Keeping Track of Scrapping Items.

[Stacy232003]

My sisters and I use Photo Shop Elements to organize our papers, elements, kits...etc. I keep my photos in folders, but all my other things are in the organizer. I am now waiting as it changes to my Mac and praying it will convert...(it is taking a long time....)

It works great. We open our organizer and then scrap in CS...so have both open. When we get a new kit, we pull it in (import files and folders) from a common folder where all our new stuff goes (but not until we are ready to organize it). Once the folder is imported you can select all and put all pieces under a category that you name with the kit name/artist/website or whatever....then go through and label each item in the way you think you will look for it.

Under Elements we have buttons, metal pieces, fasteners...etc, under papers: each color, distressed, scenes, structures..etc then we have Themes such as birthday, beach, autumn... you can make as many categories as you want. Each item can have as many tags as you want.

So, if I go to my organizer and need to find paper for a page...I can look under blue. If I find one I really like I just drag it over to CS2 (this is on windows). If I want to see what was in the kit with the blue paper, I just look at the file name, which includes the name of the kit and go to the category with that kit name....

It takes time to put it all in there, but works great...

Stacy

[vawitt]

I got a copy of ACDSee with a P&S camera and I set that up for tagging. I started out tagging individual elements but it got WAY too time consuming. Now I just keep everything in its original folder and just tag the preview. I can then browse through all the previews and use Windows 7 search capabilities to find what I want. Use Search to find all the files named Preview (you may have to rename some when you download the kits if they don't already have that name), then right-click on a preview you like and choose Open File Location. You'll jump right into that kit's folder.

I do find I like to reuse fasteners (staples, stitching) so when I'm unzipping kits, if I find a fastener I particularly like, I'll copy it and paste it into a folder called Fasteners so they are easy to find. I also read a tip recently that sounded like it would be helpful: Organize your templates, and/or quick pages into folders that are named by the number of slots for photos. Then if you need a template with room for five photos, just select from the folder called "5 slots" or whatever you name it.

I swear I spend more time organizing than scrapping and I'm finding my organizing time has greatly reduced by only tagging the previews.

Good luck with your project!

[Wendy]

Hi Eleanor ...

I hadn't used it much before yesterday but I played around with it and it was pretty easy to use. I'm going to experiment a little more and see what else I can do with it


Wendy

[victry1]

Wendy, if you're talking about Automator, I'd be interested to hear what else you found to do with it. Did you use it as an action, workflow or plug in? It does look fairly easy to use, though, admittedly I haven't tried it out yet. Just so many things going on......

[Posey2sum]

I use Picasa to organize my scrapbook supplies. It is free, and very easy to use. I keep all supplies on a 1T external hard drive. Picasa has a very good search feature, you just type in for example "red" and everything red will come up, or if you want just background papers, just type in red paper. It also has a tagging feature. You can just drag the item you want on to your open Photoshop Elements Edit screen, and you are in business.

[Wendy]

Hi Eleanor

I have used it for a couple of things ... one is opening some software when the computer is turned on and the other is adding a x to the beginning of images that I have edited.

Wendy

[lmoel]

Would it be possible to use the XMP metadata (file info) to tag photos and scrapbooking elements? I don't understand how to use it, but it looks like it can hold quite a lot of data and would be searchable. I'd like to try it, and if anyone could explain the basics, I would appreciate the help.

Linda