Organization

[JaneAgain]

How does everyone organize their kits so they can find things? I just have a great big mess, and am thinking about re-organizing...Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

[lorryfach]

I use Google Picasa. It's free. You can tag all your images and give comments, and have categories of images that are different from the "real" folders on your hard drive, so the same image can be found in multiple ways. It's a big help!

http://picasa.google.com/

[Misty]

Well... At first I put all my new kits in a file on my desktop. I vow to use them at least once and then move them to my external hard drive. (that way I don't forget about them)

On the EHD I have them organized like this:

A folder called Personal Use Kits
Then Designer Name Folders
Then Kit Name Folders
Then within the kit, I break it down to Element folders, Paper Folders, Alphas, etc.

[Jen]

How does everyone organize their kits so they can find things? I just have a great big mess, and am thinking about re-organizing...Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

After I Unzip my kits, I break them down as follows:

On my EHD, I have a folder called digital kits.
Then each designer gets their own folder.
Within the designer folder, each kit gets it own folder.
Then I take everything out of the unzipped folders and dump them into the kit folder. I like to keep the papers and elements together in one folder so I can open everything at once.

That is also why with my newer kits especially, I name everything, Paper_solid_blue.... or Paper_patterned_dots_red... or ribbon_pink... so that if you are doing a speed scrap and need to find a patterned paper or pink ribbon, you can type those into your search tool and find items in my kit easily.... Also, if you do what I do and dump the whole kit into one folder, all the papers stay together... we must have order even in our chaos!

[aevans96]

I also use Picasa. I just want to caution you (I learned the hard way) if you move items around in Picasa you move them around on your computer too. I don't tag my stuff though. I unzip my items at once and it only takes a few seconds with unzip them all it is also free, then I rename the kit with the kits name, designer and PUO (personal use only) or S4H (Share for hire ok). Picasa automatically imports everything. I go through all the kits and put like items in albums (brads and eyelets, Alpha, Lace_RicRac etc) when I'm scrapbooking and find the item I want to use I right click and choose LOCATE ON DISK and it opens the orginial folder it's in and I drag and drop it into the program I'm using and I can see right off hand weahter or not it's PUO or S4H friendly. Hope this helps.

[JaneAgain]

Thanks! I'm going to try that.

[MommySpice]

I used to use Picasa. Then I went to ACDSee. Now I use Windows Photo Gallery because the Tags stay with the items, no matter where I move them to. Plus its free and I don't have to worry about transfering the program when I get a new computer.

[JaneAgain]

Thanks for telling me that.

[velociraptorx]

I'm going to copy/paste my responce I left for this somewhere else b/c it's too long for me to retype. lol.

I organize my files like this:
DESIGNERNAME
-- KitName
----- everything that comes in it - with only ONE preview & ONE TOU [many designers put a TOU & Preview in each folder] - I move all elements/papers into one folder and then make a seperate folder titled "alpha" for any alphas that go with the kit.

Then, I copy/paste every preview image and put it in a "!!!PREVIEWS" folder so I can just scroll through that folder, find the kit I want to use & since every designer puts their name & kit name on the preview image - I can go to the folder and use it. I always used to look at the preview images but I would go through every folder trying to remember which kit had which preview. [some previews I found don't have the designer name // kit name - so I rename that preview to have both in the file name.]

I also have two other folders:
"NEEDSTOBEEXTRACTED" is where I put kitsI download [the zip files]
"NEEDSTOBEORGANIZED" is where I put the unzipped files from the zips in the NTBextracted folder.
Then, every week or so - I will go through and unzip / organize files.

[which I'm behind on doing the above but my EHD is dying after having it a few months, so I'm going to be looking into gettin ga new one and getting rid of this one.. maybe? =o\]

[beckag99]

I really like that you do that Jen! It makes it so much easier for me to find stuff. It is such a pain in the behind to rename/tag a huge kit that has like 50 elements. I have 215 GB of scrapping stuff, so I just gave up on tagging. I have my main scrap folder with kits I haven't used yet and challenge info. When I've used them, they go in my materials folder; kits are sorted by shop, then designer name. I also have a seperate folder for templates (sorted by photo numbers), alphas, word arts (sorted by theme), and misc elements like frames.

That is also why with my newer kits especially, I name everything, Paper_solid_blue.... or Paper_patterned_dots_red... or ribbon_pink... so that if you are doing a speed scrap and need to find a patterned paper or pink ribbon, you can type those into your search tool and find items in my kit easily.... Also, if you do what I do and dump the whole kit into one folder, all the papers stay together... we must have order even in our chaos!