Second, the faulty download for the new Foundations style for Photo Manager 10 is now working properly.

We now return to your regularly scheduled blog…

Table of contents for Foundations Style

1. New Organizing Style called Foundations
2. Foundations, Part 2: Photos and Text

Thanks for coming back to check out part 2 of my Foundations style series. Now that you have a good foundation for your organizing and your pages, the next items to consider are the photos and the story. After all, that’s why we scrapbook…we take tons of pictures and want to record the stories and feelings that go with them! So let’s look at the Photo Accessories group and then how about the text accessories.

Photo Accessories are pretty simple…this is where you put categories for items that go under, around, or are clipped to a photo. I don’t personally use any Adobe software products, but if you have actions for manipulating your photos, this is where I would put a photo actions category. I keep a simplified set of sub-categories for frames but you can be as detailed as you like. Again, the point is to have a short but easily defined list to speed tag your items then when you have time or the need arises you can refine your organizing.

Text accessories are fairly similar. Does an item enhance or enclose your text?  Labels, tags, journaling strips plus elements like alphas, fonts, and word-art are all about helping you with the storytelling side of your creations. As you can see, my word-art sub-categories has been expanded because I’m seriously addicted. I used to dig endlessly through single word labels, barcodes, and other word-art items looking for a cute definition or a quote. Now, with my word-art sorted out, it’s easy to find a sentiment for a card I’m making or a cute label for a tag.

I challenge you to go through a category of your own that has become so overloaded that you can’t really find what you are looking for. Can you sort some of it into a different category because it’s used differently? Can you break everything into sub-categories? Make your categories work for you by being easy to find, and clearly defined so it’s just as fast to tag as it is to search. That’s what the Foundations Style is all about.

• What’s the best point-and-shoot digital camera for under $100?
• What’s the best digital camera for under $200?
• Top 10 Digital Point-and-Shoot Cameras Under $200

Saturday, November 1,  8 pm EST

Table of contents for Foundations Style

1. New Organizing Style called Foundations
2. Foundations, Part 2: Photos and Text

Introducing a new Organizing Style. Actually, it’s more like a whole new way of looking at organizing digital scrapbooking supplies.  Throughout my experiences as a teacher and a tagger, I’ve noticed the most difficult and slowest part of tagging is just figuring out what category something belongs in. I realized that the key to organizing quickly and decisively is having clear definitions for each category. So I took my definitions and built a new categories list from the ground up and I decided to call it the ‘Foundations’ style.

When you think about it, scrapbooking involves three basic ingredients: photos, a story, and something artistic. On their own these elements can be interesting and beautiful but together they tell your story in a powerful way.  Not every layout has to have a huge story…not every page even requires photos. But it takes art, photos, and story to make a scrapbook. And all of those elements require a good foundation.

So let’s start with the Page Foundations category. This group of categories is for things you can use to start your page off. Color swatches, page layout templates, papers, and quick pages. I’ve put textures in there because they’re a starting point to creating brushes, overlays, etc. but I could easily see moving textures to the artistic category. I also have categories for other types of templates such as paper making or for shapes or hybrid projects. This would be a good place for sketches if you like to scrap from those. If it’s a starting place, a foundation for a page, then it goes here. My sub-categories for paper have evolved over time as well. I personally use the term ’solid’ to mean monochromatic. So even with textures and designs, if it would only get a single color tag, it’s going to get a solid tag as well. But if the design involves flowers (wow, I have a lot of those!) then they’ll also get a floral tag. Iconic is for shapes like snowflakes or hearts that have a specific usage or meaning and I went ahead and did a set of subcategories there. And Patterned is the catch-all for multi-color papers that don’t fit in the other categories. If you find yourself looking for something like crumpled or torn papers, add a category for that. If you don’t look for dotted paper specifically, just lump those in with Patterned and delete the extra category.

The point is to make this list as simple as you can but with well-defined groupings. While I’m speed tagging I keep the sub-category lists closed and just tag paper with the main paper tag. Later I’ll go through and add the sub-cat tags removing the generic paper tag as I go so I know what has been sorted and what hasn’t. All PSD files to into the main templates category too…I break those down by size/shape later too. By keeping the primary level list simple, I can tag quickly and even before I sub-cat them I can at least search those main headings. This keeps me scrapping while I’m organizing.

Next time, I’ll talk about my Photo Accessories categories. I hope this new style at least helps you to start thinking in a fresh new way about your own scrapping process and your organizing categories.

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Viovio:

For those of you that do feel the need to upgrade your camera, we’d recommend checking out these posts on DeGeeked to help guide you along the way:

• Should I buy a DSL or a point-and-shoot?
• Top 10 DSLR Cameras
• Top 10 Point-and-Shoot Digital Cameras

They have just released Open Office 3.0 to the general public on Monday.  It was so popular that Open Office’s website is having difficulty and they only display the download links.

I use this FREE software instead of Microsoft’s Office 2007, $400 suite of Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Outlook.  Or even the Home & Student version of $150.

• It is easy to use?  I think so. 
• Can I open Word docs sent to me?  yes.  And with Open Office 3.0, it also opens those new word docs from 2007 which have the ending .docx.
• Can I open Excel Spreadsheets?  yes
• Can I save my file as a Word doc or Excel Spreadsheet to share with others that don’t use OpenOffice?  yes
• When I create a document in OpenOffice that I want to share, I usually choose File | Export as pdf.   Almost everyone has the Adobe’s reader installed on their computer.  It’s also safer.  There have been a lot of virus attacks put into a .doc file and sharing that doc file.  Plus the person can’t edit it.  
• If you are collaborating on a project with someone, I would suggest both use OpenOffice and you share the openoffice file.

I have only used it for 2 days, so I haven’t even tried out the new features.  But if you are looking for a FREE word processor and spreadsheet, I suggest trying out Open Office. 

Its on my “Must be installed on computer list before I use that computer.”  Where the rest are:

• Firefox (for browsing)
• Thunderbird (for my email)
• Virus checker (currently Mcafee but only because our ISP provides it free)

I’ll try post back with a review of it or at least some great features that I like about it.

DeGeeked is a website dedicated to helping everyday people "degeek" the many technologies that play an ever-increasing role in our lives. Tech advice that is in tech language is not helpful. Our goal is to provide simple answers to tech questions in clear, concise, and simple language that our fathers, mothers, or even grandmothers would understand.

Their goal is very closely related to DigiScrapInfo’s goal of bringing information to you about tools, software and hardware and explaining it in easy how to use format or descriptions.

So let me link you up to some of their latest posts:

1. Top 10 Photography Web Sites To Get You Started  If you are interested in learning more about photography, here is a great list to start at.
2. Top 10 Digital Cameras from Photokina 2008 
3. What accessories do I really need for my digital camera? 
4. Top 10 External Hard Drives over 500GB I love external hard drives it is a weird addiction I have.  The over 500 GB hard drives are all coming down in price.  I personally don’t believe in spending over $100 on EHD because when they fail, (not if they fail) then you lose less money and data.  I have all my photos & digital scrapbooking supplies on a main EHD and use a second as backup EHD.   So I buy 2 for every one EHD I need. 

 

look for Download Trial button.

I’ll post back later with more info, once I have downloaded and installed it myself.  You should be able to download and install 2009 and still have version 9 or 10 working.  Just remember that if you use 2009, anything you do cannot be reverted back to version 10 or 9. 

Here is the updated feature list from ACDSee:

New version offers up-front organization of images, custom photo borders, enhanced slide shows and more

ACDSee today unveiled ACDSee Photo Manager 2009, the latest version of its powerful digital organization and photo sharing software designed especially for avid amateur photographers, scrapbookers and crafters.

Improved features combine to make ACDSee Photo Manager 2009 the quickest, most flexible and affordably priced organization software available for at-home use. Users enjoy real-time viewing, management and editing of multiple image files, whether treasured family photos or digital design elements for creative projects.

Now, ACDSee Photo Manager adds these new features designed to help users manage their growing digital images, stay organized and share memories with family and friends:

Staying organized with new tools from ACDSee

The new Import tool puts this power into the hands of users, who can now rename, back up, categorize and add keywords to images as they are acquired from a camera, card reader, CD/DVD or other storage device. Used in conjunction with ACDSee Photo Manager’s Auto Categories, which automatically organizes images according to camera metadata, organization is completed as collections grow.

Protect and share custom organization

ACDSee users love that they can supplement camera metadata (IPTC and EXIF) with their own custom metadata, including categories and ratings, in ACDSee Photo Manager. Customers can now protect and share this custom information with other ACDSee users by embedding it into their images. Users who manage many image types can now include important information even with file formats that don’t support camera metadata, such as PNGs, PDFs and GIFs.

Frame and share photos

Photographers can quickly and creatively add a finishing touch with a custom border, drop shadow or edge effect, then share favorite images with friends and family with quick uploaders to online tools like flickr^TM. Users can show off photos in auto slide shows and screensavers that now include creative presentation options such as pan & zoom, black & white and sepia effects and music.

Save originals

ACDSee Photo Manager automatically saves and preserves the original image file when it is first opened for editing within the software. Users can restore to the original at any time after making image edits like adjusting colors, cropping or adding creative elements, such as borders, frames and effects.

Save searches

Users can build complex searches based on folder name, file name, location, custom categories, ratings and other metadata, then save time by storing custom search criteria for future use.