Do I really need ACDsee?

[prodigal1978]

Hello all!
I finally downloaded a trial of ACDsee and started organizing. Good grief it takes forever!

In my hard drive I have my kits organized rather well. Each designer has her own folder, and some like Tina, have sub folders for backgrounds, word art, overlays, etc.... It's easy to identify all their items and the kits are named. The only thing is, if I want something like say a blue ribbon then I'd have to go through every single kit I have and that's a pain. I usually give up and use whatever is in the kit I have open and forget the blue ribbon. Hope that made sense.

So if my kits are well organized, do I really need ACDsee and what are the benefits of having it? What do you think? I hate to go through and label everything and then it end up being a waste of time.

Thanks!

[Maikku]

Well the benefit having ACDsee would be that you could then find ALL the blue ribbons and fast....obviously after you have painstakingly organized every single ribbon you have. :lol:Phew just saying that make me tired....:lol: I have many, many many ribbons!:lol: :eek: Where did all these ribbons come? and I :love1: all of them. Anyuway where was I of yes...I used the trial of ACDsee it just run out.... I think it is great all though I have not purchased it yet I'm really leaning towards getting it. I wonder if I could use it on two different computers?


Hello all!
I finally downloaded a trial of ACDsee and started organizing. Good grief it takes forever!

In my hard drive I have my kits organized rather well. Each designer has her own folder, and some like Tina, have sub folders for backgrounds, word art, overlays, etc.... It's easy to identify all their items and the kits are named. The only thing is, if I want something like say a blue ribbon then I'd have to go through every single kit I have and that's a pain. I usually give up and use whatever is in the kit I have open and forget the blue ribbon. Hope that made sense.

So if my kits are well organized, do I really need ACDsee and what are the benefits of having it? What do you think? I hate to go through and label everything and then it end up being a waste of time.

Thanks!

[Lauren]

I have ACDsee - Its very good - but to be honest I go back again and again to picasa because I dont HAVE to put in so much work with organising ( now if I did it would work even better) - but Picasa will sort by colour without you doing any organising - also it will find all my backgrounds if I just put in bg in the search box because all DSP backgrounds are named BG - It will bring up ribbons if the word ribbon is in the file name etc etc - its not as powerful as ACDsee for sure - and its one big issue is that id doesnt display pngs properly - it does show them but they are not displayed cleanly - ( This makes it impossible to view word art ) and it doesnt have many of the options that ACDsee has but it is free - - ACDsee is a great programme if you put in the effort with the adding of keywords and tags

[ArcaneFaery]

If someone knows if you can use it on more than one comp I would definitely get it. I have four computers that we scrap on now!! It would be gold to me as far as time saving looking for the right ribbon.

[~Heather W~]

and its one big issue is that id doesnt display pngs properly - it does show them but they are not displayed cleanly - ( This makes it impossible to view word art )

The only real organizing I do in Picasa is when I load it and new kits are added, I stick the preview images that come with kits, word art, etc. into an Album called (I'm so creative) "Previews." Then I only have to scroll through there looking for things if the search didn't find what I needed. Should I ever really feel the need, I'll just go back and tag the previews.

I tried ACDSee, but it was too much of a memory hog for my tastes, there was no way I was going to have it open while scrapping, which sort of defeated the purpose.

[webfrau]

I recently installed the trial version of ACDSee and uninstalled it fairly rapidly afterwards.

I'm fairly sure I read in the licencing that you could have it on your desktop and also on a laptop as well.

I installed it on our laptop that is set up for two users (I installed it under me) - we decided it wasn't a good "citizen". It changes all your icons when installed and makes itself the default viewer for anything. Sadly it also did the same to the other user of the machine and there didn't seem to be a quick work around for that.

I'm reasonably computer savvy and I didn't think it particularly intuitive to use, I wasn't prepared to spend several hours doing tutorials to find out if it was a program I wanted or not.

The images I keep on my laptop fluctuate wildly as my main storage is on the desktop. I catalogued the images on the laptop with ACDSee, later those images had changed and even though I recatalogued the folder ACDSee was still showing me thumbnails of files that were no longer there.

Even though I'm not a huge Picasa fan I think I'll stick with that for the time being - at least its the right price.

[shazzt]

I don't have acdsee on all the time but I have found it useful and it has been terrific for finding elements I didn't know that I had! I haven't found tagging a hassle (because I don't do much - I use the search quite a bit (and often update my categories after a doing a search)). I would love to see a more user friendly interface for ACDSee - it does take a bit of getting used to. I use still picasa for photos - I find it easier to scroll through looking for ones I want to use.

[scamptx]

I got ACDSee because my PSE organizer was too slow, and too cumbersome. I haven't organized to the nth degree on ACDSee yet, but did follow some of the batch organizing and have a lot done. Every kit I have is at least in by designer, name and store, and when I'm working in a kit, I add the rest of it into the organization files. I found a lot of support from the ladies at DigiScrapInfo, and as a beginning digi-scrapper, have found it really useful. (And they have a lot of scrap specific timesavers!)

[bensenc]

Hi everyone,
To answer your questions:

ACDSee can be installed on 3 computers.

We have pre-made categories (http://www.digiscrapinfo.com/dsiwiki/OrganizingStyles) that make getting started easier.

Easily categorize your elements in ACDSee Photo Manager using information in filenames (http://digiscrapinfo.com/wordpress/?p=36)

webfrau - it does have options to turn off the image acquiring aspect & allow Windows to be your default image viewer too. My sister is the one that assists with those details.

And thanks Scamptx! my sister & I have invested a lot of time in creating tutorials that maximize the software's use for a digital scrapper's needs & make getting started easy.

A couple of things that ACDSee does that others can't is it allows you to view white png's (stitching & overlays) & view & organize fonts. And most recently we posted instructions for how to use uninstalled fonts. This is very helpful for those fonts that you don't use often, but still need once in awhile.

Please let us know if you have questions! Here is information on ACDSee Photo (http://www.digiscrapinfo.com/dsiwiki/ACDSee_Photo_Manager)Manager if you're interested.

[CrystalMarie]

Okay, here's another question. When in search, any file I've previously looked at in the program (ie. brought up a thumbnail by looking at a folder in the folders section), comes up. Even a document. Even after I close the program and re open it. I dont want every reference to "blue" in any files on my computer to come up every time I search for something blue... Is the only way to get around this to not bring up thumbnails in other folders besides my digistuff folder?

[hejeva]

Okay, here's another question. When in search, any file I've previously looked at in the program (ie. brought up a thumbnail by looking at a folder in the folders section), comes up. Even a document. Even after I close the program and re open it. I dont want every reference to "blue" in any files on my computer to come up every time I search for something blue... Is the only way to get around this to not bring up thumbnails in other folders besides my digistuff folder?

You can go to Database | Excluded Folder Settings and add any folders that you don't want it to "see".
Just be careful to not exclude any folders that contain your digital scrapbook stuff since it will remove the organizing information when you exclude them.

[faerywings]

First, I suggest what Heidi just said.
Then if you want to further refine your search while using the Organize Pane, you can click on Match All and select only the categories you wish to look in- For ex. "Blue" + "Ribbon" will only bring up blue ribbons.
For some more info:
Organizational Challenge: Week Three (http://www.digiscrapinfo.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1094&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=)

[carlalee]

Hi CrystalMarie - I do just what Heidi suggested. On my laptop, I have a main folder named Digiscrap. Then all of my goodies are in folders below that main one. So I have my searches pointing to that folder only. When I first got my ACDSee PM I wasn't excluding any folders and up end up with a mess. After I learned to exclude stuff I got much better results. -c-

[emandlivsmom]

I have a question...say I need a frame. I search for it, and all 15 (hundred!) come flying up on my screen which is awesome!!! the problem for me is, I don't know how to quickly figure out what kit/designer it came from so credits become a pain in the neck b/c I go back and search all my folders, what a drag!!!!!

BTW.. My files are organized by designer and kit on my hard drive.

Tx!!!

[Tara]

When I put the cursor/mouse over the thumbnail (of, say, one of my 1500 ribbons!), the file info appears. It tells me where to find it and since I have things organized in folders by designer and then each folder has its own kit (as they come from the store), I can easily tell who made it and what kit it is from. I've also been labeling all kits elements with the kit name and designer as I catalogue my kits. But I usually just look at the file path.

[emandlivsmom]

Thank you! I am going to go try that now...sounds like you made things a lot easier for me!! (O:

[emandlivsmom]

It's not appearing...only a larger pict of the item appears. When you say thumbnail, you are referring to the pict of the frame or whatever it is I am looking at?

[Scrapping4Him]

First off, I love my ACDSee - can't imagine life without it now!

When I find an element I want to use - to get to the kit/designer info I right click and choose "go to file" (6th one down from top) and it pops me over to the kit folder.

ETA: something else I do is I put the kit's "keyword" into the folder name so I can quickly get the kit name, designer name and keyword for crediting.

[emandlivsmom]

That worked! I see the designer and kit when I do that! Thanks so much!!!!!!

[faerywings]

Jennifer- you can also change what is included on the thumbnails - I have the author and kit name showing on mine.

Customizing your thumbnails in ACDSee Photo Manager 9 (http://digiscrapinfo.com/wordpress/2007/01/29/customizing-your-thumbnails-in-acdsee-photo-manager-9/)

[kaylaugh]

Jennifer- you can also change what is included on the thumbnails - I have the author and kit name showing on mine.

Customizing your thumbnails in ACDSee Photo Manager 9 (http://digiscrapinfo.com/wordpress/2007/01/29/customizing-your-thumbnails-in-acdsee-photo-manager-9/)

Thanks for finding that tut...I also wanted to mention my speed tagging system (http://digiscrapinfo.com/wordpress/2008/01/22/speed-tagging-with-kristi/). You can just use the basic techniques for assigning designer to the author field and kit name to caption or keyword...which ever works for you. Then when you customize your thumbnails, the info you choose to display makes it easy to assign credits. You can even customize the information (http://www.digiscrapinfo.com/phpmyfaq/content/8/23/en/designer-credits-how-do-i-use-acdsee-to-keep-track-of-images-used-in-a-layout-so-i-can-properly-credit-the-designer.html?highlight=generate) when you generate a file listing (scroll down the the section "How to customize your file listing to get credits easily" near the bottom of the page.) When you are working on a page using the image basket it's easy to select everything in the basket (CTRL-A) the use Database|Export|Generate File Listing (CRTL-G) and there you go. HTH!

Kristi