How do you add ovals and circles?

[Mamiya2Nikon]

I just attempted (after reading ACDSee's instructions) to add an oval surrounding an area of an image that I want the viewer to examine. I was unable to get it to work. I began by opening the Edit module. Then, I attempted to follow the instructions by going to the Toolbar, selecting Create and then selecting Oval Tool from the drop down menu. I couldn't even get to "first base" because I could not find "Create" in the Toolbar.

How do I hand draw (or add ) an oval and or circle to surround an area of a picture that I want to draw the viewer's attention to?
Thanks.
Embarrassed from California

[Greyfox]

How do I hand draw (or add ) an oval and or circle to surround an area of a picture that I want to draw the viewer's attention to?

The exact steps depends a bit on what you want the end result to be, but three below were done with Edit's Ellipse tool (Ctrl + Shift + E).
When you select that tool, the colors used will be those set in the main tool bar. The foreground color will be the outer line color, and the background color the fill color.

When the tool is selected, in the context tool bar you need to set for whether you want a "filled" Ellipse as used for the examples 1 and 2 in the screen shots below, or just the line, as used for screen shot 3. Tick or untick the "Fill" box as appropriate. You can also set the line thickness. If you want a filled ellipse with no outer line, then set the foreground and background colors the same.

When drawing the ellipse, hold down the shift key if you want to constrain it to a circle.


If you draw the ellipse on its own layer then you can select the move tool to fine position it.
You can lock the Aspect ratio in the move tools context menu whilst you resize the ellipse, and you can set the layer Opacity to taste
One thing to note, is that once the ellipse has been drawn, you cannot change the line thickness.

As you can see, screen shot 1 and 2 are similar. 2 has a filled ellipse over the pelican. Screen shot 1 has the fill outside of the ellipse.
You can use a mask to do this, but for screen shot 1, I simply placed a filled ellipse (where the fill and line color was the same) over the pelican, used the magic to select the transparent area outside of the ellipse and filled it with the highlight color, then used the wand to select the ellipse fill and the Select\Delete Selected pixels to make the ellipse transparent.

[Mamiya2Nikon]

Thank you Greyfox ! It seems like you know ACDSee inside-out. Scren shot 3 with the circle surrounding the pelican is what I had in mnd. Is there a way with ACDSee Ultimate to make that into an oval shape?

[AliGW]

Drag size with SHIFT to keep it circular; WITHOUT SHIFT to make it oval.

[Greyfox]

...Screen shot 3 with the circle surrounding the pelican is what I had in mind. Is there a way with ACDSee Ultimate to make that into an oval shape?

When you have created the circle/ellipse shape with the Ellipse tool, select it with the Move Tool. If you want to change the aspect ratio (for instance change it from a circle to an oval) then untick the "Lock Aspect Ratio" box in the move tool context tool bar and then as AliGW has said, "Drag size with SHIFT to keep it circular; WITHOUT SHIFT to make it oval".

[Mamiya2Nikon]

Thank you AliGW and Greyfox !