The week after iNSD I turn my attention from shopping, prioritizing, & budget-breaking to organizing my digital stash. I’ve been doing this for about six years now, and I still don’t have it down, so I thought a community discussion might be helpful. It seems to me that digital scrapbookers have it easier than we do. I’m betting they organize by designer and/or shop and/or theme, and that’s it, since they tend to scrap with kits. It’s much more complicated for me, since I pull from everywhere for my pages. My work tends to use elements from many different designers, shops, kits, museums, artists, & on & on. So how to find what I want on my several hard drives? My solution at present (it tends to change) is storage, time, and energy intensive. If I didn’t want to post to galleries it might be simpler, but I do, so I need a system that allows me to search by shop and designer, as well as by element, or color, or theme, or . . . How do you solve these dilemmas? How is your hard drive(s) organized? What have you found that works for you, and what doesn’t?
Actually I do my AJ pages the same way I make regular scrapbook pages. I am definitely not a one-kit-scrapper and use stuff from all over the place. My organization is by designer, kits are in their own folders and I tag previews with colors, theme (if there is one), sometimes with shop and - if it is stuff that I would classify as typical AJ product - as such. I don't think there is a big difference between AJ and "regular" scrapping in terms of how to approach them on the material side, so I treat them the same.
I'm curious how you see theme as being different for AJ versus Memory Keeping scrapping? The few times I'm dabbled with AJ, I'm usually feeling a mood, which translates to themes in my life. Like sad, happy, mopey. Personally, for organization I have a store folder then designer then kit. But I rely on the search feature of my computer. I open the TLP folder, then search button or ribbon and see what comes up. That way I know I'm okay for sharing in the gallery because I'm using tlp, but I can mix and match easily. I've used Bridge a little, and just tagged previews with themes or moods. I'm testing out acdsee right now, and debating on using it because it's more visual.
I don't art journal as much any more, but I believe that your organization system needs to stem from how you scrap. I had a detailed keyword and tagging system in ACDSee and unfortunately my catalog was corrupted and there was no recovery. I had to start over with a new catalog. I began to think about how I scrap and while it was fabulous to have all my buttons and tags and flowers keyworded/tagged and in categories, it was much more beneficial to me to focus on themes of kits. I still do categorize by designer and store, and I have started categorizing previews as well. I still use ACDSee and love it because it was able to fit my needs when I was tagging everything and it fits me now as well when I'm a bit more streamlined. ACDSee is like Lightroom and Bridge in that there is no copying of files. You can place multiple keywords/tags/categories on a single kit in one location. That's great if there is an item I consider ephemera, but it also works as word art. I don't have to copy the item into a separate word art folder, but by using the tagging, it pulls that item no matter which one I choose, ephemera or word art. I don't know if this helps, but maybe trying out a database program will help you limit your time investment and produce greater and quicker results for your scrapping!
This is being very helpful so far, thanks! It's nap time for me, but I will be checking back – and also checking to see how tagging works in Bridge.
I was an ACDSee believer, I had EVERYTHING TAGGED... I MEAN EVERYTHING. I tagged everything multiple times. Let's say I was going to tag a golden colored button, I would tag it as: a button, as golden (by the colors), metallic, metal, attachment. Then one day my catalog was corrupted and there was no recovery and I decided I didn't want to go through all that trouble again. I DID LOVE IT while it worked! Do I miss it? YES! Do I want to dedicate all that time and effort again? Not really. LOL!!!!
Same here. That's why I go the extra step and store all tags in the IPTC metadata as well. It is an extra step in ACDSee which is a bother, but at least I know that if I ever use another program I still have my keywords with the file. That is the only bugbear I have with ACDSee that it does not have an automated way to do that.
Maybe one of these posts will help? https://helpx.adobe.com/bridge/using/keywords-adobe-bridge.html http://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-organise-your-photos-with-adobe-bridge-cc
Belated response even though I am not an AJer. I tag in Lightroom, and if I was into AJ, I would add an AJ tag to anything that I might ever want for that type of art. When I first started with Project Life, I tagged things that could be used with that project, back when there weren't as many items specific to PL. Now, they mostly get the MPM tag or Cards.
One thing I find helpful is to rename items if I don't feel like tagging. This is especially true of word art. Some designers include key words in their file names, but others just number them as ...wa1, ...wa2. I will rename them with the actual words such as "ready or not", "memories", "I love you", etc. Since each kit is in its own folder, I rather have to worry about duplicates. Then I can use the Windows search feature across kits to find items with the word "ready" for example. Perhaps not directly related to Photoshop since I use Artisan, but the content previews are so small that often I can not read what is on the word art. Since the software also displays the file name, the renaming tells me what is on the strip without having to zoom in on it.
Me too! I have been known to tag word art as strips or stamps too. I know I can make one from the other, but sometimes I just want it ready to go.
