How do you organize digi stuff?

[MaggieMae]

Ever since I got SBM I've become a digital addict! Now I have files galore. I've been saving them in separate kit files if they are large enough. Otherwise, I have been just saving them in digital files as I download them.

Do any of you have a system that you think works well? I've read that you should make files for paper, brads, ribbons, etc. What do you guys think? I kind of hate to break the kits up, but now I am having trouble remembering what's in what!

Would love to have suggestions!

[poppabob]

I'm a big fan of the organizer in Photoshop Elements 4. There is also a free photo organizer from Google called Picassa that a lot of people have spoken highly of.

I keep the kits together but with Elements Organizer I can keep track of things by assigning "tags" to each of the items in a kit so I can find them easily. For example I have tags for backgrounds, fasteners, ribbons, textures, Word Art, alphas, frames, color schemes, designer names, kit names, etc. If I'm looking for a background I click one checkbox for the backgrounds tag and *poof* all I see are the thumbnails for just backgrounds. Want a blue background? I click the checkbox for backgrounds and the blue color scheme and *poof*, just blue backgrounds. It's a very flexible system.

When I find what I'm looking for I then just drag the thumbnail from the Elements Organizer into Scrapbook MAX! and the actual file is imported into my SBM layout. I always have both these programs open when scrapping.

I understand Picassa works very similarly but I don't have any experience with it.

Elements is how I also keep my thousands of photos organized too, just in a different catalog from my scrapbooking stuff. One click of the mouse and I can filter thousands of photos down to just the ones of my grand-daughters!

An organizer program can save you loads of time and your sanity when you finally get to that point of having too much stuff to easily keep track of. It's boss when combined with a program like Scrapbook MAX!

I hope I didn't ramble too much and this gives you some ideas.

[mh51]

Call me THICK or what but where did you get the Elements Organizer.
Your explanation of how YOU keep organized sounds like my cup of tea!!

[MaggieMae]

Thanks for the info, PoppaBob. I don't have Elements but I do have Picassa - I'm going to explore it. I don't know if it has a way to tag things or not. If you keep things in kits but tag them, does your program then sort through all the kits for just, for example, blue brads? It sounds like it does. Wow!

I'm desperate to get some kind of order in all my freebies, etc. How did this grow so fast?!!!

[ToniNZ]

This is fantastic, I have an earlier version of elements but it is working well. This will keep me busy for while sorting and tagging but is exactly what I have been looking for - a way to maintain the 'kits' but also group by mulitple type of element or criteria. Thanks for sharing this idea.

[juliehclark]

i use some software called digital scraproom.

just got it, but i like it so far!

[poppabob]

Call me THICK or what but where did you get the Elements Organizer.
Your explanation of how YOU keep organized sounds like my cup of tea!!

It's a part of the program Photoshop Elements by Adobe. I have version 4. It's actually 2 programs in one. The organizer and the photo editor.

[poppabob]

Thanks for the info, PoppaBob. I don't have Elements but I do have Picassa - I'm going to explore it. I don't know if it has a way to tag things or not. If you keep things in kits but tag them, does your program then sort through all the kits for just, for example, blue brads? It sounds like it does. Wow!

Being the software junkie that I am, I downloaded Picassa to look at. When you have a picture/pictures selected in Picassa look at the "view" item on the menu bar. There is an item on this menu called "Keywords". You can also access it directly by using the keyboard combination CTRL + K. Here you can add keywords for the selected items like background, blue, designer name, etc. It looks like you can add as many keywords as you want to each picture. Then you can you the search bar in the upper right hand corner to find stuff by these keywords. It would be nice if you could see a list of these keywords in one place though rather than having to type then in each time. That's where you might want to look at labels instead. Right click on an item and then select add label and play around in there.

Hope this helps get you started.

[poppabob]

i use some software called digital scraproom.

just got it, but i like it so far!

Checking this one out too. Looks like it has possibilities. I kind of like the idea of the list of used items.

[MaggieMae]

Oh, my gosh, PoppaBob! I just went into Picassa2 which I didn't think would work for all the embies, etc. and found that by default it was only searching for and loading .jpg images. I found the area to tell it to load all images formats and 15 minutes later it had thousands of images! Wow! There were even images from games I have played. This will be a really good way to get rid of junk!

Now to find out how to label, sort, etc. Thank you so much for your input - I think there is a workable system in this! And it's free! I have never used any kind of photo organizer before - so here goes!

Thanks again!