Registration for Getting Organized with ACDSee Photo Manager class now open
Registration is now open. For more information and to register, visit: Organization with ACDSee at Jessica Sprague’s site.
Subscribe to the comments for this postACDSee Photo Manager class
The next class for ACDSee Photo Manager is coming up. Class runs from September 8-21.
The class is modified slightly so that there are videos, pdf guide, daily emails with tips, and a private forum. Their are no class live sessions but I will be available at different times during the week live to help answer a question if you have one. Kind of like office hours! In addition, I have a list of questions that are most frequently asked from previous live session classes and I will make sure that I address those in some format (more video, audio, tips/tricks, etc.)
For more information visit and how to register visit:
Registration starts August 25
Shutterfly’s current sales!
Shutterfly’s current sales:
- Shutterfly: 15% Off Orders of $25+. Use coupon code: AF63-AG08. (Expires 9-9-08)
- New member’s offer: Get 50 free 4×6 prints and an 11×14 Collage Poster when you join Shutterfly.
- Shutterfly - $.15 4×6 print sale. Valid 8-21-08 to 09-08-08.
go try them out!
After you try them out, come here and rate them!
Sale on ACDSee Photo Editor 2008
15% off ACDSee Photo Editor 2008 with coupon code 08PE15.
ACDSee Photo Editor 2008 is ACDSee’s digital photo editing software that can easily do photo layouts. It features templates by Andrea Gold, Maggie Lamarre and Vicki Stegall.
Text on a path is easy to do…
Here’s my latest layout using ACDSee Photo Editor 2008:
Credits:
- Template: Janet Phillips from her not-so-fat-pack 2
- Paper & Elements by Jessica Bolton from Pastiche kit
And another layout using Chase-ing Ryan from Studio Flergs, and fonts used: DJB Chalk it up, Dirty Bakers Dozen, Desdemona
Getting your digital scrapbooking prints printed online into prints and photobooks resource available!
I have created a resource for you to easily find the companies that print certain types of books or prints. Trying to find those companies that print those special scrapbooking sizes prints or finding the right sized book can take time. I have created a resource that allows you to quickly find the size you are looking for and then see what companies print them.
Here’s a search for 12 x 12 photo books:
And a search for 12 x 12 prints returns 17 companies that print 12 x 12.
You can find all Photo Book Makers
and I still have a few more to add!
Or all companies that print scrapbook specific sizes:
and more…
In addition, you can review each photo book company and print company:
All this information can be found under Printing Resources:
at DigiScrapinfo.
Feel free to go review any companies that you have used! Enjoy!
Renaming an External Hard Drive & Changing a Drive Letter
I apologize in advance for an extremely quiet blog. Family comes first and I have dedicated my time to my family and extended family in the last few weeks.
I know I run with multiple External Hard Drive’s (EHDs) and I hate the names that get assigned to them (Mybook, simpletech, etc) I really like to change the name of the drive so I can easily recognize what is on the drive. It’s really simple to do:
How to rename a drive
On Vista:
- Open Computer by clicking the Start button
, and then clicking Computer.
- Right-click the drive or device you want to rename, and then click Rename.
If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
- Type a new name, and then press ENTER.
On XP:
- Open My Computer by clicking the Start Button and then clicking My Computer
- Right-click the drive or device you want to rename, and then click Rename.
- Type a new name, and then press ENTER.
Here’s my drives with how I renamed them:
Renaming a drive shouldn’t affect any software or your computer.
How to change a drive letter
In addition, I sometimes change my drive letter. When new devices come online, they usually get assigned the first available letter. I like to change my EHD’s to have a letter later in the alphabet so they always have a consistent letter. (If they get assigned a letter early in the alphabet, like E:, and something else comes online, then they make get assignment like F:)
Here are the instructions on how to change a drive letter from Microsoft.
- How to change drive letter assignments in Windows XP
- On Vista: Change, add, or remove a drive letter and in step 4, following the instructions for changing a drive letter.
From my screenshot above, you can see I have change my drive letters to S: & U:
Changing a drive letter, can affect software and your computer, but most software will update automatically. I recommend closing all software though before you do the change. The one thing that won’t be updates is any paths referring to the old drive letter will be broken. Usually there are not too many of these and its a quick change. In the case of ACDSee software, it will not affect your organizing since ACDSee recognizes your drives by the their serial/volume number. The few exceptions are:
- If you moved your ACDSee database to the EHD you specified a path and this path needs to be updated.
- If you sync, your paths need to be updated
- If you set your start folder to a path, this needs to be updated.
DigiScrapInfo Makeover
Well, I have been working on this on the site for a few months. Hopefully you will find DigiScrapInfo a more streamlined website and it is easier to find information. As you move around, old links might take you to a general area where you need to look for what you were looking for, but hopefully I got you close. As with all things on the internet, some links might take you to old or broken links. I sincerely apologize if this happens. If you can’t find what you are looking for, please post in our forum and someone can you direct you to the new location.
Here’s some screenshots of the new DigiScrapInfo:
Home Page:
Printing Resources
Different types of Photo Books offered by companies:
Companies that print 12 x 12:
ACDSee Resources
and look for the Play buttons to play online videos: 
ACDSee Photo Editor Tutorials
Along with a new blog & forum look…
Hope you enjoy it!
Heidi
Should you keep zipped files of digital kits?
I have often been asked this question and there is always some discussion on this topic.
Let’s start with some background information:
A zipped file is a file containing one or more files that are compressed into one file. This allows for easier distribution of many files and making files smaller to share. The main reason why digital scrapbooking kits comes in a zip file is because it has so many files. Since digital kits mostly contain image files and these files are already compressed due to the nature of an image file, compressing the image files into a zip doesn’t save any space. So basically a zip file of images is almost equal in size to the unzipped images. There are also other kinds of compressed file archives besides zip, like rar and others. The difference is mainly the tool and the algorithm used to compressed. All this information applies to rar files as well.
So what should you save?
Well, here is my process and the reasoning behind it:
- Once I unzip a file, I don’t immediately delete the zip file but I move it into a folder called let’s say: “Zipped Done”. The reason why is when I go to organize the kit, if I see something is not quite right or strange, I can go back to the zipped and unzip the file again if necessary.
- I also have a process that all my digital kits get backed up automatically. Once I know the unzipped digital kit is backed up and I have looked at the digital kit to make sure it looks alright, then I know I can delete the zip file. But I don’t go delete it immediately cause that would be an extra step, but I wait for a while and do one big deletion (see next step.)
- Periodically, I go into the “Zipped Done” and delete anything older than a week or two old. Because I know that everything I am deleting has gone through the above steps. My periodic time is about every 6 months. How often you do this is going to be based on a few factors: the amount of hard drive space you have available and how much you download.
So obviously, by now you realized that I don’t save the zips permanently. I know many people burn their zip files to CD/DVD to preserve them. I wouldn’t recommend doing this for 3 reasons:
- You aren’t saving much space. (a digital scrapbook kit zip file is close to the same size as unzipped images in it)
- If you have to go to your backups, you have to unzip all those again. If it was a large collection this is hours of computer processing time. Restoring your collection from already unzipped images is much quicker.
- And lastly it is due the nature of a zip. If a zip gets corrupted, you can’t access any images in that zip file. Here’s an example: Let’s say you put all your zips on a DVD and on a second DVD you put all the unzipped images. And both of these DVD’s are scratched in the exact same way. On the zipped DVD, the scratch corrupts one zip file and you would be unable to unzip this file and thus unable to access any images in that zip file. On the unzipped DVD, the scratch corrupts 1 or more images and you would lose those images but probably not all the images in the digital kit.
Hope this helps you in coming up with a way to manager all your images and zips!
Backing up ACDSee Photo Manager, a tip
It seems lately that I have worked with a few people that they had backed up their ACDSee and still had issues. So today I was going to suggest what options you should back up with.
First, backing up ACDSee is really backing up all the organizing information that you have done. This information is not stored with the files so that is why you need to do this.
How Often?
- I recommend doing it weekly.
How?
- Database | Backup Database…
This starts a wizard that give you options. So what options?
- I suggest always choosing Create a new backup
- The databases themselves aren’t that big. And if something gets corrupted, you can go back to previous ones. If you update, you don’t have that option.
- On the second page, I suggest Include Thumbnails
- Any of the top 3 is fine, but if you have space, I suggest including the thumbnails. If you don’t include them and you restore the database, then ACDSee has to rebuild them all. It doesn’t take too long if you don’t want to include the thumbnails.
- Also on the second page, Backup files of types. I suggest NOT checking this box. This will back up your images. Since your digital scrapbook collection is so large I don’t think this is a good way to backup your images. I suggest coming up with your own backup plan.
- As to where to backup? I suggest someplace other than your hard drive. (Unless you run with ACDSee database on your EHD, than back up to your hard drive.) Periodically burn that backup to CD/DVD too.
Free Photoshop resources
Someone in my network shared this link for free photoshop resources.
Brushes, Patterns, Custom Shapes, Styles & Gradients & tutorials - all FREE!
Enjoy 
