ACDSee: Using Favorites for frequently accessed folders

Using Favorites for frequently accessed folders

Ever wonder what you were thinking when you miss the obvious? Do you have folders that you frequently browse inside ACDSee Photo Manager? Why not just make that a favorite folder and use the Favorites pane?

First, let me mention that you can easily setup the default path of where ACDSee’s folder pane opens to.

Setting up Default Start Folder:

1. Go to Tools | Options
2. Click on Browser
3. Select Specific Folder
4. Click on browse to the right of the box and choose the default path that you want ACDSee to start in.
5. Click OK

I don’t usually have this option set because my digital images are not on my laptop. I store everything on a EHD. When I set this option to my EHD, it does work while my EHD is connected. If my EHD is not connected, when I start ACDSee Photo Manager it changes the default back to My Pictures. So I rarely go back and switch it back.

So another option is to use Favorites. And this can be in addition to changing the default start folder.

To make a Favorite Folder:

For any folder you visit often, right click on the folder and choose Add to Favorites.

To use Favorites:

• To view the Favorites pane, go to View | Favorites and it will show up where your Folders pane usually is.
• Just click on a folder in your Favorites pane and you will go to that folder.
• There are tabs at the bottom of that pane to switch between Favorites/Folders which I use frequently.

Some Ideas:

I have created Favorite Folders for:

• my Fonts folder (in C:\WINDOWS\Fonts)
• my main digital scrapbooking folder
• my layouts
• Originally posted October 15th, 2007 by Heidi Vanyo at DigiScrapInfo.com
• 
  

Terrific Tuesday Photoshop Tip: Auto-Selecting A Layer

May 17, 2011

Note: starting today “Manic Monday Photoshop Tips” is moving to Tuesdays and will now be called “Terrific Tuesday Photoshop Tips”.

Hello! Today’s tip features a quick way to auto select a layer: with the Move tool (V) selected, click-and-hold the Control (Mac: Cmd) key and click on that layer in the image. And yes, it’s just that easy!

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Fonts

May 9, 2011

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Fonts!

Today’s Photoshop tip is about fonts. I love fonts and I’m like a kid in a candy store when I start browsing through font sites. Fortunately for me there are lots of free font sites to use.  A couple of my favorites are www.dafont.com, www.urbanfonts.com, and  www.fontsquirel.com. Professional fonts can be expensive and I can usually find a free alternative but if I need to buy a premium font I use www.myfonts.com. Here’s my tip for finding fonts that look similar to professional fonts: go to a free font site that has a space to let you enter sample text and enter a few letters or numbers that are unique to the font.  Select the category or theme for the font you are looking for. In the example below I’m looking for a font similar to Bodoni (I’m obsessed with those cool numbers) so I start with the serif category, type in the numbers 123 as my example and click the search button. As I scroll through I’m quickly able to spot the font John Hancock as a very close match to what I’m looking for so I download it  and I’m done.

Here’s a list of some of my current favorite fonts…

Typewriter font: VT Portable Remington

Bold: Old Sans Black

Script: Honey Script (it has a cool retro feel)

Serif Font: John Hancock

Dingbat:  WC Rhesus (cool splats!!)

Fonts are great tools to use in digital scrapbooking. What are your favorite fonts? 

See you next week,

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Type Tip—Visually Adjust Kerning

May 2, 2011

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Type Tip—Visually Adjust Kerning

Sorry PSE users but this tip will only work in the full version of Photoshop. Today we’re going to look at keyboard shortcuts that will let you visually control the spacing of the letters in your type. To set the tracking tighter (decrease the space between letters in a word or group) highlight the type with the Type Tool (T), then press Alt-Left Arrow (Mac Opt-Left Arrow) to tighten. Press Alt-Right Arrow (Mac Opt-Right Arrow)  to increase or add more space between a selected group or letters or words. To adjust the space between two individual letters (this is called kerning) click your cursor between the two letters and use the same keyboard shortcuts as mentioned above.

Now I want you to go type a word in Photoshop and use the shortcut to track an entire word and then use the shortcut again to kern the space between two letters. Go on…I’ll wait. Back? Good! I realized that I know a lot of shortcuts but if I don’t use them I forget them so I’ve made an effort to use them every day and I’ve noticed I’m working much more efficiently by using the keyboard shortcuts. Try adding one or two shortcuts a day into your workflow and before you know it you’ll be a pro at it!

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop & Photoshop Elements Tips: Resetting Preferences

Monday, April 25, 2011

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Resetting Preferences

Ever have one of those days when Photoshop just doesn’t seem to be working right? Today’s tips will help you clear up those pesky quirks and reset Photoshop’s default preferences. If you’re having problems with a single tool try resetting that tool preference by clicking on the little button on the upper left menu bar. You can choose to reset the current tool or all tools. Usually just resetting the tools works for me but if the Photoshop program itself seems quirky you can reset your preferences by pressing and holding Ctrl-Alt-Shift (Mac: Command-Option-Shift) while you start Photoshop. As you start the program you will get a pop-up dialog asking if you would like to delete the settings file. Deleting the file will create a new set of preferences from scratch. 

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Viewing

April 18, 2011

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Viewing

Here’s a quick tip for those times when you want to turn off one or more layers for quick viewing in Photoshop.  To turn off one layer just click the eye icon next to the layer you want to hide. If you alt + click (opt + click on a Mac) on the eye icon it will hide or show all other layers except the one you clicked on.

I used this tip to make the previews below. I put all the screenshots, type layers and the arrow shape into  one psd file and turned the layers off and off to make the two different previews. This allowed me to just make one file and to use the same arrow for both previews which saves time and space.

See you next Monday with a new Photoshop Tip!

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Cycling Through Layer Blend Mode

 April 11, 2011

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Cycling Through Layer Blend Modes

I love to use blend modes when working in Photoshop but I’m often not certain which one I want to use and I spend a lot of time manually cycling through the list. Fortunately Photoshop has a shortcut for this! Click on the Blend Mode list from the top of the Layers panel and select a blend mode. Now press Shift and + to cycle through the list (Shift and - cycles in reverse). Note: don’t select (highlight) a blend mode or the keyboard shortcuts won’t work; to deselect the highlighted blend mode just click anywhere on the Photoshop background.

Don’t forget to sign up for Cilenia's newsletter to get a exclusive subscriber freebie coupons. Reminder that the coupons are only good for Monday and Tuesday so don’t wait to redeem your!  You can sign up  for the newsletter at the top right of the Digital Designer Blog.

Manic Monday Photoshop & Photoshop Elements Tips: Quick Fill Commands

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Quick Fill Commands

April 4, 2011

Today’s tips will have you using the Quick Fill commands like a pro. Here are a few ways to access and use the Fill tool:

• The Fill tool keyboard shortcut is (G)
• To access the Fill menu use Shift + F5
• To bypass the menu use 
• alt + backspace to fill with the foreground color, 
• command + backspace to fill with the background color
• Using these shorts cuts you can quickly fill a selection or set the color for type and shape layers
• If you want to preserve the transparency of your selection you should first lock the transparency layer by pressing / (backslash) and then the fill command
• Or an even simpler option is to press alt + shift + backspace or ctrl + shift + backspace to fill the foreground or background with color and preserve the transparency

I hope you signed up for Cilenia's newsletter because this week's freebie is adorable! You can get coupons for freebies and see all the new products by signing up for the newsletter at the top right of the Digital Designer Blog. 

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Accessing Tools In A Group

March 14, 2011

Have you ever  been working in Photoshop using the Rectangular Marquee tool and wanted a quick way to switch to the Elliptical Marquee tool without having to go back to the tool bar. Well, I’ve got the solution! Just press and hold the SHIFT key while pressing the group’s keyboard shortcut (in this example M is the shortcut for the marquee tools) and you can access all the tools within that tool group. 

Manic Monday Photoshop Tip: Changing the Document Background Color

Monday, March 7, 2011

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Changing the Photoshop Document Background Color

Today’s tip is the direct result of me typing to fast and crazy and suddenly watching my Photoshop document background change from neutral gray to black. At first I thought  hmmm no big deal I’ll just click ctrl z to undo it but that had no affect except to undo my last move. Okay, I’m beginning to panic because I’m in the middle of a this project and I really hate that black background and I want to just go back to gray and get back to work so what now? A quick Google search and I find the answer and today’s tip: How to change your Photoshop document background—right click anywhere on the empty document background then choose from gray, black or custom color. Once you click the change is automatic. I’m so glad it was an easy fix. It is important to note that the reason Photoshop has the neutral gray as the default background is that it makes it easy to see the true colors in your document so take that into consideration if you decide to go with the neon green background. ;-)

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