Speed Tagging with Kristi
January 22nd, 2008 by KristiI’ve had a lot of requests to explain my speed tagging system and include screenshots so here it is. Of course, all the credit goes to Heidi and Connie for providing this site where I learned all these tips and tricks…this is just how I’ve combined them to make organizing my digi supplies a fast and fun process.
Step 1. Select a range of folders in your file list. Try not to bite off more than you can do in one sitting. In order to include sub-folders you need to expand your file tree…highlight the parent folder above the ones you want to work on and use the asterisk * key to open all of the sub-folders at once…hit it again if you still have plus + signs showing. If you have alphas mixed in with other files, separate them into their own folders first.
Step 2. In the center pane just above your thumbnails click the drop-down boxes to Group by ‘File Type’ and then Sort by ‘File Size’. This places JPEG’s together, previews on top, paper below. The next group is PNG’s and small files like staples are on top while the largest ones, usually quick-pages and overlays, are near the bottom of the group. Layered PSD files are in a separate group as are ABR files. Be careful when you’re ready to work through your PNG’s, to select kit folders but skip the alpha folders.
Step 3. You can tag by selecting multiple thumbnails such as all the quick-pages and dragging the thumbnails to the category in the Organize pane, the category to one of the selected thumbs, or by checking the box next to the category in the Properties pane (make sure it’s on the Database tab)
Step 4. Highlight only one designer’s folders, click inside the center pane and use Ctrl I to select all images, then assign the designer’s name to the Author field. Select only the folders belonging to a particular kit and use Ctrl I again then add the kit name under Caption. You can see that I changed my ACDSee thumbnail display options to show author and caption instead of filename. I can also choose for the Generate File Listing function to include these fields and easily handle credits.
I had several starts using several types of organizing systems and this is what ended up fitting my style. There are many ways to use ACDSee Photo Manager and it’s flexibility is part of what makes it such a powerful tool for digital scrapbookers, professional photographers, or anyone with a lot of media files to organize.
The yummy kits featured in this tutorial are from the 4 Seasons CD which is only available with the purchase of ACDSee Photo Manager and/or Photo Editor
And be sure to grab the 20% off discount code on our Birthday Celebration page here at DSI! Happy Tagging everyone!
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Jan 22, 2008 - 07:01:16AWESOME tutorial! I will definitely be able to use this. Thanks!
Oh, thank you! I’m just starting out with digi-scrapbooking and have made a few attempts at organization. This is so helpful, and I figure if I start now, before I have too many files, it’ll be easier to keep up as I go along.
I discovered something similar to this a bit ago myself as well; I have so much digizip files on my computer, and not every designer has their stuff nicely unzip into a folder with their name on it, or unzip into a folder at all, and so for those designers who do not always start their zip file names the same way, their can be alot of muddle.
What I do is first drill down into the zip file and see the TOU; if no TOI, then take the info off the preview. occasionally there is neither, so these go under unattributed folder.
Then, I unzip right in to the designer’s directory where all their previously unzipped and tagged stuff is.
I then filter by, and filter out the categorized ones, or filter by uncategorized, whichever one it is that makes only the uncategorized viewable. Now, they don’t disappear the second you put one of your newly unzipped files into a category, in case you want it in more than one. If you go up or down a directory, or forward or back, or refresh the view, though, that one you just categorized will be filtered out and you won’t see it.
It is okay, though, because fellow items from that kit still sitting there will tell me what kit or kits I was categorizing, and I can add further categories to the one that got filtered out if I accidentally changed folders or whatnot, when I’m done with the rest. Plus I think we can sort by date, I know there’s all sorts of powerful functions.
For designers who DO consistently name their files (BLESS their hearts!) the powerful search features got me out of a big mess when a BUNCH of Tracy King stuff just unzipped into the one folder for her (ie, none of the umpteen zip files I was unzipping at once, sent any of the files to any of their own subdirectories, ugh, I do hate it when a bunch of zip files just unzip on each other!). The good thing though was that with her naming conventions, I pretty handily sorted out the mess (like, a zillion versions of several alphabets w/upper, lower, punctuation, numbers, those files alone were probably over 500 or 600 files . . .).
LOVE your tips! I’ll be trying some and see how they fit with what I’ve been doing, like you say, there’s a great variety of ways!
I think this will be a big help.
Thank you for sharing your ideas.
Diane
Thanks for this - with the alphas do you leave them in separate alpha folder as a subfolder if they are a part of the kit?
Also if a kit has sub folders for elements, previews, etc do you leave them in a folder or put them all in the first folder?
thanks!
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