Organizing Digital Supplies on a Mac?

[Geralyn]

I am sure this has been covered in the forums over and over, but can't seem to find a thread. I have a mac and have tried to find an easy way to organize my tons and tons of supplies. At one point digital scraproom came out with a beta tested mac version. but now I can't find anything for organizing it, even the links i had for digital scraproom are no longer working. Is Adsee an option? and is the only version for mac the one that's $169?
I would love to hear what anyone has tried and what has worked versus what has not worked.
Thanks!

[HeatherPrins]

I have always used Bridge and have had no issues with it. I love it.

[Geralyn]

I like bridge, but i would really like to have something like PSE has where they have an organizer view where you can tag items and then if i'm looking for red paper or a stitching png file or brush, i can look at all those items specifically. You know?

[TereseC]

I tag everything in Bridge using keywords. I have categories for brushes, papers, embellishments, color etc and then sub-categories within those. I can search for blue patterned paper or red buttons using the edit - find function in Bridge. You can "Reveal in Finder" by right clicking on any item. Hope this helps.

[cstaff]

I've heard criticism of Bridge but I have had no problems and everything is tagged and working well. Know nothing of ACDSEE and maybe that's best

[maureenreynolds]

Geralyn, there are quite a few of us Mac users here and ACDSee has just become available for Mac.

Here are some threads to let you read what's been said here acdsee threads.

Bridge always crashed on my so I went to iPhoto for a couple of years but ran into not being able to see all my keywords at the same time and thus search via keyword. I won my copy of ACDSee here and waiting til the Mac version became available this spring. I am now bit by bit learning how to use it, tho it is very much like iPhoto in a lot of ways.

I keep my photos in iPhoto, with a yearly library. That's a process I started this year and I really like the ease of finding this year's photos that way. hth!

eta: btw, it always helps to know what platform you are on (you said Mac) and what software you are using.

[HeatherPrins]

i tag everything in Bridge and love that system. I have a number of keywords so I can see 'red' items or tags, or buttons, whatever you like. I am on a Mac, OSX, I use PS CS5 never had an issue.

[jennaz]

Never used Bridge..not even sure where it is...I finally set mine up in folders on my hd like Cassie did. It's free! Here is the link she provided...

http://www.designerdigitals.com/digi...stest-way.html

[Debi]

I just switched to a Mac laptop and I am happy with the organizer that comes with PSE9. I used it on my pc, and now am using it on my Mac. I haven't used Bridge so I can't speak to its usefulness, but the PSE organizer tags photos and supplies easily and allows me to quickly find my photos and supplies for scrapping and printing.

As far as organizing my photos and supplies on the hard drive, for photos I use a folder for each year, then subfolders for events or months, and similar for digital supplies. But I do my work out of PSE9, so I use the tags to find what I need.

[hendon]

Yes apparently pse9 has organiser

[iUma]

The newest version of Bridge in PS CS5 is supposed to be more robust that earlier versions. Lots of people had trouble with Bridge in it's first renditions. Cassie was one. She doesn't tolerate losing scads of work very well. She worked out a method to use the Finder which is referenced above.

I use the new ACDSee for Mac and love it. I'm biased though since I was on the beta team for it's development. And they only have the Pro version $$ at the moment.

Any tagging system takes a huge front end commitment to sort everything but it's worth it to be able to play with your products easily.

[Myra]

I've tried different things, Picassa, the organizer that comes with Elements, Bridge (a little). In the end, I've gone with my own scaled down version of Cassie's method. I would love to try ACDSee, but it's pretty spendy, and I don't want to lose any RAM while I'm working. That works pretty well for me.

[maureenreynolds]

Boy, how true this is Patricia!
" Any tagging system takes a huge front end commitment to sort everything but it's worth it to be able to play with your products easily. "

[AllynD]

I am a visual person, so I use iPhoto for all my scrapbooking supplies. I don't want to spend the time to tag a dang thing ever. I spend too much time reading in my work already and use scrapbooking as a relief from all the words in my life.

I just want to flip through the tiny previews in iPhoto to find what I want. I use smart albums for .png (assorted elements) and .jpg (mostly previews and papers) and .psd (layered template) files, or for words like "Christmas" or "red" or "green" or "alpha" or "frame" or "krafty" or "ledger" or "stitch" or "staple" or "kit" or a few others.

Surprisingly effective with a minimal use of words. I'm too wordy anyway.

I wrote an explanation of how I use iPhoto a long time ago that maybe you can find somewhere on the board here.

By the way, I only use iPhoto for my supplies now. I used to use separate libraries for supplies and photos, but now I use LR for all my photos (and I use Scott Kelby's method for organizing those in LR).

[maureenreynolds]

Lynn, your way with iPhoto worked for me for a good bit of time, til I found I could not find the small bits that were associated with templates or in the depths of kits. I don't know that I would have paid the $$ for ACDSee but since 'the price was right', I'm very happy with it.

I don't mind tagging very much at all. The Virgo side of me likes organizing as much as creating I find. I know we're all not like that!

[jackieclayton]

i'm still in the process of tagging everything, but i'm using Lightroom... i got the student version for $89 and I'm using Kayla's tutorials... it's taking a LONG time but i'm sure it will pay off...

Digital Scrapbooking 101: 2011 Spring Lightroom Class

[Amy L]

I think I'm the only one here who uses Picasa. I started when the folder system became to cumbersome for me and ACDSee wasn't available for Mac. I tag my supplles and it works fine. I'm sure it has its drawbacks compared to ACDSee, but it's free and now I can't imagine starting over.

[AllynD]

Hi, Maureen,

Now that I am finished with school and I hope I will have more time for playing with scrapping, maybe I will try out some different schemes. But, still, I just don't want to tag, especially since the designers do a pretty good job of naming their supplies. I have found the smart albums or searches can find what I need. I have accumulated a shocking number of digital supplies over the past few years, and still this works. Sometimes I just look over all the kit previews to remember what's in the different kits.

I really learned a lot from both Cassie Jones' organizing and from Scott Kelby's method of organizing photos for LR. It really all starts with keeping things in simple and well organized folders.

The important thing in organizing anything is to keep it simple. I heard somewhere: keep it simple and you will keep it up.