Not a PS or PSE question, lol

[scrapmommytn]

Okay this is not a PS or PSE question but I wasnt sure where to put this so Jenn move it if you need to, lol. Just wondering, what organizing system you all use for your digital files? Do you love it? Hate it and wish you had something else?

[zippizip]

What I use is to name the folder where I store pictures with a few key words of the event - "vacation to NY 2009". Then I can easily search - if I remember what I used. Jenn uses a date system - but I never remember the date!

If I was starting fresh, I would use Picassa or ACDSee or even Adobe Bridge or Lightroom to tag the pictures with as many tags as I could think of and then organize them that way.

[zippizip]

Another critical thought - no matter what, make sure to store your folders of of pictures all in one master folder (we call our "PHOTOS") so you can easily backup that folder. Don't have them spread around in different location all over your different hard drives and computers.

[*Angie*]

I have AcDSee but I don't like it so I stopped using it and have not found anything else yet I like!! :(

[scrapmommytn]

jenn showed me her Picasa and I think I am going to give it a try. The way I am doing it is hogging alot of space. I have the CM memory manager for my photos. It works really well and helps me keep up with what goes into who's album. It also alerts me to back it up ever so often. I also have a folder on my desktop called photos. Once again, doubling my space. LOL, can you tell I am a little scared to let things go. I just need to do the Mozy thing like Jenn recommended and get rid of that folder and all my extra digital folders. I seriously have like all my kits on there twice because I have a kit folder which has the whole kit together and then I seperate the kit out into element folders which means I have a duplicate of everything in the kit folder. Crazy huh?? Gotta do something about that! Anyone wanna have an organizing party?

[jenn]

Yeah, I'm totally the wrong person to ask this!! I'm not all that organized, and too much of my organization is in my head. I've just started with Picasa, and it would work great if I would just sit down and tag stuff. We DO need to have a tagging party - maybe at one of the crops we'll take an hour out and just tag stuff!! We could give prizes for who tags the most files in an hour or something! LOL

[beckygtx]

Had to jump in here. I did not really like organizing photos in ACDSee or Picasa (really do not like Picasa..). My pictures first are downloaded into files named by month/year "July 2009" or for a special occasion - "Vacation 2009". Sometimes there are folders in that folder. Vacation 2009 has 5 folders for different sections of our trip. July 2009 has a folder named July 4. I name my pictures "mm/dd/yy picture subject 00" using ACDSee to rename in batches. I have found this is really the best way for me. Oh, and all of my pictures in my My Pictures folder and backed up to DVDs and the EHD. Clear as mud? Anyway, it works for me!

[jenn]

Becky, I'm actually with you on that one. I don't use Picasa for photographs, I'm trying it for my scrap files. Our system is like yours except we don't rename each image. I have a folder for the year, one for each month or large events like vacation, and within each month I have a folder for each topic or event. This works for me.

It's scrap supplies I need help with. I don't like working just within one kit, and often can't remember which of my own kits I put a certain element or paper in. So I'm hoping to be able to browse my brown ribbons when I need a brown ribbon! But the tagging is SLOW going!

[BrandiWhite]

I was a big ACDSee fan but I've had a lot of trouble with it lately. It won't istall properly on my new computer and they won't help me with it because it's an older version. It's supposed to be compatible but it won't recognize my license code. So, I started trying out Picasa but I don't really like that, either. It will probably just take time. I can't figure out how to tag things and making a ton of different albums is just a major pain.

As for photos, I don't have those organized with a program. I don't take as many as most people seem to - less than 100 a month usually - and I have them on my computer under My Photos -> Year -> Month.

[BrandiWhite]

Oh hey... I hope it's OK to post this here but Hummie just posted on her blog about using Windows Live Photo Gallery for organizing digiscrap supplies, so I thought I'd share...

http://blog.hummiesworld.com/2009/08/windows-live-photo-gallery-tutorials.html

[beckygtx]

Brandi, I just discovered this too. I am going to try to use it to organize my kits. Like Jenn, I wish I could find things easier and it looks like this program may just be right for me! We'll see.

[scrapmommytn]

I decided to use the Windows Live Photo Gallery too! I have already started organizing.