A Most Relunctant Convert

So now that I’ve been digi scrapping for a whole year, and buying supplies for a year, I have a real mess going! Actually, I don’t…I’m pretty anal about being organized…on the computer anyway. But it still takes forever to dig around all those folder looking for just the right papers or elements. I tried the ACDSee trial once before and didn’t like it. The learning curve just seemed too steep to tackle, the task too overwhelming! I played around with a variety of other programs but nothing quite seemed to fit the bill. Then I won a copy of ACDSee Photo Manager at a chat and I determined to jump in and learn how to make the most of the opportunity. So I’ve been sorting, tagging, and keywording my supplies working my way through the tutorials at www.digiscrapinfo.com and lo and behold…I like it! I’m actually having fun!

So I took a screenshot to show you how it’s going:

The file tree on the left shows you how I’ve sorted my layouts/projects in an art folder and my supplies are divided up by designer name…a folder per designer and then a sub-folder per kit is nested inside. On the right are my categories for tagging. I have colors in ROY G BIV order, how kits can be used since I’m going pro, and then supply types. These categories are actually pretty general. My goal is to be able to glance though just about anything in three clicks or less. So I’m into speed tagging rather than detail tagging.

For example, I used the instructions in this tutorial to select all the kits by a designer so I could assign the designer’s name in the author field and tag everything with the designer’s terms of use all in the same step. You can also use the same procedure to select your entire stash then in the databse pane sort by image type to pop all the jpegs to the top. It’s easy to select all of them at once to tag as paper. After that I did a quick search for files named folder.jpg (I named all the previews that beforehand) and unchecked papers and checked previews instead using the properties tab. I searched for and deleted the piracy jpegs next (don’t worry, I’m totally on board! No need to preach to the choir here!) and untagged other non-paper jpegs like tou images and coupons.

I am now in the process of going through each kit folder and assigning type tags to the pngs. By keeping the categories simple I can quickly select all the fasteners at once, then the fibers (includes bows, ribbons, stitching, etc.) and work my way through my very short list of element types. I call this speed tagging for the easily overwhelmed…or ACDSee on training wheels. Later on I can subdivide my fasteners if I feel the need to but for now this works. So here’s the rundown on my categories and what I include in them…this is just what works for me though…the beauty of this program is how flexible it is. You can set your lists up in whatever way works for you.

• Ephemera (anything that’s three dimensional…like flowers, gems, or bottlecaps)
• Fasteners (things that stick other things to a page…pins, brads, eyelets…even tape)
• Fibers (textiles of all kinds: ribbons, yarn, bows, stitching, fabrics)
• Papers (300ppi jpeg files of any kind)
• Previews
• Stamps and Stickers (translucent or opaque elements that are generally two dimensional)
• Tags, Frames, and Mats (any kind of tag, if it’s used as a frame, or if it’s used to mat a photo it gets this tag)
• Templates (layered files or craft shapes like envelopes)
• Wordart (if it has words on it then it gets this tag)

Lots of items overlap…like a stamp-like frame with a word on it would get stamp, tag, and wordart tags in addition to color and terms of use tags.

So that’s my system so far. If you’re wondering about alphas…that’s another whole procedure and I’m starting in on it using another tutorial from www.digiscrapinfo.com.

I might have gone kicking and screaming into the ACDSee camp but I’m a flagbearer now! In fact I’m even in love with ACDSee’s new Photo Editor but that’s a topic for another post.