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I’m always intrigued by the color tweaking I can do to a digital image in ACDSee Photo Manager 2009. Playing with the trees in an outdoor scene are green but not green enough or the experimenting with the hues of a shot is almost perfect. I love the fact that I can, in a few steps, quickly jump in and change HSL values, adjust RGB values or remove a color cast to get just the right look. Plus, once I have a formula I like I can also save the options as a preset for future use. Over the next few posts, I’m going to explore that color editing features in Photo Manager 2009, starting with Color Casts.

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Did you know that you can use ACDSee Photo Manager & ACDSee Pro 2 to create awesome abstract images from your photos? I’ve played with the special effects & met the developer behind many of them. But I want to introduce you to someone who is using them to create gorgeously unique art from them! 

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It seems that applying metallic effects has become popular. I’m going to show how to apply it to the water in the photo below. This tutorial will work for ACDSee 10 or ACDSee Pro 2.

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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:

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

Recently I saw Thomas Hawk’s Principles & Guidelines for Photo Walking which are excellent. He has some great ideas & his photos are incredible. It prompted me to take my camera out. I can see where it would be helpful to do this with a group of people because you would see other’s perspectives on capturing photos. What a great way to learn!

Then today I saw a link to the America at Home project that I had read about. They have neat challenges that may inspire you. They have a list of Pro Photo Tips that are very helpful!

So would you like to see the results of my photo walk? It was a gorgeous fall day here in Minnesota. All of these were edited in ACDSee Pro 2.

• This is my favorite photo of the afternoon & they don’t even know I took it! I like the shadows of the leaves on their backs.

• I love ladybugs! My Canon S3IS totally rocks with macro! I love it! I was reading & noticed this ladybug.

• I used the shadows/highlights tool in ACDSee Pro 2 to lighten this photo. It’s maybe not the best photo, but the parts underneath the ladybug are pretty amazing. Do you like the photo or no?

• I love the textures in this photo & the brilliant color of the pin oak!

• and my husband was grinding bolts off. It reminded me of my childhood when I’d watch my dad or grandpa weld or do fascinating things like this. And we wonder why their clothing gets riddled with holes?

Do you go photo walking? Link us to your photos!

Color Cast in ACDSee Photo Manager 9 & ACDSee Pro 2 beta 2 makes it easy to take an average photo & warm it up with subtle highlights.

The original photo was taken in the afternoon & the final one has the color variations of a sunset on the clouds & glinting off the tail of the windmill.

To achieve the effect:

• Double click on an image.
• On the left side, click on the Color Cast button (5th one down)
• An eyedropper will appear. Click on the image to select a color (this is what chooses the color cast).
  • In my example I clicked on the sky.
  • Experiment with your color choice
• Move the slider to adjust to the desired effect.

What types of effects have you gotten using the Color Cast feature?