Organizing Digital Supplies - SUCCESS!

[tracydigigirl]

In all their keyword glory...but remember that these are according to the way that I think and work. Yours will most likely be quite different. This is also a fluid process. Writing the keywords to the file means that I can tweak the structure and words as I learn more about what makes sense to me. For example, although 'cupcake' looks like it would make more sense under the 'food' category, for this season of my kids' life, it makes more sense under 'kids.' I can move it later according to needs or wants.

Remember that each '>' should be replaced with a tab before importing.

Army Military
Avatar
Card Making
Desktop Art
Elements
>Alpha
>> Chipboard
> Borders
>> Edge
> Building Sets
> Doodles
> Fasteners
> Floral Flourishes
> Frames
>> Corners
>> Frame Clusters
> Journaling
>> Dates
>>> Calendar
> Mats
>> Tags Labels
> Magazine
> Metals
> Overlays
> Paper
>> Black
>> White
> Ribbons
>> Photo Wraps
> Stitching
> Wire Beads
> WordArt
>> Flair
Inspiration Scraplift
Miscellaneous
Photo Embellishers/Tools
Quick Pages
> Quick Albums
Templates
> Project 365
> Travel Mug
> Year In Review
Themes
> Animals
>> Zoo
> Beach
> Birthday
> Food
>> Chocolate
> Holiday
>> Christmas
>> Easter
>> Fourth of July
>> Halloween
>> New Years
>> Other
>> Thanksgiving
>> Valentines
> Kids
>> About Me
>> Baby
>> Boys
>> Cupcake
>> Daddy
>> Disney
>>> Pooh
>>> Princesses
>> Games
>> Girls
>> Mommy
>> School
> Music
> Seasons
>> Fall
>> Spring
>> Summer
>> Winter
> Travel
Tools
> Actions
> Brushes
> Color
> Fonts
> Lightroom Presets
> Mask
> Patterns
> Shapes
> Shutterfly
> Storyboards
> Styles
> Textures
> Tutorials
Web Pages
Year In Review
Other Keywords

[tysam]

I am in the process of organizing all my digital scrapbooking items. I have been entering the title/date downloaded/and designer number into the get info field of each item (time consuming, although I don't have toooo much stuff yet..)

I never thought of using iphoto for this although I do have several different iphoto libraries that I use already (have iphoto library manager and have used for years) but how do you "tag" photos? is it the same I have been doing in get info, or is it using keywords in iphoto... I would rather do all of this once and not have to do it all over again, so any tips would be appreciated...

I never knew about the option for not importing the photos when you add them to iphoto.. and it still lets you drag them to your project? If I change the preferences for that one iphoto library, will it change it for all the other libraries? (which i dont want to do)

thanks for all your advice! I just joined in december and have spent hours reading all these great forums...!

[tracydigigirl]

Tysam, I'm sorry but I'm no help with iPhoto. I've used it so little that I would be more harm than good! I googled and learned, though, that iPhoto '08 has new tagging capabilities. Read more here.

Originally Posted by tysam

I have been entering the title/date downloaded/and designer number into the get info field of each item

I can't duplicate what you're describing here so I can't help here, either.

Tagging is writing keywords to the image file's metadata. This thread is speaking directly to Bridge CS3's ability to do this. If you create a new thread with some descriptive words in the title, you'll likely get lots of input form others more experienced with iPhoto.

Good luck!

[tracydigigirl]

Well, ladies, I've finished tagging all of my supplies and I'm so excited to get going with my new organized system.

Here a few observations as I finished and began using the system:
1 - When I was done, I was surprised to find that almost 5,000 of my image files were alpha files. To keep from having to scroll through all of them when I'm looking for a cool alpha, I created another keyword called 'AlphaPreview' and tagged the preview files. This cut that search number down dramatically and is completely sufficient for the purpose.

2 - I went back and changed each of the two word+ keyword tags to eliminate spaces and characters. 'Tags Labels' became 'TagsLabels' There is no particular reason for this rather than instinct telling me that it could matter later down the road.

This new system makes changes so simple that it was loads of fun. All I had to do was create a new keyword (TagsLabels) and do the search using the old keyword. Then with all files selected, I clicked one keyword and un-clicked the other. When all files had been written to, I simply deleted the now un-used keyword. Simple!

3 - My 'Miscellaneous' tag represented alot of files, too. I was surprised to learn how many stars and arrows I had so I created two subcategories for those two keywords and cut down the 'misc' group dramatically.

4 - I discovered that if you right-click a keyword from the keyword panel, you'll see 'Find' in the drop-down list. Clicking this will bring up the Find dialog with that keyword prefilled in the search fields. Click Find and off you go. (Be certain to verify the search folder first!)

5 - Speaking to the 'wonkiness' of Bridge mentioned earlier in this thread, I only ran into two instances of this behavior and both times it was due to a defective file. After opening the folder, when the thumbnail tried to load, Bridge would shut down. I identified the corrupted file and either fixed or removed it and the problem ceased. I've tagged over 20,000 files and this only happened with two files.

Here's my favorite part...when I was completely done, I decided to move all of my scrapbooking stuff to my portable hard drive to speed up my laptop. All I had to do was drag-and-drop in Finder, wait an hour for 35Gb to copy (!), and Voila! All files, along with keywords were moved. No sweat!

I really expect that this system will evolve and perfect over time as my needs and preferences change. I love that this system is so perfectly suited to these anticipated changes.

Unless there are questions, this is my last anticipated update. I sincerely hope that this has helped some of you. It's been great fun for me!

[tysam]

I will try to start a new topic about iphoto if I can

(to explain my previous: highlight a folder then do file/get info.. then under spotlight comments you can type what ever you want.... when you view your folders (if you have show comments marked in view mode) you can see all the comments, or you can check them in get info .. plus they are searchable..)

hope I didnt confuse you more..

[AllynD]

Tysam
Life is too short to tag individual items. I do some tagging-- usually in bunches. CMD+K brings up your tag menu in iPhoto. You can select large numbers of items and just click on the tag, and BAM!, they are all tagged.

Keep it simple, and you will use it and enjoy scrapping.

[LandMom]

[QUOTE=tracydigigirl;127459]Well, ladies, I've finished tagging all of my supplies and I'm so excited to get going with my new organized system.

Thank you so much for all your explanations! I used your keyword system in Word, and tweaked it to make sense to me. I did the tabbing -- but when I import it into Bridge, it doesn't come in right. Things are all mixed up.

Any idea why or what I might have done wrong?

Thanks,

Wendy

[hguenthe]

I started using Bridge to organize my supplies when I got CS3 and yes, it can have a few lil problems at times but found that I didn't have many at all. It seemed pretty stable and worked nicely.

I recently upgraded to Bridge CS4 and it is way more stable and much faster. Its "little" improvements are amazing. However, I did have problems with keywords showing up in CS4. I am not sure if I needed to do something differently or if having Bridge CS3 still installed was causing problems. However, it only took me a few hours to re-keyword everything as it had become second nature to me and all the keyword structure was already set up. I couldn't find any help with anyone having this problem so guessing it is likely just a problem I had as if more people had it, there probably would be something about it somewhere on the web and I found nada, nothing.

Some improvements to it you might be interested in and I viewed as amazing reasons to upgrade to CS4 (in addition to the new amazing things added to Photoshop CS4):

1) instead of needing to use the "find", you can set up collections based on the find criteria. You can create your own collections or what I did was create smart collections which will keep pulling in any new additions. So based on my keywords, I have collections for paper, ribbons, etc. No more clicking the find & entering what I want to search for. Just have to click the already created collection and it pulls everything up. Makes it quick to pop from looking at papers to looking at ribbons to back to looking at papers.

2) similiar items that you don't want to necessarily see every individual one when you search through, you can "stack" and then mouse scroll through the stack or collapse/uncollapse the stack anytime to see all the items. I did this with my alphas.

Still learning all the new things but from the sounds of it, Bridge CS3 was the baby version and Bridge CS4 has reached adult stage in terms of development behind it. It is a full program on its own, no longer a kinda bridge between.

Still have the problem of don't go too fast or you will get the error that it can't tag that file. It can, you just have to give it a brief moment to write before you try to go to another folder. It shows the progress at the bottom so you know you can click back out and into another folder.

If you decide to upgrade, I am sure you will not be disappointed. If you love Bridge CS3, you will just fall in complete love with Bridge CS4.

[iUma]

Can you upgrade Bridge only or do you have to get the whole PS upgrade to get it?

[hguenthe]

I don't believe you can get Bridge upgrade as a standalone but might try giving Adobe a call and see if it is possible.