Another way to organize on a Mac is to use the “smart folder” feature. While in Photoshop/PSE, go to open a file (command +O) , and enter a search term in the upper right spotlight box (“ribbon”, “green,” etc.) You can tell it to search only your digiscrapping folder this way, instead of the whole computer. When your search results come up, you can tell it to save the search (save button on the right of the window). It will ask you if you want the smart folder to show only when you have PS/PSE open. Click yes and label it “ribbon”, etc. All your searches will appear in folders on the very left of the “open” window (below “places”). Ypi can refine the results with additional search terms (+ button). I just make sure to re-title everything I download with a basic description if it didn’t come with one. Think the spotlight comments idea would work for this too…. better even. Because it’s a smart folder, each time you click on the saved search for “ribbon,” e.g., anything new you’ve added to your cache of supplies labeled “ribbon” will show up too. Ugh– hope that made sense. It’s been the easiest/best way I’ve found to organize and easily find things (for free).

The nice thing about Bridge: if you add keywords to your stuff, it adds the keywords *to the files themselves* so that any other program that can see keywords – your work is already done, you’ll never have to do that again.

But I’ve recently discovered how powerful spotlight is. So when I am looking for a ribbon, I ‘spotlight’ “ribbon” and do a “show all”. Then use the ‘+’ to add criteria, and under ‘kind’ choose ‘image’. This works great as long as designers use the word ribbon in the file name.

The other thing I’ve discovered is that you can make the ‘spotlight comment’ box in the ‘get info’ window searchable and add it as a criterion. So as of about 3 weeks ago, each time I’ve downloaded a new kit, I’ve taken the time to add ‘tags’ in the ‘spotlight comments’ box. This include colors, element type, and any themes, such as holidays. It won’t be terrible effective until I take the time to tag my old kits, too, but so far, I like what I’ve seen!

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