Comments on: How to browse your supplies

By: Arianna

Arianna — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:38:31 +0000

In the beginning I thought a lot about a good “tree structure” for my stash but never made it, so now my memory it’s ruined and I remember mostly by shop/designer name. I’m afraid that if I finally organize my thing I couldn’t find anything anymore…Besides I scrap both by kits and by “non-kits”, so it’s a mess. I do separate free and brought stuff, tutorials, layout ideas and new downloads.
For now I think that I’ll bring together some specific items like templates, masks and overlays, singles quick pages and alphas and folders with the image of themed kits (as Christmas or kitchen-food). I hope this would reduce the huge amount of time I spend searching what I need.

By: Ang

Ang — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:18:29 +0000

I rely on my file structure and it works well for me. As my stash has grown over the last couple of years I’ve expanded it and made adjustments. Now that I have vista I can’t see my .psd thumbnails in the regular windows explorer so I love Adobe Bridge. Between the two I’m good to go. I find that if I keep familiar with my stash that helps a lot. I will periodically (especially when I’m in a scrappin’ slump) go through folders to look at my stuff. This way I can purge stuff I know I won’t use and often just seeing certain elements, color combos, etc. I get inspired to actually scrap! My main file structure is; Alphas, Elements, Ideas & How-to, Layouts, Papers, and Templates/Overlays/Masks. I also keep a NEW folder. This way I can back up all new stuff before I move them to my regular structure. I know, KITS is missing. A while ago I decided to break up all kits into their parts. I keep some kits together if they are very specific, like I have a Taekwondo kit that is still together b/c it is SO specific to one kind of layout. If I’m using a ribbon that came from a kit and I want to know what else I have that coordinates I can always search by that designer (I make sure designer names are in each filename). Or even by kit name it that happens to be part of the filename too. I have a “Collections/Kits” folder under my Elements folder.

The subfolders inside each main folder are pretty extensive. I know it wouldn’t work for all kinds of scrappers but I find it works really well for me and that’s what is really important right? Good luck finding your own system and Happy Scrapping!!

By: Jenn White

Jenn White — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:23:40 +0000

When you click on the folder, you can see everything in that folder unless you type in a tag. So I just scroll around. I’ll be doing a demo tomorrow night at 10PM in our gotomeeting classroom if anyone wants to see. I can fit 16 people in the room, email me jenn (at) scrappersworkshop.com and I’ll send you an invite!

By: just sarah

just sarah — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:30:57 +0000

ok… just downloaded wlpg… off to figure it out!

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:32:27 +0000

I believe you can simply search for words in the name of a file. But instead of showing a list of files, like in regular Windows search, it shows thumbnails of the results.

Jenn demonstrated Windows Live Photo Gallery for me and it does indeed look slick.

By: just sarah

just sarah — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:00:43 +0000

If you dont tag it, then how do you find stuff?

By: Jenn White

Jenn White — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:23:58 +0000

Before you do ACDSee, try Windows Live Photo Gallery. I tried ACDSee and found it hard to set up. And WLPG is free, AND you don’t have to tag stuff to use it!

By: just sarah

just sarah — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:19:40 +0000

I have tried and tried to organize my files into a way that works for me. Initially I sorted all my kits/freebies, etc into separate folders by item (paper, ribbons, etc). Then it got all crazy when I didnt do it as soon as I unzipped. I tried having folders names JUST BOUGHT or folders by specific event or holiday… nope, that didnt work. Then I went with the method mentioned here and I cant say that it is much better either. It works… for when I only want to use items from that designer but for me, my best layouts are ones that use a combination of kits from a variety of designers.

Its also a very daunting task to redo everything… aghhh! I might just have to break down and try ACDsee. I can spend hours sometimes searching for an item that I know will work perfectly but I just cant find it.

By: Jenn White

Jenn White — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:30:09 +0000

I’ve struggled with this for four years! And I finally found a solution I can live with. I use Windows Live Photo Gallery. (Not regular Windows Photo Gallery that comes with your OS, you download this one free online).

I’ve tried other organizational software before and got overwhelmed with the tagging or with trying to learn how it worked. This is great – I didn’t even have to tag anything to use it! I CAN tag things, and am working on tagging, but even without the tags I can open it up, point it to a folder (like my Kits from Others folder for kits I didn’t make) and see everything in all the sub-folders! I just scroll down to browse.

It’s amazing how much I love this, I’m using things in my stash I would never have used otherwise, even those oddball freebie pieces that looked so cute when I downloaded them but where the heck do you put them? With WLPG it doesn’t matter, they’ll show up when you scroll through the master folder they’re in.

I think having a good folder structure like Jen described above helps, sometimes when I want to narrow down my search, I’ll just select a sub folder to browse. Also, the folder.jpg that Jennifer mentioned in #3 above? You can change the name of ANY jpg file to that and it will force it to the front of the folder. Very useful. If the designer didn’t name their preview folder.jpg, you can go ahead and rename it, so you can see it when you want.

Great suggestions – but everyone, TRY the WLPG, it’s coooool! And NOT a memory hog (at least on my machine)