Finally at a point where I have some down time to tackle sorting this digi stash of mine out but need some category/tagging ideas as I am completely overwhelmed. I have ACDSee Photomanager and did go looking for organizing styles which used to be around but can't find any of them now due to the resources moving or sites shutting down. I am a 2-3 shop shopper so while I'd say 50% of my stash is from here I do have a few other places I shop at too however I generally only do challenges here if I do them I scrap using both one kit/designer and also in a mix and match way too I don't tend to keep previews I am not on any creative teams At the moment 11.5gb is sorted through folders of either subject or type (so kits have been split up) and 141gb....eek is currently unzipped but in the folders that the downloads came in (so haven't been touched really) When I did start sorting nearly 3 years ago when I was forced to restart I was somewhat doing project life but at the moment I am just scrapping normal layouts I'm just overwhelmed before I've even started and know that without a plan of some sort it will never get done
All I can say is good luck. I do not split kits so my way of organizing would not help you at this time. Just in case you are interested, I am usually a one kit scrapper (or one designer scrapper) most of the time so I have organized this way: C: Drive Digi Scrapping Dig Scrap Kits Most Used _The Lily Pad (so it sorts first) Disney Type Kits (several other stores/designers and retired designers from other stores or CT's I was on that I still use in my scrapping) Then under TLP I have a folder for each designer. That folder has folders for each kits. Papers/elements are in this folder. Alphas for the kit are in a sub-folder of the kit. I do keep the previews and put them in the main folder for the designer so I can see at a quick glance what I have in Picasa. Basically for the color schemes then I can look at the kit and see if it fits what I am scrapping. I also rename any folders for retired kits with z- before the name of the kit so they sort last. I add the word retired to the preview as well (beginning of file name). So every single kit I have bought from Bella Gypsy whether it is in the store or not is in their folder as are all templates for FDD or SWL. I have other folders on EHD's for those designers/stores that I don't use much but don't want to get rid of. Ironically, I did have to find several of those kits in my scrapping journey in January. I had done a page several years ago but have other photos from that event that I wanted to scrap and I wanted the pages to look like I had done them at the same time. I still had the kit on the EHD I've been organizing this way for over 10 years and it is what works for me. FWIW, I also have folders in the Digi Scrapping folder for my layouts, fonts and all photos. So all my digi scrapping needs are together and I can just select this folder for any backup medium I use.
I've never done tagging and I don't split kits, but "back in the day" when smaller packs of one type of item were more common than they are now, I used to sort things into categories. Here's what my main category folder looked like: If a category had a lot in it, I would make subcategories. For example, here are my alpha subcategories: I don't know if that's the kind of thing you're looking for, but maybe it will spark an idea?
@littlekiwi I don't split kits. Here's a look at my File Explorer list today. Inside kits are folders for each designer. I don't split up by store as I keyword what store the designer works in (easier to change a keyword if they move stores). I was using ACDSee to tag/keyword, but after losing my catalog multiple times, I only use it now for when I'm scrapping and I'm viewing a kit as I love the way it previews. I then moved to Bridge, which I loved for keywording BUT it is a HUGE resource hog and I was having issues with my computer really slowing down when scrapping. So, I moved over to Lightroom because it was able to read all my keywords that I had already entered into Bridge. Lightroom is quick about retrieving items that I've keyworded - much more than Bridge was able to - so I'm pleased with that at this point. I will share my keywords here. Yes, I know it's a long list, but it works for me. You will likely want to start with a much more streamlined keyword structure, and then build on it as you notice yourself looking for particular items when scrapping. Maybe this will help spark some ideas for you. ALPHAS/NUMBERS BYOC 2014 2 - February 2014 4 - April 2014 2015 6 - June 2015 2016 2 - February 2016 5 - May 2016 7 - July 2016 12 - December 2016 2017 5 - May 2017 2018 5 - May 2018 2019 5 - May 2019 6 - June 2019 10 - October 2019DESIGNERS Allison Pennington Amanda Yi Amy Wolff Becca Bonneville Bella Gypsy Blagovesta Gosheva Britt-ish Designs CD Muckosky Cindy Schneider Clever Monkey Graphics Designed By Soco Digilicious Designs Digital Scrapbook Ingredients Elif Sahin Designs Erica Zane Fairytale Scrapbook Fiddle-Dee-Dee Designs ForeverJoy Designs Grace In Color Grace Lee Heather Joyce Holliewood Studios Inkie Quill Jenn Barrette Just Jaimee Kelly Bangs Kim Jensen Kristin Aagard Kristin Cronin-Barrow Laura Wilkerson Little Butterfly Wings Lorie Davison Lynn Grieveson Lynne-Marie Maggie Holmes Meagan's Creations Meghan Mullens Misty Cato Mommyish NBK Designs One Little Bird Paige Evans Paislee Press Paula Kesselring Pink Reptile Designs Rachel Jefferies Rebecca McMeen Red Ivy Design Sabrina Dupre Sabrina's Creations Sahlin Studio Sara Gleason Scrapping With Liz Shimelle Simple Pleasure Designs Studio Basic Studio Flergs Tangie Baxter The Committed Crafter Traci Reed Valorie Wibbens Virginia Walker Wendy P DesignsEMBELLISHMENTS Acrylic Ampersands/Asterisks Angels Animals Arrows/Compass/Directional Balloons Banners Bokeh Bookplate Books Borders Bubbles Butterflies/Bugs/FlyingThings Cameras Candles Cardboard Charms Circles Clocks Clothing Clouds/Constellations/Rainbows Clusters Cork Crochet CURRENCY Dates Doilies Doodles and Scribbles Embroidery Patches Enamel Ephemera Fashion/Clothing Fasteners Feathers Felt Fireworks/Bursts/Lights Flags/Pennants Flair and Brads Flair/Brads/Bottlecaps Flourishes Flowers Foliage/Sticks/Branches/Nature Food and Kitchen Related Frames Furniture Glasses Glitter Globes Hearts Houses/Structures Journal Cards Journaling Strips Labels/Tags/Flags Metal Mosaics Music Notebooks Ornaments Paint Gesso Paintbrushes Pens and Pencils People Photo Corners Pockets Pom Poms and Tassels Rubons Sequins and Scatters Sequins/Scatters/Confetti Sewing Shiny Bits Smoke Snowflakes Speech Bubbles Stackers Stamps Stars Stitching String/Ribbon/Fabric/Tulle/Lace/Netting Technology Transportation/Vehicles Typewriters Umbrellas Vellum Washi and Tape Water Wood and Veneer Word ArtMONTHLY SUBSCRIPTIONS Create Crate Monthly 2017 2 - February 2017 4 - April 2017 2018 2 - February 2018 3 - March 2018 June 2018 March 2018 Storyteller PAPER LINES Crate Paper Fancy Pants ForeverJoyPAPERS COLORS Black Black and White Blue Gray and Silver Green and Mint and Aqua Multi Neutrals Orange Pink Purple Red White Yellow and Gold LETTER SIZED PATTERNS Arrows Banners Bokeh Chevrons Clouds Collage Cut Apart Sheets Cut Outs Damask Damask and Paisley Doodled Dotted Duotone Fabric Figures (Animals, People, Objects, etc.) Floral Foliage Geometric Gingham Glitter Grunge Hearts Herringbone Houndstooth Lace Maps Messy Paint Music Notes Notebook and Grid Objects Plaids Quatrefoil Scalloped Scallops Scenes Stamped Starburst Stars Stripes Text Water Watercolor Waves SOLIDS Cardboard Folded Folded and Crumpled Kraft WoodgrainPHOTOSHOP TOOLS BRUSHES STYLESPRESETS PREVIEWS STORES American Crafts Crate Paper Pink Paislee OScraps Sweet Shoppe Designs Collabs The Lilypad Collabs After The Rain All About Me You Us All The Feels Bloom and Grow Roots Wings Currently Grateful Life Is An Adventure Of Wishes, Hopes & Dreams Snapshots Spring Has SprungTEMPLATES & CUT FILES Autograph Book Calendar Clipping Masks Die Cuts & Cut Files Frames Numbers Photo Clusters Single Page 1 Photo 2 Photo 3 Photo 4 PhotoTHEMES ADVENTURE AND TRAVEL ALL ABOUT ME BABY BOY BYOC MAY 2018 COUNTRY/FARMHOUSE DISNEY 1 - PROJECT MOUSE Animal Kingdom Artsy California Adventure Celebrations - BDay Anniv Christmas Essentials Magic Kingdom Adventureland Fantasyland Frontierland Main Street USA Tomorrowland Project Mouse Freebies Travel Animal Kingdom Magic Kingdom Liberty Square Moana PRINCESSES AND CHARACTERS Ariel and Ursula Aurora Belle / Beast / Gaston Cinderella and Prince Charming Elsa / Anna / Kristoff / Olaf Jasmine Merida Rapunzel Snow White Tiana Tinkerbell DOCUMENT YOUR DECEMBER 2013 - Jingle Bells 2016 - Merry + Bright 2017 - Falala 2018 - Tis The Season DREAMS GOALS WISHES EMPLOYMENT ENCOURAGEMENT EVENTS AND CELEBRATIONS EVERYDAY LIFE FAITH FAMILY FOOD FRIENDS GAMING AND ELECTRONICS GIRL GIRLS NIGHT OUT HERITAGE HOBBIES Art Scrapbooking Sewing HOLIDAYS Christmas Easter Fourth of July Halloween New Years St Patrick's Day Thanksgiving Valentine's Day HOSPITAL/DOCTOR/INJURY HOUSE AND HOME LOVE PARENTS MOM PETS AND ANIMALS Cats PHOTOGRAPHY READING SCHOOL SEASONS Fall Spring Summer Winter SLEEPING SPACE STORYTELLING TEEN WATER WEATHERTRAVELERS NOTEBOOK Z - HAWAII/TROPICAL
the other big thing is - what do I do about the stuff that has already been split up cause I'm thinking I now would rather stick to designer and store first rather than subject or type like I have done with the 11.5gb of stuff
Geez, that may be a hard one, unless your files are clearly named and/or your renamed them so you can move them back into their designer folders. If you are going to use ACDSee and tag/keyword, then I wouldn't move them at all, I'd just tag them where they are.
@gonewiththewind I'm not stuck on using Acdsee if theres a better way of doing it. its just an option I currently have
I think ACDSee is a great option if you already have it. I'm enjoying Lightroom, but that is an additional expense if you don't have that already. Either one you have the capability to keyword or tag so that you would just be able to leave the products where they are in File Explorer and then tag from there.
I have the following file folder hierarchy, as I am currently not using any tool other than File Explorer on Windows to find things. These are just some of my file folder names to give you an idea. Templates Fiddle-Dee-Dee Designs Christmas Halloween all the restfavorite designer 2 TLP Misc Non-TLPArtwork Designers - Non TLP Designers - TLP Lynn Grieveson Alpha - Andersen - maroon Alpha - April - light blue Andersen - Christmas & Winter April Dates - Bracket Dates 2016-2020 DYD December Nights Effects - Alphabetti Mess Frames - Retro Slides Paper - Totally Trashed and Chilly Each designer at TLP has a folder. Within the designer, each kit has its own folder except that I pull out the alphas out and give them their own folder. Otherwise, I do not split up kits, but throw everything from a kit (and bundle) into one folder (except templates are stored elsewhere). For alphas, I name the folder "Alpha - name of kit - description". This sorts all of my alpha for a designer together, tells me what kit they go with, and what color or style they are. Then I can just look down the list of folders to find a blue alpha, or a brush alpha, etc. I put other keywords out front as part of the file folder name so that all of those type kits sort together. Dates for kits made up of date stamps, date tags, date labels, etc. DYD for Document Your December kits. Effects is kind of a catch-all since Lynn has masks, inky brushes, text element kits, etc. Frames is frame and photo kits. Paper is paper packs. I also rename kits to include a description, i.e. "Fredrick - Winter", "Going to be Good - school", etc. That lets me find the kit folder when I do a search for "winter", "school", etc. since some kit names do not tell me what the theme of the kit is about. I often wish I had a way to sort my papers across kits to find a specific color paper. Once upon a time I tried to do this using keyword tags. Trying to decide if a paper was blue or grey, for example, was tedious. Now I just do a search for *.jpg and it brings up all the paper. Then I scroll through them looking for the color I want. As for tags and keywords, I just rely on the designer to do that by naming elements appropriately. So if I want a staple and there are none in the kit I am using, I just do a Windows search for "staple". If a designer used that in their file name, it pops up. If a designer called their elements something like element1, element2, etc. then I will be rarely using their staples. Sometimes I will rename elements to describe them better.
As for your intermingled stuff by what it is -- most designers include their name and some part of the kit name in the filename of the element. You could sort the folder of "flowers" alphabetically and then, hopefully, all the flowers belonging to a specific designer & kit would be together. You could move them back into kit based folders.
I was much like @KimJ in the beginning - read: it took up like all of my scrappy time just to stay organised so a good 7-8 yrs ago, I said 'nope, store & designer sorting only fron now on' ! But the main difference I think was I just made an 'Essentials' folder for 'must haves', like I had 'favourite' staples, a paperclip & stitches, a generic stamped alpha, etc that I just copied from their main store/kit folder and added into the essentials folder as a duplicate so that when I'm 'kit scrapping' or in a speed scrap & needed a staple, I wouldn't have to think or search too far. It had a few neutral papers in it as well but it was only my tried & true stuff, not every neutral paper I owned. Maybe this is an easier way to approach tagging? A 'fave' tag for must haves or actually if you love every item u have, it might not help!
Love this idea - When I started scrapping I was forever organizing and never scrapping so not much has changed in the 14 or so years I've been scrapping
No matter how you organize your stash, having preview images can really cut down on the time needed to find exactly what you want. Looking for a blue paper? Scroll through your previews and look for blue-heavy previews. Want to find an art-journal kit? Scroll and look for either "art journaly" kits or look for the Preview image for certain designers (like Paula's Stamped name logo or LBW's bright emblem). Also, I only tag preview images; it takes less time to search my Previews folder than to run a search through my thousands of kits. And I've said this before in other threads but it's worth repeating: start an Excel spreadsheet with kit info. That'll really help you (1) from rebuying something and (2) quickly searching for a certain designer, store, theme, BYOC, color, etc. If you want I can give you a "blank" copy of mine.
I think @BevG has a good idea about finding intermingled stuff. It will be time consuming but if you do a little at a time, you might be able to find a lot of the items that belong to kits. Personally, I wouldn't have a problem if I had been splitting kits since I keep all my zip files. I would just set up my folder structure and start unzipping. Then when I was sure I had everything, I would delete the folders with split items. I also find that keeping all the kits under a designer folder helps when they move to a new store. I just move their whole folder. Did that for FDD, SWL, Bella Gypsy and Kristin Aagard when Scrap Orchard closed. Set up new store folder, move designer folders. Easy Peasy!
This is my folder system SHOP 1 -designer 1 *kit/product name *kit/product name -designer 2 *kit/product name SHOP 2 -designer 1 *kit/product name *kit/product name -designer 2 *kit/product name I keep a PREVIEW of the product in each folder and I use Adobe Bridge to tag those previews. I don't have to tag each piece. That would one TAKE FOREVER and two DRIVE ME CRAZY. So I use Bridge to find a theme. Since I mostly scrap using one kit. My tags in Bridge are: -Alphas -Art Journal -Baby -Be Inspired (kits all about hope, staying motivated, being inspired) -Cats and Dogs and Animals -Celebrations and Bdays -Children Fun -Children Teen Angst -Daily Documenting -Dreams -Feelings -Family Heritage -Family Home Life -Foodie Life -Friends Forever -Happy Life -Holiday Christmas -Holiday Halloween -Holiday Misc -Holiday Thanksgiving -Just Being Me -Love is All -Nature Lover -Pop Culture -Seasons Autumn -Seasons Spring -Seasons Summer -Seasons Winter -Sports and Hobbies -Travel and Vacays If I need a button, or string. Then I'll search using the Windows file explorer within that SHOP's folder system so that I use a designer within the same store. Since usually I'd probably be doing mix and match for a challenge of some sort.
I do basically what @BevG does too. I sort using folders only. I don't have time to tag stuff, even though it would be magical if someone else would do that for me! I'd love to be able to search for a green paper and have only green papers show up, but I don't have time to do that every time I download a new kit. I basically rely on the search function in the Store here to find stuff too. I log in, search for what I want and then scroll through the results until I see what I'd like... then it'll tell me if I already own it or not.
I've been using ACDSee for tagging and keywording for over 10 years now and I can't imagine scrapping without it. That being said, I've gone from tagging all papers and elements to only tagging previews which really cut down on the time I spend tagging. Also, I found that ACDSee started locking up on me at one point because I had so much tagged. If you do tag with ACDSee be sure to remember to embed your database tags (you can set it up to do it only closing the program) and optimize your catalogue regularly. My actual folder hierachy is very simple - store, then designer, then templates/kits/embellishments unless I CT for the designer, then it gets broken down by year too.
Now I’m more confused than ever - Acdsee or Folder based? My laptop would probably function better with folder based but I’ve paid money for Acdsee......
Your files are always in folders anyway, so, to me, it makes sense to keep designer’s supplies together but still use ACDSee to find specific things that you are looking for - Themed items, buttons, ribbons, charms, etc.