Organization

[Craftmomma]

Another question for all the experts out there: How do you organize your papers and kits and everything. I find myself going through kit after kit looking for the particular paper i want, etc. and taking way too much time. I wonder if it would be better to organize by colors, element type, things like that. But then, how do I keep track of who's work it is if I want to credit them in a post or something like that. And how do you keep track of what you've used so that you can easily credit someone if needed? I'm getting so many supplies that its hard to keep track! I need a good method for organizing it all and then staying on top of it.

[earlofoxford]

I would be lost without ACDSee. I organize my supplies by type: alphas, buttons, brushes, etc. Within my paper folder, I also organize by color. It still takes a while sometimes to go through my stash looking for something, but I always find cool things I forgot I had.

[vfleslie]

Yes, ACDSee! I have lots of tagging done but if you want to get a quick start just leave everything in kits and tag the kit preview. (The second step you should do after tagging is to right click the file and select to embed metatadata. Then, as I understand it, ACDSee can recreate your database no matter what. Hope I never have to find out!) Then you can look at all the previews on one screen, select the one you want and right click. Select-->go to file and it takes you to the folder where all your digital files are for that kit. You can get as detailed as you want with ACDSee but it can get overwhelming especially if you already own a lot of digital scrapbooking supplies and tagging the kit preview is better than nothing. Then you can tag inside the kit as you go along (and embed metadata!)

Leslie

ETA: I leave pretty much everything in kits by designer/company. That would make giving credit easier. I just set up a separate folder for each designer/company inside my scrapbook supplies main folder

[anxela]

ACDSee, waiting for the Mac edition. I'm kind of wondering how it will be, though. The beta keeps freezing on me.

[lizj]

What do MAC users use to organize supplies? I've heard some use iPhoto, but that seems like it would bog it down. Does it? How about Bridge?

[AllynD]

I use iPhoto and it still works well for me-- I wrote a long explanation a long time ago that you can find.

[laura grimes]

I use Bridge, and I tend to separate items into categories; ribbon, stickers, paper, brushes, etc.

[Amy L]

I use Picasa to organize on my Mac...it's free and works well for me.

[justmp]

This thread's inspiring me to make organizing my supplies a priority in the new year. I keep all my kits together, etc., which is great when I'm just scrapping from one kit, but it's not very useful for me when I want to grab something out of it when I'm using something else.

[Lisa Pate]

I have tried ACDSee and a folder system. I've gone back to my folder system it works best for me. I have folders broken down into alphas, embellishments, papers, brushes and kits. Then I copy the thumbnail into the appropriate folder for easy browsing.

[Joey_M]

I use PSE Organizer. I can't scrap without it! I tag all my items according to color, designers, element type or paper. I even tag them with holidays! PSE won't tag certain files like brushes and psd files so I import the preview that comes with the kit and tag the preview file.

On a regular basis I do an Edit- Select All and then File - Write Keywords Tags & Properties Info to Photo. This embeds my tags to my photos (I don't know if it embeds to png files though). Then I do a backup of the organizer. This helps to ensure that all my hard work of tagging doesn't get lost!

[linnefaulk]

Organizing isn't too bad with bridge. But how do you deal with the amount of brushes in photoshop? There are so many that it slows things down when I want to look through them. Do you only load what you need?

[maureenreynolds]

After several crashes with PSE4, when that was the most up to date Mac version, I learned to only add the brushes I planned to use. I'm now up to PSE 8/9 and still follow this procedure.

[sarahdg]

I use the PSE organizer to tag all my supplies. It took me a long time to decide what categories I was going to create, but what I came up with seems to work pretty well for me. I have keywords for color (subcategories like red, green, blue, etc.), embellishments (subcat. like ribbons, fasteners, flowers, foliage, stars, etc.), kits (subcat. with kit names), pattern/material (subcat. like check, dot, felt, fuzzy, stripe, metal, etc.), paper (subcat. with paper pack names, if applicable), and theme (subcat. like Christmas, dog, fall, ocean/beach, etc.).

FYI, the PSE organizer will not write keyword/properties to png files...big bummer! Only jpgs, as far as I know. You can still tag them, just not save the info to the file. This becomes a problem if you want to back up your files WITH the tags attached.

[dugarner]

Originally Posted by Joey_M

I use PSE Organizer. I can't scrap without it! I tag all my items according to color, designers, element type or paper. I even tag them with holidays! PSE won't tag certain files like brushes and psd files so I import the preview that comes with the kit and tag the preview file.

On a regular basis I do an Edit- Select All and then File - Write Keywords Tags & Properties Info to Photo. This embeds my tags to my photos (I don't know if it embeds to png files though). Then I do a backup of the organizer. This helps to ensure that all my hard work of tagging doesn't get lost!

It doesn't write to PNGs, that's the only drawback to a tagging system like PSE. But I didn't know the embedding procedure, I'm off to do that now! But I tag PSD files without any trouble. I tag all my PSD files---do you have trouble with those?

[Faefester]

I use acdcee 12 for all my digi supplies. I've never learned how to tag with this software though and I've been told that this version the tagging system changed. Figures, right? Anyway, I have set up folders with Paper Solid, Paper Patterned, Brushes, Templates, Overlays, Clipping Masks, Embellishments,etc and merely browse through them when I want something. It's better than having one file for everything, right?

[sarahorton]

I use ACDSee as well. It makes it so much easier to find what I'm looking for. I find that I use more of the kits I have because I can actually see and locate them with ACDSee