On a PC, you need a separate app to unzip more than one file at a time. AFAIK, you can't have them automatically unzip like Macs can do. I would still say it's not really more effort than the way you do it. It's just that it's a different app instead of Finder. If you're doing tagging, you can use tags (say, "BYOC-2016-05") to group collections from different designers. You could also use aliases in Finder, so that one product can show up in multiple folders. Then you could have designer folders and also have MPM, BYOC, etc. folders. It really depends how you want to look for it. We all have our own strategies
@cookingmylife for me, it's not the unzipping as much as one is unzipped, I have to put it away. Otherwise my downloads folder gets out of control! Last November I had 300 something folders sitting in it. So I'm more cognizant nownow, and unzip= put away! =p
@bestcee I just counted and my 1605 May folder has ...264 folders of products. Those 3 bundles of Allison Pennington's made 95! @lorryfach Those are some good suggestions. I used to use more aliases but now all my digi stuff is in a Lightroom catalog so the keywords manage that . i just have to do it and possibly have a bit of a shopping fast. AAARGH!
In my folders, I keep byoc pieces with their designer folders. Mpm, m3, and pcm all go in the month of the collection. So may byoc.... Amber's pieces are in Amber's folder, Valerie's are in Valerie's folder, etc. May M3 will go in the May M3 folder, and any add ons i buy will go in the May M3 folder, too. In Organizer, I have tags for the collections, year, and month. So I can find it in my files in the designer folder for byoc, or collection folder for collections, but I could also easily search my tags. The difference for me between BYOC and Collections like MPM or M3 is the theme.... The designers usually have various themes for byoc, but the collections are usually more similar/the same. This works for me, because I'm more of a kit scrapper anyway.
Good job @Cath_ I know that's been a goal of yours for a while!! Lol. I didn't buy much else. Just I hadn't put away the DigiScrap Parade or the DigiScrap files yet either. Lol.
If you're already using Lightroom, keywords would make more sense then. I have a BYOC keyword, with years under it, and each month under the years, for example.
For BYOC- I usually have the kits/etc in two different areas- I'll have them where I would normally put them (templates in that folder & so on) but ALSO have a BYOC-Month folder with all of those products too. Probably not the best way as far as space on the EHD but it's what works best for my brain!
Unzipping stinks for me. My WinRar wasn't working, so I had to unzip each file individually, which was click file, click extract, click extract all, choose location, click ok, wait for it to unzip, delete zipped file. Or something like that...lots of clicking anyway!! As I use craftartist, I then have to import each kit individually, tag it and name it. Craft artist separates each kit into embellishments, frames, background, materials, Letters and layouts. Backgrounds and materials are essentially papers, but they work differently, so I import my papers twice. Letters are smart, so you tag each alpha with its corresponding keyboard stroke. It's A LOT of work but once it's done its very intuitive and my kits are really well organized so I can see exactly what I've got. I had craft artist for a year or so, but didn't use it because I thought I could only use the digikits they made available in the format used by the programme. I'd bought all the ones I liked, about 5 kits lol. I got bored pretty quickly. Most of their stuff is REALLY old fashioned. Then I discovered TLP via Sahlin Studio and I've never looked back! Thanks @sahlink xx and of course @MrsPeel who taught me how to use templates in Craftartist
It took me a couple hours, but I unzipped, tagged by designers, shop, product, color, pattern in ACDSee. I did all my BYOC purchases, iNSD purchases, designers' kits I CT for and 2 blog hops and a FWP kit. It was a bit of a drag to do it all, but everything is right where I can find it with a couple of clicks of some buttons. I LOVE ACDSEE!!!!!!!
Thanks all for the suggestions. I don't know why I didn't think to add a BYOC to my LR keywords! @dvhoward I won a copy of ACDSee about 8 years ago and waited for the Mac version. Sadly, it never seemed to work right and when there was an upgrade of Mac operating system it didn't work at all plus it was expensive then. If I were on a PC I think it would be my choice had I not bought LR. The last bit of putting away and tagging may get done today.
Automatic unzipping is one of my favorite things about using a Mac since 2011 instead of PC. LOL at the comparison with laundry. True, somewhat. I have a lot more fun putting my digiscrap stuff away though! I don't bother tagging because I find things pretty well without it. I make my folders the kit previews and sort by store. So when I'm scrapping here, I have my TLP folder open beside Photoshop and scroll until I see colors or items I want for my layout. For small items like buttons or specific things, like maybe a cat or a hat, thanks to designers naming their files well, I can do a search for "button" or "cat" and get good results. So my routine is simply 1. download from the store (and unzipping happens automatically) 2. change the blue folder icons into kit previews (This is the only part that might be tedious, because some designers use too many folders and I have to rearrange the kit so everything is in just one folder. I don't want to have to open a bunch of folders repeatedly while I'm scrapping.) 3. move the files from my Downloads folder to my "EHD To Sort" folder. (I do this because it's easier to copy a bunch of files over all at once and sort on my EHD than to move them singly from my Downloads folder to various EHD folders.) 4. sort the stuff into the appropriate EHD folders. All my TLP digistash goes into a folder titled "The Lilypad," which is inside a folder called "Digiscrap Stash."
Sadly ACDSee is for PC. But LR does the same type of thing, I have it and use it the same way as ACDSee but for my photos only.
I've been thinking about doing this with BYOC. I used to keep BYOC in its own folder named BYOC YEAR-MONTH, but then when I searched for something by name (by just typing the of the product to go to that folder), I of course miss those BYOC products. So then I pulled everything out of BYOC folders and just added "BYOC YEAR-MM" to the end of the product's name. I also have a Text doc in each BYOC product's folder titled "Coord. with" and then I list everything I've purchased from the same BYOC. And of course I have a "Misc" column in my Excel KITS spreadsheet--I put PP and EP in here cuz I usually buy both lol (and my EXTRAS spreadsheet, where I list templates)--where I put BYOC YEAR-MM so I can organize my spreadsheet and see everything BYOC, all arranged by year-then-month. As far as unzipping... y'all make it seem like a bunch of work. All I do is download stuff to my Dowloads folder, then I double-click the folder to open it, and then I select what I want and I move it to the folder I created for it. My computer must unzip as it transfers the files. (I have a PC.) I've never had issues that I know of, at least.