Cherryfield.net
Customizing the Main ACDSee Toolbar
- When you first start ACDSee you get the ACDSee Browser which, depending on how you have arranged your windows, might look something like:
- If you choose View on the menu bar and then under Toolbars turn off (uncheck) the Context Sensitive Toolbar and turn on the Main Toolbar, you'll get something like this:
- Some of the reasons I don't like the Context Sensitive Toolbar: the rotate buttons change dates on the files (see Rotate Options), and even though Editors like Photoshop Elements 2 allow you to select multiple images in ACDSee and edit them all at once, the edit option is missing from the Context Sensitive Toolbar if you select multiple images (I guess because the ACDSee Editor gets unhappy when you do this).
- Depending on your screen resolution, you may not see all the Icons on the Main Toolbar, but what's nice is that you can remove Icons you don't use and adds ones you find useful.
- Compare the bottoms of the two pictures above and you can see what happens when you also turn off (second sample screen) the Status Toolbar. Because I have a big monitor and use a high resolution screen setting, I tend to leave the Status Bar on, but if you have a smaller screen you might want to consider turning it off.
- Icons on the Main Toolbar which I tend to turn off are: InTouch, myACD, and Help. Ones I add are Rotate, Resize, and Batch Rename. Once you're confortable with the Icons you can also turn off the Text Labels under the Icons ... then many more Icons will fit, even on a small screen. (Even if you turn the Text Labels off, if you hold you cursor over and Icon you don't remember and don't move, the Text Label will appear.) Here's the result of making those changes on a fairly small screen:
- To Customize the Main Toolbar, first turn it on (under View/Toolbars) and then right click on the Toolbar and choose Customize. From the Window that pops up, drag Icons you want onto the Toolbar (you'll find the Icons under the Commands tab, listed by category). While in this customize mode you can also grab Icons that are already on the Toolbar and drag them off ... this removes them from the toolbar. In the Window that pops up, under the Toolbars tab you'll see a check box which allows you to turn off or on the Text Labels for the selected Toolbar.
- Also notice how I moved the Edit Icon over to the far left, in the same position it is in the ACDSee Viewer.
- Another nice feature of ACDSee is that you can configure the Browser to work with multiple Photo Editors. If you click on the little pull-down arrow to the right of the Edit Icon (the Artist's Palette), and choose Configure you'll get a Window like:
- You can add any Photo Editors you have installed on you system to the list and also specify which one is the default (the one used if you just click on the Edit (Palette) Icon. The default is indicated in bold type. Put checks next to editors which can deal with multiple images. (The ACDSee Photo Editor 3.1 comes with the ACDSee Power Pack ... personally I like Photoshop Elements better and in the example above it is my default.) For simple editing (cropping, color correction, etc.) I think the Editor which some with the Standard ACDSee should be your first choice, and I often make it my default. If you want to Edit a particular image with an Editor other than your default, after selecting the image(s) just use the pull-down arrow and choose the Editor you want to use at the moment.
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