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Organize Your Pad!

jenevang

jenevang

Rocking a two-piece under my scrubs
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Organize Your Pad

This is a new Blog Series at The Lilypad where we all get a little more Organized! Every once in a while, we will post a new question in the forum and we want to hear how YOU do it! Some of the responses will be featured on the Blog during the month so we can all get ideas on how to make our digi lives a little more manageable.

The first question is this (OK it's sort of a cluster of questions, hehe)...

1. To Tag or Not to Tag? Do you do it? What do you tag (photos/kits/elements)? How do you tag? What program do you use to tag?

Tell us all about your Tagging Sytem! We want to know.
 
I'm on a MAC and i use Bridge. i tag everything as soon as I unzip it. I tag it by:
designer
theme-Cameras, birthday, nature, beach, etc.
paper-solid, patterned, wood
embellishments-button, string, frame, etc.

This system works for me as I am not usually a kit user, I like to mix things up. It works especially well for PL.
 
I love the idea of tagging BUT .... I have so much scrap stash I don't think I can EVER contemplate starting to tag things .... it would probably take me until I'm 70 to finish :giggle
 
I need this thread in my life. Probably I will forget it exists, though.
 
no tag here
I use search
my Lily Pad folder
stitch
button
happy
smile
etc...and it all pops up

my system is only as good as the designers labeling, and they do a purty good job here!
 
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I tag ALL photos as soon as I upload them to the computer with tons of keywords. Names, places, colors, events, emotions, relationships, etc...

Then I use the rating system... 3 stars for the best photo in a series, 2 stars for "supporting pics" that are still good enough to scrap, 5 stars for my absolute favorites (I use this very sparingly).

All in Lightroom. I LOVE this b/c I can find pictures quite easily this way.

I tried to tag digi supplies once but gave up. I use Finder instead and it works pretty well. I agree with Anne that if a designer labels their stitch as "element7" instead of "stitch", it gets lost. But enough do an excellent job at labeling (thank you, Lilypad Designers) that I can usually come up with enough options when I need something.
 
I tag photos only. I too rely on the search function to find digi files. Well that and my memory. :P

I would offer a suggestion for you Amanda. If you want to tag digi files, start by tagging multiple like items. In windows you can search staple in your digi folder, then seect all and tag all of the staples that show up from your search in one swoop. Then later you could find stragglers and tag them separately.
 
AnneofAlamo said:
no tag here
I use search
my Lily Pad folder
stitch
button
happy
smile
etc...and it all pops up

my system is only as good as the designers labeling, and they do a purty good job here!
Click to expand...

This what I do too!!!
 
amandac said:
I love the idea of tagging BUT .... I have so much scrap stash I don't think I can EVER contemplate starting to tag things .... it would probably take me until I'm 70 to finish :giggle
Click to expand...

exactly my problem - I have ACDSee Photomanager 2009 but haven't done anything as yet
 
I totally second you Amanda...don't want to even think about starting this project


amandac said:
I love the idea of tagging BUT .... I have so much scrap stash I don't think I can EVER contemplate starting to tag things .... it would probably take me until I'm 70 to finish :giggle
Click to expand...
 
I don't tag photos, but I store them in folders by date and if something particularly interesting that day then I add a note to the folder name too. I keep all my stash in Picasa so I can scoot through to find things visually, I also use Picasa for tagging but at the moment I (bizarrely) only tag Washi Tape and Templates! I also have all my Lilypad stash in Lightroom so I can right click and 'Edit In' using Photoshop CC (ready for doing CT stuff for JustJaimee, and for the January MOC).

Also, Picasa has a really good facial recognition system built in, so all photos that include people are easy to find by person name in there :)
 
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I use Bridge for my stash and Lightroom for photos.

In Bridge I tag previews only, not individual papers and elements. I tag designer, store, kind of product (e.g. alpha, kit, 2-photo template, etc.), and theme if applicable (Christmas, family, Autumn, food, etc.) I have tags for all the BYOCs so I can find coordinating stuff easily. As previously mentioned, most designers do a decent job of putting things like "button" or "stitch" in the file name so that's good enough for me and no need to tag more than previews. I also label things when I use them so I can easily find the stuff I haven't used yet when I'm in the mood for new things.

In Lightroom, the photos are organized by date and I tag them with "to be scrapped" on import. When I scrap something, or decide it's not going to be scrapped, I just remove the tag. I use reject/pick a lot to choose the best pics from a series. I used to tag people and places but I found I hardly ever used these tags. I mostly just want to know if it's been scrapped already or not.

When I was on a Mac, I used Finder, and I want to mention something you can do in Finder that I think a lot of people don't know about. You can combine different search terms and then save those searches, similar to a collection in Bridge, but cooler because there is no limit to the number of terms or the ways you can combine them. e.g. you have save a search called "The LilyPad" that searches:
"Allison Pennington" OR "Amy Martin" OR "Amy Wolff"...
Remember the quotation marks! :) You can also use parentheses for more complicated searches
(APennington OR "Allison Pennington") AND (button OR brad)

You can do some similar searches in Windows Explorer, but there is a character limit that makes it almost worthless. :(
 
I am about to give up on ACDSee! It does not get along with my Mac. Hangs up or quits all the time.

Lately I have been using the search method to find stuff. I like to use a lot of word strips on my pages so I rename all of the word art in kits ("Great Day" instead of "designername-wordstrip8") as soon as I get it - so it makes it easier to find words I might want to use.
 
I don't tag anything. All of my photos are organized by year/month/date, so I can typically find something fairly easily… even if I don't remember exactly when something was, I usually have some idea of the season. I started tagging photos in LR years ago, but it never stuck. I do flag photos in LR, though. For my supplies, I don't tag those either. I have everything sorted by designer and I do searches in Bridge. Works for me.
 
I use ACDSEE & I tagbhy each item... Stitches, ribbons/strings, metal, etc. I don't do by theme except Xmas. And I only tag one letter of the alphas or it would get overwhelming.

Also, I don't tag anything until I move the kits to my external hard drive every other month or so.
 
I use search and instead of tagging everything, I have folders sorted by theme so I can easily drag my new Christmas kit into my Christmas folder. The only thing I "tag" per se are previews. I have an abbreviation for each store and designer. Makes search super easy.
 
I don't tag anything...no time for those extra steps. I use LR for my photos and only keep the current year on my computer. past years are on an external hard drive that isn't typically hooked up to my computer so I don't do a lot of previous years scrapping unless I am working on a specific project. All of the photos are imported into folders by date so that is good enough for me.

I use Bridge for scrapping supplies and have those items organized by store with each designer in their own folder. the previews are good enough for now and the search function usually pulls up at least one item of what I'm looking for so I just go with it. :)
 
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I tag just about everything. Supplies are tagged in ACDSee by type if I think I'll use them again. I might tag 50% of a kit Christmas if it's that theme. I tag repeat use items by color as well. I have an expansive category list but I do use it. My photos used to be in ACDSee too but are now in Lightroom. There I use an adapted Library of Memories system (Us, People We Love, Places We Go, etc) but have many other keywords as well. I can't believe I didn't go over to the Lightroom camp earlier for photos as I really love the search capabilities there.
 
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