Organizing Digi Elements

[creative]

I am new to digital scrapbooking and am totally overwhelmed with all the elements and papers that I now have saved on my laptop.

I know I need to remember what site and designer the element belongs to, but am so lost as to how to keep all this information and be able to find the different elements so I can actually use them.

What is a good way to organize them all?

[steph]

I have mine saved by the kit and the designer. I tend to like to use one kit for a layout most of the time, so I just label my files by the designer and the title. So for example, Forever in Blue Jeans by Alice Naylor would be titled forever in blue jeans anaylor. That's just how I do it! There is actually programs that you can purchase to help in this quest. One of them is acdsee, which is the link at the top of the forum. Lots of people seem to like that!

Stephanie

[creative]

How does acdsee compare to google's picasa?

[TaraP]

This is a thread about a way to organize digielements. It seems like a very overwhelming task when you set out to do it but once it's done,, it's done. Keeping up with it when you buy new kits is much easier. I always make sure kits, elements and papers are named by the designer. For example my papers would be names taraparks_papers_whateverthenamemightbe. It's okay to credit a designer for a flower you used on your layout by simple stating,,, Pink flower by Tara Parks. I don't credit the designer by the site they design at,, it's usually easy to find a designer simple by googling their name and the words digital scrapbooking.

Any questions simply send me a private message here at goDigitalScrapbooking,,, TaraP. :) This topic of discussion seems to be a favorite of mine. and by the way I don't use ACDSee or Picasa or the organizer that comes with Photoshop Elements,, I just use my windows file system that's mentioned in the Elements Thread. You can also visit my chats every other Thursday night here in the chat room. There isn't one this week the next one is the 29th at 10pm. Even if it's not the current chat's topic of discussion I am always up for answering whatever questions you have.

Hope this helps!
Tara

[ginabee]

Thanks, Tara! The Thursday night chat on "organizing elements" was just what the Doctor ordered. Now that I've gone through and done this I can actually find my "goodies". I'm so excited!

[TaraP]

Very cool,, glad to hear it helped.

[bensenc]

Originally Posted by creative

How does acdsee compare to google's picasa?

Hi,
Picassa can't view png's - whereas ACDSee can view them plus you can see white png's like stitching & overlays because you can change the background color.

I had a hard time with Picassa but find ACDsee to be much more flexible. We have written tutorials for using it and they can be found here if you're interested.

Here is a screenshot of how it looks -

[yin]

I do the old fashioned thing - keep everything in the zips they come in - labelled by name of site/designer/kit, then save a preview of the kit in another document, which I print out. So I refer to the hardcopy of all the previews and zoom in to the ones I want. It works for me!

[Cherry47]

I print mine out also. I like to see it.

[Xaria]

I use picasa, and you can use it to view .png files. Just Tools> options> file type.
When I download a file, I Unzip it into a folder with the designers name and kit name on it (generally all on the zip title) and then move it into my >scrapbook downloads >GDS (or other shop / blog) > designer name. It just makes it a little bit easier for crediting the designers for me.
Also with picasa, when I have just exported a jpg for uploading, I put a note on it with picasa, pink flower by tara parks etc, so I can find it again in the future.
I was just looking at my files and GDS is 5GB!! EEEK.