You can do this by selecting all the files in the folder (including XMP and/or RPP files if present), right clicking, selecting Move to Folder, and then browsing to the current bucket. Depending on how you configure your ACDSee Pro windows, there might be other easy ways of doing this.

You should check first, though, to be sure there is enough room in the target bucket. You can browse to the ORIGINAL folder in ACDSee Pro and then click on the current bucket folder, which should be the last one you have created. After a few moments of calculating, the total size of the folder should display in the Properties pane. You can then return to your working folder, where the total size should be displayed in the status bar, and determine if adding all these files to the bucket would push it over the capacity of a DVD (around 4.4 GB). You should be conservative in this to allow room for database information to be included on the DVD; I generally consider a bucket full the moment it goes over 4GB, and I back it up to DVD and start a new one with the next higher number at that point.

Depending on how big your memory cards and how full they are when you copy them to your computer, you may decide to split your current working folder up between buckets. For example, if you have 3 GB in the current bucket and have 2 GB in your current working folder, you may wish to put 1 GB of working images in the current bucket, back that up to DVD, then start a new bucket and put the remaining 1 GB of working images in that.

If you have created editable copies of your files, you will probably want to archive those as well. I recommend creating a parallel bucket structure under the DERIVATIVE folder for these. You can make the bucket numbers correspond exactly if you like, so that an image in bucket DVD_ORG_007 has its editable copy in DVD_DRV_007 as well, as I recommended for proofs. But whereas for proofs, the resulting folders were guaranteed to be much smaller than the originals folders, this may not be the case for these editable copies - the size differences are not likely to be as extreme. This means that it may not be very space efficient to try to combine folders named this way onto a single DVD. For example, DVD_DRV_006 and DVD_DRV_007 may be 2.6 GB in size each. Backing them up onto separate DVDs would be rather wasteful, but they are too large to combine. So instead of creating a new DERIVATIVE bucket every time you create a new ORIGINAL one, you are probably better off only creating new DERIVATIVE buckets as necessary. This means that an image in DVD_ORG_007 may well have its editable copy in DVD_DRV_002. This should not be a problem, as the ACDSee Pro database will keep track of what files are in what folders. You may want to get in the habit of labeling your DVDs with the date of first and/or last images they contain, in addition to the bucket names themselves.

After you have copied your files to their buckets, this would be a good time to run Database->Back Up Database. I generally keep one backup on my computer and one on a rewritable CD or DVD. I also include database information on the DVDs I create for each bucket. Periodically – such as, perhaps, when starting a new bucket – you should consider running Database->Optimize Database as well.

Export Database (Optional)

There are several reasons you might want to save your database information outside of the internal database. One would be so that the information can be made accessible to another computer running ACDSee Pro. Another would be simply as a form of database backup. Yet another would be to allow you to someday migrate your entire system to another application. To some extent, the fact that we have exported our metadata to IPTC and to RPP files will allow this already, but exporting the database itself is another optional method that you may wish to use.

To export the database, select the images for which you wish to export information and go to Database->Export. In the wizard that comes up, select “Export database information for selected items” for most normal database export operations, or the text file option if you are trying to export the database in preparation for migrating to a new application. You can specify a location for the exported database. If you would like this information to be made available to other computers accessing the images, then the logical place to store the information is in the bucket along with the images. That way any computer that can access the images can access the database information as well. It would also be logical to select all the files in that bucket when exporting the database – not just the newly added ones – and to overwrite any exported database you created in that bucket previously. Thus the exported database in the bucket always reflects the current contents of that bucket. You should be sure to leave enough room in the bucket for this information! However, if your primary reason for exporting the database is for backup, then you may prefer to export the entire database (rather than just the information for the files you are currently working on or even all the files in the current bucket), and you will probably want to keep this exported database someplace more central.

At this point, you are done processing your images. You can now consider them part of your permanent catalog.

Popularity: 52% [?]

• ACDSee Tutorials , Workflow
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Marc Sabatella August 24th, 2007

The Workflow

The workflow I am about to describe differs slightly from the one in Peter Krogh’s The DAM Book. Some of the differences are due to the fact that Krogh is dealing with at least two different applications – Adobe Bridge and iView MediaPro. He therefore tries to do things in an order that minimizes the need to switch back and forth between them, and has to take some extra steps in order to get them to share information. Because we will be working within a single application – ACDSee Pro – we don’t have to make those sorts of compromises. On the other hand, some of the differences between my workflow and his are due to other factors. For instance, I do not assume you will want to convert your RAW files to DNG, and indeed, I do not assume you are shooting RAW at all. I also am trying to be pragmatic about how much backup people are willing to do, and how much hardware they are willing to dedicate to DAM. A few changes are also to facilitate some things I find useful, such as having easy access to my images on my notebook computer even when my primary storage disks are not attached.

Here, then, is the list of steps to perform for each new cardful of images:

• get images
• rename files
• RAW: convert to DNG (optional)
• rotate images as necessary
• enter high level metadata
• rate images
• enter low level metadata (optional)
• RAW: custom process high rated images as necessary (optional)
• RAW: batch process low rated images as necessary (optional)
• export metadata
• generate editable copies (optional)
• edit copies as necessary (optional)
• generate proofs (optional)
• move files to archive buckets
• export database (optional)

I will now explain each of these steps in more detail, beginning with the things you must to do to set up before you can start processing images using this workflow. I am including a lot of explanation, and it may appear at first like a lot of work, but to put things in perspective, I can process a card with a 100-200 images on it in just a few minutes if I put my mind to it. I do not always pressure myself to work so fast, though, so I may have several folders representing several cardfuls of images that are at various stages in this process. It is important to keep in mind that while I refer to these steps as a “workflow,” the time you spend with your images can and should be fun as well.

Get Images

Once everything is set up and you are ready to start working with a cardful of new images, your first step is to copy them to your computer. Connect your camera or insert your card and go to File->Get Photos->From Camera or Card Reader. Select your device and press next, then next again (no reason not to just import all the images). I recommend the options to keep the original filenames (for now), to automatically rotate images. Under “Location”, choose your Working folder (this will be selected by default in the future). I also recommend letting ACDSee create a subdirectory with today’s date. Depending on how your camera names you files and how you want them renamed on import, you may be able to use the renaming facility of the Get Photos wizard. But it is also possible you will have to rename the images as a separate step using Tools->Batch Rename, because this provides more flexible naming options than the Get Photos wizard.

I should mention that I do not normally actually use ACDSee Pro to import my images. Instead, I use a free utility called ImageIngester. I do this in part because it has very flexibile renaming options, but also because ImageIngester will run the Adobe DNG converter on my RAW files for me, meaning I can skip both of the next two steps.

Rename Files

Now that you have the files on your computer, you should rename them to something more useful (assuming you were not able to do this on import). As I mentioned previously, this is not going to be anything having to do with the subject of the photo, but it will still be more useful. What you want is a name like MJS_070224_3642.PEF. “MJS” are my initials, and you will of course replace that with your own initials or name or something to identify these images as yours. “070224” is the date in YYMMDD format. We use this format so the files will line up in the correct order even when sorted by filename. “3642” is the number that was part of the original name generated by the camera. My files start out with names like IMGP3642.PEF. I can turn this into what I want by selecting all images and going to Tools->Batch Rename. I created a template by typing “MJS_” and then inserting the metadata Image:Date/time original, then typing “_” and insert the metadata File Properties:Filename (w/o extension). On the Search and Replace pane, I replace IMPG with nothing. This template is available to me every time I enter Batch Rename. Actually, as I mentioned previously, ImageIngester can do this renaming for me, so I normally do not need to rename my files from within ACDSee Pro.

RAW: Convert to DNG (Optional)

Peter Krogh, in The DAM Book, makes a strong case for converting your proprietary RAW images to DNG and then throwing away the originals – treating the DNG versions from then on as if they were the originals. The main reason he favors this is the DNG allows a preview of the image that includes your adjustments to be stored in the image itself. Metadata such as IPTC can also be stored in the DNG file itself, and Krogh believes that an image in DNG format is more likely to be understood by more programs and longer into the future than an image in a proprietary RAW format. These issues are of concern primarily if you are trying to share files between applications, but since ACDSee will be handling virtually everything for us, the arguments in favor of using DNG are not so strong. Furthermore, since ACDSee Pro does not currently support including a preview in the DNG file, and metadata such as IPTC can be stored in sidecars for proprietary RAW files, and ACDSee Pro does not actually support DNG files from cameras for which it does not also support the proprietary RAW files, there is less to be gained by using DNG with ACDSee Pro. However, if you are concerned with future portability of your proprietary RAW files, or if your camera does not produce compressed RAW files, or if incorporating metadata into the image files themselves rather than sidecars is important to you, then you may well find that DNG gives you an advantage. Since my camera does not compress RAW files, converting to DNG cuts the file size roughly in half, and that is an important factor in why I personally convert to DNG and delete my PEF files.

While ACDSee Pro does not offer DNG conversion itself, the Adobe DNG Converter is a free download. You can install it as one of your external editors via Tools->Open in Editor->Configure Editors; this need be done only once. You can then select images and then run the DNG converter from within ACDSee Pro. I recommend not including a full size preview in the DNG file, since any preview generated by the Adobe DNG Converter will not reflect any processing you do in ACDSee Pro.

After the DNG file has been generated, I feel I can safely delete my original PEF files. You may prefer to archive them first and then delete them, or move them to another folder. Again, I normally use ImageIngester to download my images, and it can run the DNG converter for me and move my PEFs to another folder where I can delete them or archive them at my leisure. This means I can skip directly to the next step.

Rotate Images As Necessary

If your camera is capable of detecting when you are shooting vertically and recording this fact in the image file, and you had ACDSee Pro (or ImageIngester) automatically rotate the images accordingly on import, then this step will never be necessary. I am not so lucky. All images I shot vertically need to be rotated at this time. Images shot as JPEG files can be rotated directly from ACDSee Pro – simply select them and go to Tools->Batch Rotate / Flip Images (available as a button on the toolbar as well). Images shot RAW files cannot be rotated in this manner. But there is another fairly simple solution: create RAW presets for rotation, and apply these to images in need of rotation. To create a preset to rotate clockwise, enter the RAW processor on a RAW image that has had no processing applied, go to the Crop/Rotate tab, hit the “Right 90” button, and save this as a preset. Do the same for counterclockwise rotation using “Left 90”. These presets can then be applied directly to a group of images from the browser. Note that when you apply one of these presets, it will override any previous processing you have done on that file, so be sure to do your rotation at the beginning of your workflow as I am suggesting. Also note that because this rotation is performed using RAW processing, it does take a few seconds per image for the thumbnail to be updated to reflect the change. However, this work is done in the background, so you can continue working while the images are processed.

Enter High Level Metadata

The metadata you should enter at this stage is that which applies to large numbers of images – especially adjacent images. For instance, if the card I have downloaded contains pictures from a birthday party as well as pictures from a friend’s garden, I will start by selecting all of the birthday party pictures and entering the metadata that applies to all of them, then selecting all the pictures from the garden and entering the metadata that applies to all of them. I use the Notes field of the ACDSee Pro database to enter a short description of the event or location, like “Wendy’s birthday party” or “Jill’s garden.”

I also have keywords and categories I assign to my pictures, and I will try to get started on that now as well. In general, keywords are what I expect other people may someday use to search my images, and I try to choose terms with this in mind. The keywords I enter into the database will be copied to the IPTC Keywords field in the “Export Metadata” step (this is what makes the keywords accessible to others as well). Categories are things that I use to keep track of images for my own purposes, and while I have been copying these to IPTC fields as well, there is no real standard for using this information, and I do not depend on others being able to use it. In practice, the distinctions between what makes sense to enter as a keyword versus a category are admittedly often fuzzy, so some examples may help.

I always try to assign all my images a keyword of either landscape, cityscape, seascape, portrait, candid, interior, macro, animals, plants, or perhaps some other term that basically describes the subject matter of the picture at the highest possible level. In addition to this, I assign keywords for each person pictured in a photo if it is someone who is well known or whom I expect I or someone else may want to search for later. If the photo depicts a significant identifiable place, object, activity, and/or emotional state, I may enter a keyword for these, too. Most pictures end up with 3-6 keywords. I try to assign the first two or three – which, except for names of individual people, are often the same for many if not all pictures shot in a given session - at this stage in my workflow. After rating the images, I may get pickier and enter more keywords for the best of the images, to make them easier to find in the future.

The categories I define are harder to pin down. In general, I try to follow the advice of Peter Krogh in The DAM Book when he says to create categories because you need them, not just because you can. For instance, I took a lot of pictures of my fellow students while working on my Masters degree in Jazz Composition at the University of Denver, and I knew I would be creating a slide show of these at the end of the year. So I created a category called “DU Jazz”, and each time I shot pictures of DU musicians, I entered them into this category. When it was time to create the slide show, I started by creating a subcategory called “2007 Candidates,” and I put the highly rated photos from “DU Jazz” into this new category. I then created another category for the images I selected for the actual show. But the only category to which I would assign images as I shot them was the overall “DU Jazz” category, and I did that only because I knew in advance I would be wanting to create a slide show of these images.

For important events, I have categories that essentially duplicate the type of information I enter in the Notes field. For instance, I have a category “Weddings” with subcategories for each wedding I have attended and shot pictures. Any picture from Jessica and Wouter’s wedding will probably say something in “Notes” that reflects this, and I can certainly search on those terms, but it becomes that much easier to find these images if I have assigned them to their own category. I only bother doing this for images I expect to want to find later as a group. If I were a professional photographer, I would have categories for each job and would assign my photos to them immediately.

I have categories for groups of people for whom I do not feel like entering individual keywords. For example, if I take a picture of a friend of a friend I meet at a party, and her five children are in the picture, I may just create a category with the name of the family rather than enter keywords for each family member.

I have also used categories to record location information, but given that I want this to eventually live in IPTC, and there is no simple way to automatically transfer location information from categories to IPTC, there is really nothing to be gained by having this information duplicated in categories. Since I shoot most of my pictures in or around my home city, I have this set as the default during the “Export Metadata” step. I can easily override this location for a specific batch of pictures taken elsewhere. Another possibility if you travel more than I do is to use the Author field of the database to record location information, and copy this field to IPTC location fields when exporting metadata (I recommend the Author field simply because it is the only field I never use otherwise).

I should note that copyright and contact metadata will also be exported later, but on the assumption that this does not tend to change from one batch of images to the next, you do not need to do anything about that at this stage – this information can also be incorporated into the defaults for the “Export Metadata” step.

So to summarize, I am primarily concerned with entering notes, keywords, and to a lesser extent, categories (most images will have at most one or two categories; many will have none). These first few steps are very easy and quick to do – especially if you enter just the bare minimum at this point, and save keywording tasks such as identifying individual people in each photo for later. I would recommend trying to get at least this far immediately upon downloading your images, and consider backing them up (by running File->Sync to copy them to your external drive, or copying them to rewritable DVD) at this point, especially if you know you are not going to complete the full workflow at this sitting.

Rate Images

At some point, after entering the most basic of the metadata I want to enter for my images, I start rating them. There are two main reasons to rate images. One is so you can then concentrate most of your subsequent work on the higher rated images. The other is so that when you are searching for images later, you can constrain your search to just the images you previously identified as the better images.

The rating scheme I use is based on the ideas of Peter Krogh as expressed in The DAM Book. My scheme differs somewhat because of differences between ACDSee Pro and Adobe Bridge but also simply because I had some some ideas of my own in this department. I assign ratings as follows:

1: This image has no redeeming qualities. If I deleted it, I wouldn’t be likely to ever miss it.

2: This is a perfectly acceptable picture, but is not one of the best ones I took of that subject in that setting. I would show it to someone who wanted to see everything I had of that subject or that setting.

3: This is one of the best pictures I took of that subject in that setting. These (and higher rated pictures) are normally the only ones I show people who are interested in a subject or setting, unless they specifically ask to see more.

4: This is one of the best pictures I have taken of any subject in any setting. I would show it to someone who wanted to see some good examples of the kind of pictures I take in general, whether or not they had specific interest in that subject or setting. These are the ones I would be most likely to consider uploading to a photo sharing site, use as a screensaver, or print at some size larger than 4”x6” (you have to realize these are all relatively rare events for me).

5: This is not only one the best pictures I have taken; it is one I think compares well with pictures I have seen from other photographers I admire. I would consider entering this into a photo competition.

When I first started trying to organize my pictures, I think I took too long rating my pictures, in part because I did not have a clear idea of what my ratings should really mean. I was asking myself, “is this a 2 or is it a 3” without giving myself anything concrete on which to base this decision. On the other hand, by asking myself, “is this the best picture I took of that subject in that setting or is it not”, it is at least clear what I am trying to determine. It may still take a bit of comparing to decide which are in fact the best of the images of a given subject in a given setting, but at least it is then clear what ratings to assign the the images. I also have keyboard shortcuts defined to make assigning ratings even easier: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (plus 0 to clear the rating). Note if you do define keyboard shortcuts for rating, be sure to do so both from within the browser and within the viewer, since you may find you do rating from the both windows, and keyboard shortcuts defined in one window do not apply to the other.

The vast majority of the pictures I take are either 2 or 3, with many more 2s than 3s. I try not to give out too many 4s – this is reserved for the pictures that are truly memorable. I have yet to give out any 5s. Of the pictures I assign a rating of 1, I actually do delete quite a few – ones that contain major mistakes (eg, out of focus, subject moved, completely wrong exposure) that were fixed in other shots. But if there is anything even remotely usable about the shot, it doesn’t hurt to keep it – disk space is cheap. By giving it a rating of 1, I will know not to bother doing any post processing work on the image unless I decide to revisit it later, and I’ll only do so if I should have reason to want to see everything I have ever shot on that topic.

I may also have images that are so bad they should simply be deleted. Disk space is cheap enough that if there is even the slightest doubt, I keep an image, but some clearly have no value whatsover. Even so, rather than deleting images when you first look at them, I recommend getting in the habit of just marking them for deletion later, perhaps with a custom category you create and assign a keyboard shortcut. Then you can review your choices when you have finished rating all your images to make sure you are not deleting images you should have kept.

After I have rated my images, I usually sort them on rating. This gives me a chance to make sure I have really made the right choices and not missed anything, and it also allows me to easily identify the images rated 3 and higher so I can concentrate on them for the next steps. I have keyboard shortcuts assigned to the sorting criteria I use most often – rating and filename (recall the filename includes the date, so that sorting on filename is equivalent to sorting on date).

Enter Low Level Metadata (Optional)

This is just an extension of the metadata entry I do before rating. But since I have now identified the images I think are the best of each subject, I can limit my effort to those. Realistically, I often treat 2s and 3s pretty much the same int his respect – which is to say, I may not enter any additional metadata at this point. But if I shot any 4s on that card – and often, I have not – I can consider entering some more esoteric keywords, like ones depicting emotions of abstract concepts. Although I have not tended to enter captions on individual photos unless there is a specific reason to, this is the point where I would consider doing so, at least for the 4s. In short, there is no specific reason to split your metadata entry into two phases, but I often find it useful to perform some before rating (when the images are sorted in there order taken) and some after rating (when the images are sorted by rating). There is, of course, nothing stopping you from switching between sorting by rating and by filename / date after doing the rating.

At this point, we can turn our attention to any processing we want to do on our images. This is where the workflow will differ the most depending on whether you shoot RAW or JPEG, and as you will see, can actually be easier if you shoot RAW.

RAW: Custom Process High Rated Images As Necessary (Optional)

Because RAW processing is non-destructive – meaning that changes you make are stored in the database and do not require modifying the actual file – we can do this work without the need for generating copies of the files to work on. And because the ACDSee Pro RAW processor is so fast and can perform much of its work in the background, we can easily move from image to image, and back and forth between the RAW Processing and the browser, without having to stop to save a file each time we move from one image to another. In fact, because it is sometimes difficult to compare images to see which is truly the best of a given bunch without doing some processing (such as improving exposure or adding sharpening), we can quickly do a little of this as desired while rating our images, and find that any processing we started to apply during that step is still there for us now waiting for us to fine tune – again, all without the need to ever explicitly save a new version of the file.

Another great thing about RAW Processing in ACDSee Pro is how easy it is to copy settings from one file to another. Once you have the exposure, color, sharpening, and noise reduction for one image looking the way you want, you can easily apply these settings to other similar images.

While RAW Processing does not give you access to all of the editing tools that ACDSee Pro provides – no red-eye reduction or photo repair, for example – I think you will find that many of your photos can be improved significantly in just a few seconds of your time in the RAW Processor, and that you will often not feel the need to perform any further editing. For the photos that do require more work, you can always convert them to JPEG or TIFF and edit them later.

Depending on the type of shooting you do and how you feel about post processing your photographs, you may not feel the need to do any custom processing at all to even your highly rated images, and that is fine. For me, the benefit of shooting RAW is still how easy it is to do when necessary. I do a lot of concert photography in which the lighting and exposure are very difficult to control (flash is usually inappropriate in these settings). The amount and color of light often varies drastically from one area of a stage to another, and the levels of light are often such that, even if using a tripod or some form of image stabilization and the highest ISO setting the camera supports well, the shutter speeds necessary to get a good exposure often result in blur from subject motion. So I find it more convenient to simply set my camera WB to the generic “tungsten” or “incandescent” setting, and set the exposure to something that has at least some chance of freezing my subject and still produce some sort of image, and shoot away, confident that the images can be improved through RAW Processing. Some people find this attitude offensive, but it works for me. On the other hand, most of my pictures taken outdoors need no further processing to make me happy, even with the camera on automatic WB and exposure settings. Anyhow, assuming you will want to process at least some of you images, I will describe a general strategy for doing so.

Because we chose at least one picture of each subject to rate as a 3, we can concentrate our attention on just the 3s. As mentioned before, I have my images sorted by rating at this point. I select all the images rated 3 or higher and enter the RAW Processor (and because this is an operation I use a lot, I have it assigned to a simple keyboard shortcut: R). I usually begin with the first image in line that needs work. If I have previously saved a preset that I think will apply well to this image, I select it. Otherwise – or if the preset does not work out as well as I had hoped – I spend a few seconds each on the exposure, color, and detail tabs to custom process the file.

Most sources recommend adjusting white balance first. I may try one of the presets, or I may use the eyedropper to select a neutral area. I may then adjust the sliders slightly to improve the color further. If you shoot a frame with a gray card or other calibrating device, you can set the white balance on that image and then copy it to the others shot in the same light. On the exposure tab, I usually start by adjusting exposure compensation as necessary to make the exposure look right without introducing clipping (be sure to have the clipping warning turned on). Then I may adjust the other controls to improve the exposure and contrast further. I usually look at the details tab only for high ISO images that need a lot of noise reduction and/or sharpening.

I seldom use the crop / rotate tab, because in general, if I am cropping, it is for a specific print size, and I would rather generate new conversions of the file for each specific print size as necessary. And rotation to orient the image correctly is done earlier. However, I do occasionally make use of cropping or slight rotation to fine tune horizontals, such as when shooting my own paintings, you are welcome to use this tab as you see fit.

When I have an image looking pretty good, I move on to the next. Again, one of the benefits of RAW Processing in ACDSee Pro is that I can move on instantly without stopping to save my work, and I can always come back to the image later if I change my mind, and my settings are intact so I can pick up where I left off if I like.

In many cases, I do not need to actually custom process images in order to improve them. Many will need no processing at all, and I will simply skip these. For the ones that do need work, I use the “Last Used” preset a lot, as well as the ability to select specific RAW settings for an image (by right clicking its thumbnail in the RAW Processor) and paste them on to other similar images. Often this is good enough. At most, I may individually adjust the curves for individual images after copying settings from another image. If, after processing an image, I think I may be shooting more images under similar conditions that will need similar processing in the future, I may save a preset for use later.

When I am done, or if I decide to return to the browser to work on some more files, I hit Done. Once again, the fact that I do not need to explicitly save my work, and the fact that ACDSee Pro is able to perform much of its work in the background, means I can immediately resume browsing and return to RAW Processing whenever I desire, without ever having to wait for anything.

RAW: Batch Process Low Rated Images As Necessary (Optional)

Here again, ACDSee Pro provides facilities that make it simple to improve the images we have decided are not worth spending as much time on – the 1s and 2s. For starters, you can apply RAW processing presets directly from the browser. If I do not have a preset I think is applicable, I will often return to RAW Processing on one of the higher rated images I had processed in the previous step, then immediately hit “Done”. This loads the “Last Used” preset with settings that may work for other images. One drawback of applying presets is that if you have already used a RAW Processing preset to rotate images, this will be lost when you apply the new preset. So instead, you may prefer to simply copy and paste white balance settings from one of the custom processed images to the lower rated images – this can also be done from the browser (Edit->White Balance). Or, if you wish to copy settings other than white balance, you can return to RAW Processing to copy all settings except rotation. Because these are lower rated images, I do not worry about making them perfect, but if they are severely underexposed or the white balance is so far off that they are not pleasant to look at, I will spend a few moments at least bringing the 2s into the right ballpark. Again, since this non-destructive, I know I can always revisit the processing for any given images later.

Export Metadata

As mentioned previously, keywords and other metadata should live in the IPTC fields, so they can be accessed by others browsing your images. We enter them into the database first because it is far easier and faster, but at some point after you finish your metadata entry, you should export it from the database into the image files themselves (or sidecar XMP files for proprietary RAW images). Because the RAW Processing parameters are also a type of metadata that can also be exported from the database, and because performing RAW Processing may cause me to change my mind about ratings and other metadata, I usually wait until I finish my RAW processing before exporting metadata.

The database fields can be written to IPTC fields using Tools->Batch Set Information, and this same command can fill in other IPTC fields. I have created a template that loads into Batch Set Information by default with all the fields set up the way I like them. Unfortunately, there is no one absolutely correct way to do this, so different people end up doing it differently. Note that if you are shooting RAW, it is important to use IPTC fields that are part of the XMP standard for IPTC, since this is how IPTC information is stored for RAW files. I have the Copyright Notice, Photographer, Credit, Source, Writer, and Special Instructions fields filled in with my name and contact information. The database Keywords field is copied to the IPTC Keywords field. The database Notes and Caption fields get copied to IPTC Headline and Caption respectively. I also record the filename in the IPTC Object Name field, so that I can still identify the image should someone else to whom I send it change its filename. If you record location information in the Author field of the database, you can copy this to the IPTC City field; otherwise you might have the location fields default to your home city.

This is information we record into IPTC in order to make it available to others. The other database fields are also worth writing to IPTC, simply to make sure they are preserved should your ACDSee Pro database be inaccessible, or should you eventually want to migrate your image catalog to another application. I suggest copying the database Ratings field to the IPTC Urgency field and the database Categories field to IPTC Supplementary Categories field. Both of these IPTC fields are considered “Deprecated” by the XMP standard for IPTC and hence are unlikely to be used for other purposes, but still exist and can be written to by ACDSee Pro, and both can be read by other applications if necessary.

With proprietary RAW files, exporting metadata to IPTC actually writes it to a sidecar file with the extension “.xmp,” not to the RAW file itself. Since we will seldom if ever be giving our RAW images to anyone else, this should not be a problem. Just be sure to always keep the sidecar files with the originals as you move them around. As you will see, we will do very little moving around of our RAW files, so this should not be a problem, either. If you use the DNG format for your RAW images, the metadata is written directly to the files themselves; no sidecar files are involved.

Note that the Beta 2 version of ACDSee Pro 2 does not actually support writing metadata to DNG files, nor will it create XMP sidecar files for these files. However, I have determined that you can force it to create sidecar files by simply running Tools->Batch Rename to change the file extension from “.dng” to the extension used for your camera’s proprietary RAW file, and you can change it back after running Tools->Batch Set Information to create the XMP files. This step will not be necessary in the final version of ACDSee Pro 2; metadata will be written directly to the DNG files. You may wait until the new version is released before exporting metadata if you are using DNG, or you may use the renaming workaround to generate sidecar files if you wish.

As mentioned above, RAW Processing parameters can be exported at this time as well. To do so, select your files and run Database->Export->RPP Files. This creates a text file with the extension “.rpp” in the same directory as your files if you are using proprietary RAW files. This step is not necessary if you are using DNG, as the RAW Processing parameters are already stored directly in the DNG file. Again, the Beta 2 version of ACDSee Pro 2 does not support writing to DNG, so I do recommend exporting RPP files for now.

This would be a good time to backup your images again, especially if you do not plan to finish the workflow in this session.

Popularity: 57% [?]

• ACDSee Tutorials , Workflow
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Marc Sabatella August 24th, 2007

Basic Concepts

Most likely, the workflow I am going to describe is going to represent a significant change from how you have been doing things thus far. In The DAM Book, Peter Krogh puts forth a number of very eloquent arguments to convince the reader why some of the changes are necessary, and if you having trouble why I am suggesting some of the things I am, I encourage you to read Krogh’s book. I am going to just summarize some of the main points.

• The most important factor in keeping images organized so that you can find them later is metadata. This includes ratings, captions, keywords, and categories that you associate with your images. This information should live in a database so it can be easily searched even when the actual images are not present, and it should also be duplicated in the files themselves so that it stays with the files even if you make copies to send elsewhere. The more of this information you enter for an image, the easier it is to find that image later.
• The most important factor in keeping images organized so that you can easily back them up and restore them if necessary is keeping them in folders that correspond in some way to your backup media. For most of us, DVD is the backup media of choice, and this means keeping images in folders no larger than the size of a DVD (around 4.4 GB). Krogh calls these buckets, so I will use that term as well. New images go into your current bucket until it approaches 4.4 GB in size, at which point, you backup that bucket and start a new one. You do not go back and add images to old buckets, as this would make it difficult to tell what was backed up and what was not.
• In all the work you do, you will be most efficient if you do relatively more work with the more valuable images and relatively less work with the less valuable images, and if when searching for images later, you can easily restrict your search to the more valuable images. This means making consistent use of ratings.

These facts (the first two in particular) combine to yield an important conclusion: we will use metadata as opposed to filename or folder names to record virtually all important information about the content of our images. File and folder names will be automatically generated using a simple scheme that makes it easy to assign a unique name to each file and to determine what folder that file belongs in. This system will also make it easy to determine which files and folders have been backed up and which have not, and to locate the backup of any given file or folder should the need arise.

I should mention that if you already have a file management system in place you are completely comfortable with, you can of course use it instead of the “bucket” system. Most of us are not already so well organized, however, and the bucket system has the advantage of being simple to describe and implement. On the other hand, this system does require an adjustment to our usual way of thinking about file management.

Use of metadata means that a picture you took of your aunt Martha last Thanksgiving gets keywords such as “Martha” and “Thanksgiving,” and perhaps others if you like. This allows ACDSee Pro to find the image at any point in the future using a simple keyword search, without your having to remember what you called the file or what folder you put it in. If this search yields too many “hits,” we can narrow it further by including more keywords or by using the date.

The use of metadata does not mean your images and folders cannot have descriptive names, but it does free you to name them in a way that facilitates storage management and backup. While there are many possible schemes you could use, the bucket system is one that many professional photographers use, and it works well. Use of the bucket system means that the picture you took of your aunt Martha last Thanksgiving does not get a name that has anything to do with Martha or Thanksgiving, nor does it live in a folder with other photos of Martha or of other Thanksgivings. Instead, the file will get a unique but generic name that includes the date shot. You will add this file to a folder (the current bucket) that contains your most recently shot images, whether they were from Thanksgiving or not. If your current bucket fills up before you finish adding pictures from Thanksgiving, the remainder can go into the next bucket. You won’t worry about keeping all your Thanksgiving pictures in one folder by themselves, as that would not be optimal for backup purposes. And you definitely won’t combine pictures from other Thanksgiving celebrations with pictures from this year’s celebration, or pictures of your aunt Martha from several years ago with more recent pictures of Martha, into the same folder.

In addition to the storage management advantages of this type of naming system, the fact that we are not including content information in the file or folder names gives us added incentive to be thorough in our use of metadata.

I know it took me a while to accept the wisdom of this arrangement, and if you are in doubt, I encourage you to read The DAM Book for more information, as he is able to take the time to be much more persuasive than I. And again, if you have a system that works for you, feel free to continue using it. But I am going to simply hope you will bear with me as I outline a workflow that will enable you to get more out of the bucket system of image organization than you may otherwise have thought possible.

I should also mention that I am primarily describing the steps you will take every time you download pictures from your camera to your computer – the process of attaching metadata and filing your images away so that they become a permanent part of your collection. What you actually do with this collection is up to you, of course, but I am hopeful that, as you start organizing your images in the way I describe, it will be reasonably clear to you how to take advantage of this system in your subsequent work with your images.

Setup

You will need to start by figuring out where you like to keep your images permanently. If you currently have less than 100GB and do not expect to shoot more than 100GB of images per year, then you can easily keep all your images on a single hard drive. I would recommend an external drive so it can easily be replaced. You could start with a 200GB drive now, and by the time that fills up, you will probably be able to replace it with a drive that is several times that capacity and costs less than the 200GB drive will cost now. This should be good enough for the next several years, and you can probably repeat this process more or less indefinitely – hard drives will probably continue to get bigger and cheaper. If you do currently have too many images to fit on a single drive, or expect your image collection to grow faster than hard drive storage capacities increase over time, you will need to manage some sort of multidisk system. In any case, in addition to storing your images on hard drives, you should also be backing up to DVD.

Once you have the disk in place, create a top level folder for your pictures. Underneath that, create folders called ORIGINAL and DERIVATIVE. Underneath ORIGINAL create a folder called DVD_ORG_001 – this is your first “bucket” for your original images. Underneath DERIVATIVE create one called DVD_DRV_001 – this will be a a bucket for any processed copies you end up creating.

You will also need a folder called WORKING. I would recommend having this on your local hard drive, not the external one. You could put it under My Pictures if you like. If your main computer is a notebook and you would like to access images while away from your main storage disk, create another local folder called PROOF.

Depending on your tolerance for risk and how long you tend to leave pictures lying around in the WORKING folders before completing your processing of the files and moving them to the ORIGINAL folders where they can be permanently backed up, you might want to create a backup strategy for your WORKING files. An easy way to do this with ACDSee Pro is to use File->Sync to copy your WORKING files to your external drive periodically. Once you set up how you want the sync to work, running the job can be done in just a couple of keystrokes and provides a simple backup option. Or you can write the contents of WORKING to a rewritable DVD periodically. Of course, either of these assume you have access to the necessary external media. If you are working from your laptop while away from home, you may want to consider a portable hard drive for backup of your working files. Of course, if your DVD drive is built-in to your laptop, then it is a simple enough matter to carry a few blank disks with you.

If you are like me, you will also come to value keyboard shortcuts for the commands you use the most, using View->Toolbars->Customize->Keyboard, and you will probably want to arrange the various ACDSee Pro windows in a way that works well for you. There are also some program options you will probably want set in particular ways. But these are mostly things you may want to figure out for yourself once you see how the process works for you. I will from time to time mention the settings I use. There are a few you will need to set in order to use the workflow at all, so I will list them here:

Tools->Options->General, Date/Time output format
select Custom, type “yyMMdd” in the Date box, and make sure the Time box is clear

Tools->Options->Database, Database date
set to EXIF Date

Database->Excluded Folder Settings
make sure you are not excluding your external drive from the database
(or any other folders you will be using in this workflow)

I am assuming that you already have a bunch of images you have taken in the past that you want to organize, but I would suggest first getting familiar with the workflow using new images, and then going back and migrating you old images into this system. You might want to estimate how many DVDs of existing images you have (total size in GB divided by 4) and create buckets for them right away, so you can put your new images into the proper numbered bucket instead of starting with DVD_ORG_001.

Popularity: 57% [?]

• ACDSee Tutorials , Workflow
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Marc Sabatella August 24th, 2007

Digital Asset Management (DAM) with ACDSee Pro

Digital asset management, or DAM, is the process of downloading, naming, rating, grouping, tagging, processing, archiving, searching, tracking, and otherwise organizing files. In particular, for the purposes of this article, I am referring to the management of digital photographs, and ACDSee Pro is a great tool that can help you do everything on this list. But merely having a great tool is not enough – you also need a strategy for using that tool. That is my purpose in writing this article – to show you how to use ACDSee Pro in an effective manner. And by this, I mean, in a way that allows you to easily do any processing you need to do on your images, to easily group and tag your files in a way that makes them easy to find and access later, and perhaps most importantly, to easily backup all your images. You want your images to be readily accessible and organized in a way that will allow you or others (such as your family or potential customers) to find images of interest years and perhaps even decades from now. At least, that is the assumption behind DAM.

Perhaps the best known and most authoritative work on DAM is The DAM Book, by Peter Krogh. Most of my own understanding of the topic comes from that book and from discussions on the forum of his web site. In The DAM Book, Krogh describes a method of organization and of working that can help photographers – particularly professionals – manage their ever-increasing collection of digital images. I think he does a fantastic job of explaining how much there is to be gained by employing good DAM practices, and many readers become quite excited about doing so. The book assumes that the reader will already own Photoshop (CS2 or later) and will use that for browsing files, image editing, and most importantly, for processing RAW images (it should also be mentioned that Krogh assumes you are shooting RAW). But while that Photoshop has many features, it does not have any sort of cataloging facility, and Krogh argues emphatically that photographers need an additional cataloging application to help them manage their images. He does not recommend any one specific cataloging application, although he does describe the set of features a cataloging application needs in order to function in the workflow he advocates. Much of what Krogh writes about, then, deals with the process of using a Photoshop in conjunction with a separate cataloging application, using RAW image files in the DNG format as a means of coordinating information between the two applications.

ACDSee Pro can in fact be used in the manner described by Krogh, in which Photoshop is used for RAW processing, image editing, and some other tasks, but ACDSee Pro is used for cataloging. I encourage anyone interested in using ACDSee in conjunction with Photoshop in this fashion doing to read The DAM Book and see for themselves how this could be made to work.

However, the real power of ACDSee Pro is that it can actually accomplish almost everything that one might otherwise need Photoshop for. It is true that the editing features of ACDSee Pro are not quite as sophisticated as those of Photoshop, so some users may find they still need Photoshop for some editing tasks. But of course, ACDSee Pro supports the use of external editors, so that option is still available for those who want it.

So, what I am going to describe is an adaptation of the workflow endorsed by Krogh that is optimized to work well with ACDSee Pro on its own. If you sometimes need to use an external editor like Photoshop (or a free alternative, like the GIMP), that is fine too, but the workflow I will describe does not depend on having access to Photoshop. You will be working within ACDSee Pro exclusively unless you choose to use an external editor for some reason.

Like Krogh, I am also going to start by assuming that most of you are (or could be) shooting RAW. I know many people are reluctant to do this, because they do not understand how to use RAW, or fear that it will be more difficult. But once you see how easy ACDSee Pro and the DAM workflow can make the process of working with RAW images – easier, in fact, than working with JPEG in many respects – you may change your mind. Of course, I recognize that not everyone owns a camera capable of shooting RAW, so I will also describe how to take advantage of DAM ideas while still shooting JPEG.

I will warn you in advance this is a rather long essay, and the ideas I present may take a while to fully absorb and accept. However, I do feel you will find this process worthwhile. And in any event, I am trying to make it easier than actually reading The DAM Book in its entirely and then figuring out for yourself how to make it work with ACDSee Pro. The rest of the article follows in the next four entries.

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• ACDSee Tutorials , Digital Asset Management , Product Help , Workflow
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