ACDSee Pro Blog Archives

Shooting in a studio has its advantages, and one of the biggest ones is that you have control of lighting—you set the intensity, the color, the shadows, and you stay in command throughout the shoot. Basically, you can make the light adapt to whatever scene you wish to illuminate, in whatever manner you’d like. When you’re outside of a controlled environment, however, you are at the mercy of the “ambient” lighting conditions and you must adapt to them.

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So, with the blades whopping overhead and the pilot crackling instructions into our head phones we lofted into the crisp mountainous atmosphere leaving the mist to the valleys below. As we ascended I can see that the photo gods are indeed with us. It looks like it will be a spectacular adventure complete with stunning lighting streaming through the broken overcast.

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I was recently asked to create a slide show for a photographer friend who shoots a lot of weddings. His images for this particular event, taken about a year ago, were the standard mix of wedding photos—ceremony, formals, reception—but were taken with several different digital cameras (he often uses an assistant to shoot, also). One of the cameras was a newer model, and another was probably three or four years old. I was, in a word, stunned at the difference in lower-light image quality produced by the two cameras, both of which were set to the same exposure. Notably, the older camera exhibited a tremendous amount of noise.

Cameras are designed to detect light, and much of the effort in digital image sensing technology development over the last five years has focused on improving low-light sensitivity with minimal amounts of digital noise. For example, the Canon 1D Mark III, with an ISO capability ranging to ISO6400, shows far less digital noise on images taken in low light at, say ISO 1000 than an earlier model of the 1D series or, for example, a Canon 10D. Nikon has made similar developments in its image sensors, over about the same time period (but I’m more hard-pressed to give you specifics, since I exclusively shoot Canon).

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Occasionally you may need to get photos processed in a big hurry. Here at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, I have several clients who need photos less than 20 minutes after a fencing match has concluded in order to optimize their editorial image sales – a tall order, especially given that it can take almost ten minutes alone to get to my office in the Olympic fencing hall.

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ACDSee 10 and ACDSee Pro 2 now support more camera RAW models than ever before!

ACD Systems is committed to releasing regular updates to our list of supported camera models. ACDSee 10 Photo Manager offers viewing and managing of supported camera RAW formats. ACDSee Pro 2 allows additional camera RAW functionality, including non-destructive RAW processing with complete precision and control.

The free RAW update is for ACDSee 10 Photo Manager and ACDSee Pro 2 in English, French and German and following camera models are included:

Canon EOS 450D/Digital Rebel XSi/EOS Kiss X2
Nikon D60
Panasonic Lumix DMC-L10
Pentax K20D
Pentax K200D
Sony A200
Sony A300

Download the RAW Plug-in Update to view, browse, manage and process RAW images from the listed cameras.

View the full list of supported camera RAW formats here. New RAW formats will be added regularly.

I always enjoy questions for how to do something. It means that I get to write a tutorial! Someone asked in ACDSee Product Forums if it was possible to erase the tongue on this tiger. The forums are very active & a great place to ask questions!

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ACDSee Pro 2 & ACDSee 10 can be used to add a white or black border to a photo. If you’d like to get creative & nest the borders, that is possible too. This tutorial shows how to change the color of the border also.

Special thanks to JD for explaining how to do this! I just added the steps here.

This would be much easier in ACDSee Photo Editor. (If you’d like to a tutorial for that, let me know).

1. Click on the thumbnail of the photo that you’d like to put a frame around.

2. Under the Palette icon, Choose Edit Mode

3. Click on Selections on left & the window below opens.

4. Click on Marquee. Make the inside selection. Try to keep it even all around.

5. If you need to do it again, click on Clear & redo it. When satisfied, click on Invert.

6. Click on Done (on bottom left).

7. Click on Exposure.

8a. To make a black border, click on the top right & drag it down the right side to bottom.

8b. To make a white or colored border:

Click on the top right of the line & drag it to the left along the top as shown.

9. Click on Done.

10. On left side, choose Color

11. Under the RGB tab, move the sliders to adjust the color of the border.

12. Click on Done.

Now repeat from Step 3 on to create a black border.

(You can add as many borders as you’d like, just work towards outside.)

When you get to Step 8 use 8a.

Click Done. Click on Finished.

Close window on top right & Save as new file to protect original.

If you use this tutorial, please link to your creative work! I’d love to see it.

Selective coloring in ACDSee is SO easy now! Before ACDSee 10 in order to achieve this I had to use masks in ACDSee Photo Editor.

This can be done in both ACDSee 10 & ACDSee Pro 2!

• Open your photo in ACDSee by double clicking on the thumbnail.
• Use the pull down menu on the Palette Icon & choose Edit Mode

A new pane opens on the left

• Click on Selections
• With Freehand Lasso tool selected, draw around the item
• stay fairly close, but it doesn’t have to be exact.
• when you get back to where you started the selection will be made
• Click on Invert, Click on Done if you’re satisfied with your selection

Click on the Color - in the left pane & this is when the magic happens!

• Move the Saturation slider to the left to desaturate the background

To make up for the area around the image, on the top

• Move the slider for the Feathering to the right.
• Decide what looks the most natural.
• Click on Done

This will bring you back to the Main Menu of the Edit Panel

• Click on Finished Editing at the bottom
• And your photo is finished!

Here’s a quick tutorial for opening the Advanced Editing mode.

You’ll find it in both ACDSee 10 & ACDSee Pro 2.

Under the palette icon’s pull down menu, choose Edit Mode

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

ACDSee Photo Manager 9 is a powerful, flexible photo organizer & has great photo editing capabilities! But the latest version, ACDSee 10, has all of that plus so much more!

In this series, I’ll show you all of these new features. My sister has created videos to showcase some of them in action!

New Features for ACDSee Photo Manager 10

We’ll be taking a look at each of these over the next few days.

Sharing made Simple

• Simplify online photo sharing with integrated uploading to sites like Flickr and Smugmug. Post a photo widget on your website or blog, powered by your free ACDSee SendPix online album.
  • Take a look at the slide show on the right! I will show you how to create them.

Browse by date

• Browse and find photos intuitively on a virtual calendar with the new Photo Calendar option.

Instant Previews

• Preview larger versions of your thumbnails instantly with ACDSee 10’s new Pop-up Previews.

Advanced Image Editing

• 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. With ACDSee’s advanced red-eye tool, get natural-looking results with custom eye colors to replace red areas.

Photo Presentations

• Create Power Point® presentations right inside ACDSee, including notes, captions and more.

Unzip & Go

• Unzip files and start viewing and organizing archived items right away, without leaving ACDSee.