ACDSee Pro Blog Archives

I am excited to announce that on Monday I will begin my new role as ACDSee Community Manager. I will be continuing Jason Kiwaluk’s vision for ACDSee to better connect with it’s customers. If you frequent the ACDSee product forums you may have met me there.

About me:

For almost a year, my sister & I have been creating third party tutorials, videos & plug-ins that are available at our site at DigiScrapInfo.com. We have provided tech support & connected users to ACD when necessary. I have utilized our blog for fostering community, exploring creative marketing strategies, and software solutions to make everyone’s busy lives easier. Recently I’ve helped our community explore social media & it’s tools as avenues to maximize their hobbies & online businesses. In addition to blogging here, I can also be found at conniebensen.com & DigiScrapInfo.com

In my new role with ACDSee, I wil be the “voice of the customer”. I look forward to communicating your needs as digiscrappers, photographers & tech illustrators to the company. My goal will be to ensure that the company’s products & services best reflect your needs. Together we can make great products even better!

Please let me know how I can help you.

Connie Bensen conniebensen@gmail.com

• Export photos directly to PowerPoint
  • Use the new PPT wizard to instantly create a PowerPoint presentation of your photos by exporting them directly from within ACDSee. Just select your photos, click Create | Create PPT and the wizard will help you add or remove images, name your presentation, choose where to store it, apply a design template or even add captions, titles, and notes to each slide.
• Unzip archives from right inside ACDSee
  • Now you can unzip archives and start viewing and organizing files without leaving ACDSee, so you can start viewing and organizing downloads immediately.
• Upload to online services
  • Quickly upload your photos to online services like Flickr and SmugMug from within ACDSee.
• Photo widget
  • Post a photo widget on your web site or blog, powered by your free ACDSee Sendpix online album.
• Print Templates
  • Print Layout reduces the complexity and confusion suffered over printing multiple photos. It gives you a variety of print layout options. Print multiple 4×6 prints on a single page, or fill an entire page for an 8×10.

Download a 30 day trial today!

Certified for Vista â„¢
ACDSee Pro 2 is Certified for Windows Vistaâ„¢, providing the best experience possible on the Vistaâ„¢ operating system. ACDSee has worked closely with Microsoft to provide features and functions at the highest level of compatibility with Windows Vista.

• Improved Shadows/Highlights tool
  • The sophisticated image processing behind the Shadows/Highlights tool is now even better! This patent-pending feature actively analyses each photo to automatically apply optimal settings for each individual photo. Fine-tune shadows and highlights independently using sliders, or a single click on the photo.
  • For greater precision use the Light EQ and Advanced tabs. The Light EQ tab is like a sound equalizer - for light. You have complete control over 2-9 separate tone bands.
    With the Advanced tab, you drag the actual local, tone-mapping curve, which tells you immediately when clipping starts - or make adjustments directly on the photo itself using mouse controls. You can even “roll” your own custom curve using the mouse scroll wheel.
  • Two examples can be found here:
    • This example uses the sliders
    • This one uses the Custom Curve feature

• RAW Shadows and Highlights
  • Even better, controls for adjusting the too-dark or too-bright areas of photos have been added to RAW Processing both on the Exposure tab and on the separate Light EQ tab.

• Expanded Batch Processing
  • Apply 13 different operations to a single photo or multiple photos using the Batch Processor, which now includes controls for Shadows/Highlights, Channel Mixer, Sepia, and Saturation.

• Creative editing with Selections
  • Apply corrections, adjustments, and creative effects to a selected area of your image with the new Selections tool, giving you complete technical and artistic control of every aspect of your image.

• Opacity and Blending
  • Change the opacity of an effect applied to the whole image or a selection. Change the way edited images blend with the original image. Used with selections or special effects, these tools effectively give you 17 new options for every editing panel!Quickly flip through the blend modes by hovering over the control and scrolling with your mouse wheel.

• Channel Mixer
  • Create rich black and white images by controlling the amount of color information in each of the red, green, and blue channels used in the grayscale image. A preview window shows you precisely which areas of the photo you will affect for each channel. In Edit Mode, click Color and then select the Channel Mixer tab.

• Advanced red-eye correction
  • With the new Red-eye Reduction tool, get natural-looking results even if the red coloring has bled onto the surrounding skin or iris. Set the intensity of the color and then create a custom color to replace red areas.

Download a 30 day trial today!

• Multi-word keyword support
  • ACDSee Pro 2 now supports spaces in keywords, making it compatible with the IPTC standard and with other photo editing software. Enter keywords like “Los Angeles” and no metadata will be lost when you import or export images from other applications.

• XMP and DNG support
  • ACDSee now supports the XMP sidecar file format created by Adobe products. These sidecar files can be used to store metadata for RAW images that cannot be edited directly.
    ACDSee also supports reading and writing to XMP metadata for our currently supported IPTC fields. XMP metadata is a new extensible standard that is becoming more widely adopted. For backward compatibility, ACDSee reads metadata from or writes it to, both the older IPTC fields and the newer XMP fields, with the XMP field (if it exists) taking precedence.
    You can also edit the metadata in DNG files including EXIF, IPTC, and XMP metadata.

• Automatic categorizing based on metadata
  • Save time sorting your photos - browse through the Auto Categories pane. ACDSee Pro 2 now leverages metadata from your images to automatically place them in categories based on EXIF camera information, IPTC data, ACD database information and file properties. Use auto categories to improve searches too.

Download a 30 day trial today!

• Pop-up previews
  • To see the new pop-up previews in the File List pane, hover your mouse over a thumbnail. To disable pop-up previews, select Tools | Options, under File List, then click off Show thumbnails on pop-ups.

• Browse by date
  • View your photos by date with the new Photo Calendar or Events View.
    To access the Photo Calendar in ACDSee Pro 2, float the Calendar pane, select Month View, and enlarge the pane.
    Events View, a new option in the Calendar pane, displays your photos in an organized event list. Personalize events with unique descriptions like AutoShow or Jones Wedding.

• View photos faster
  • See your photos instantly on screen with the Quick View mode. Whether opening an image attachment to an e-mail, or double-clicking on a JPEG from Windows Explorer, the Quick View mode is a fast, sleek, and efficient addition to ACDSee’ powerful viewing tools. Pared down to include the viewing and browsing essentials, it displays your photos with greater speed than ever before.
• Organize, sort, and navigate
  • Group By arranges your photos into subsets, providing a logical viewing structure for faster viewing. Group by keywords, size, date taken, and other commonly used information.
    With Filter By, you get improved sorting and display of photos assigned to particular ratings or categories. For example, select Filter By | Rating 1. Only the photos in the selected folder(s) assigned to Rating 1 will be displayed.
  • Easily navigate a summary list of groups of photos in a folder using the Table of Contents display. It is available when using the new Group By and Events View features.

Download a 30 day trial today!

Certified for Vista â„¢
ACDSee Pro 2 is Certified for Windows Vistaâ„¢, providing the best experience possible on the Vistaâ„¢ operating system. ACDSee has worked closely with Microsoft to provide features and functions at the highest level of compatibility with Windows Vista.

Here’s what’s new in ACDSee Pro 2. Download a 30 day trial today!

Viewing RAW in ACDSee Pro 2 is now incredibly fast! Browse and view huge RAW files as if they were JPEGs, with new background RAW processing and RAW Image Previews (RIPs). Performance and handling of RAW files is optimized for dual processors. The quality of demosaicing and white balance is also improved

• Copy and paste RAW settings
  • Accelerate and simplify your workflow by copying and pasting RAW settings from one photo to another.
• Rotate and crop in one step
  • Crop and rotate your photos at the same time with the flexible new Crop/Rotate tool
• Export to multiple formats and resolutions
  • Simultaneously export RAW images to up to 14 file formats and multiple resolutions, rename and resize your files, and embed a color profile.
• Recover detail in RAW photos
  • Even when a photo is properly exposed, you can lose highlight details due to clipping by your camera. In ACDSee Pro 2, recover up to two stops of lost highlight detail with the Highlight Recovery slider in the Exposure tab of the RAW Processor. Or, use the Light EQ tab to control up to nine individual tone bands.
• New RAW file formats
  • ACDSee Pro 2 supports several new RAW formats as well as XMP sidecar files.

You may also be interested in reading Marc Sabatella’s Digital Asset Management (DAM) Workflow.

Certified for Vista â„¢
ACDSee Pro 2 is Certified for Windows Vistaâ„¢, providing the best experience possible on the Vistaâ„¢ operating system. ACDSee has worked closely with Microsoft to provide features and functions at the highest level of compatibility with Windows Vista.

A fellow user over on the ACDSee Public forum, shared this tip with me. (Thanks Sam!) This tip is used in the Folders Pane inside ACDSee Photo Manager to quickly expand out all the folders & subfolders and select all the folders & subfolders very quickly. Enjoy!

(Tip: For any image, click on the image to see a larger version of it.)

In the Folders Pane, click on the folder you wish to expand.

On your number pad, press the * key for how many levels of subfolders you have. In my example I pressed it twice. If you press the * key more times than necessary, nothing happens. Now I have all my folders expanded out.

Now to select all of them, hold down the Shift key and select the last folder. It will select all the folders in between the first and last folder. If you want specific multiple folders, hold down the Ctrl key and select individual folders one at a time.

To easily de-select the folders, just select another folder outside the range of selected folders.