First, let’s optimize.  It’s kind of like cleaning up ACDSee’s messy desktop in a way. 

• Optimize your ACDSee Database

Let’s set the backup reminder if you haven’t already done so.

• Database Reminder: Set the database reminder to remind you to backup!

And then backup!

• Backing up ACDSee Photo Manager Database

And if you haven’t done so already, make your ACDSee backup disk with your license and trial version:

• Create own backup disc of ACDSee Photo Manager  

Your Categories & Authors:

• Look through your categories?  Do you have categories you don’t use?  Right click on them and delete.
• Look through your authors?  Are some misspelled?  Here’s how to fix:  I have a misspelled author/designer name. How do I get rid of them?

Lastly, where do you save all your downloads that you have already unzipped and organized.  Have you deleted them recently.   I know I put mine in "Done" folder and then periodically delete them from there.  How full is your "Done" folder?

Yes, back by popular demand (ok a couple of requests…lol) here are five more favorite ways to customize ACDSee Photo Manager.

5. Let’s start off with fonts again.  Or at least my favorite way to find my system’s installed fonts.  It used to be a dig through my C drive and Windows folder but I created a shortcut in the favorites pane.  Now it’s right at my fingertips.  You can also add a shortcut to your ‘new downloads’ file to make it easy to keep up with unzipping and tagging new downloads.  Have a go-to file of favorite elements or a favorite designer you search for a lot?  Add a whole folder to your favorites or individual files from all over your collection and create a folder to put them in.  Here’s a tutorial showing you how to do it!

4. Get rid of those Auto-Categories you never use.  That’s right, you don’t have to scroll endlessly through that long list of auto categories.  Just right-click on one of them and then click on the ‘Remove from Commonly Used’ option that pops up.  I decided to only keep Author and Keywords in the Commonly Used list since I actually use those and I keep the Photo Properties set collapsed.  And don’t worry, the information is still there in the properties pane and can be restored to the Auto Categories lists by right clicking on them in the properties pane.

3. Customize your workspace.  I like to keep the Preview Pane closed…with PM10, the pop-up preview is all I need.  If I want a closer look than that I double click to see it in the viewer.  I like to have my file tree go from the top to the bottom of the screen and I close the Image Basket to tag and browse and only use it when I’m pulling stuff together to create a page.  With ACDSee, there are lots of panes to choose from so seeing your images clearly and the tools you use the most often is easy to do.  And anything you want to see that you closed is available in the View menu…you can even Reset Layout to return to the default workspace layout.  Each pane has a stick pin icon in the corner that lets you auto-hide that pane when you’re not using it and the little drop-down arrow next to that allows you to float panes so you change where they are docked.  (I keep my calendar pane on the left under the files, favorites, and search panes.)

2. Set up your default editor.  I have used a variety of scrapbooking programs and am currently using ACDSee Photo Editor Beta 2 for most of my scrapping.  But it’s not the only editor on my computer.  Go to Tools|Open in Editor|Configure Editors… and then you can add editing programs, set the default editor, and check the box if it supports opening multiple files at once.

1. The most important customization this week: Set your database to remind you to back up weekly!  You can set it for other time spans such as monthly or yearly but why would you want to do that?  Take it from a veteran of computer crashes, you can’t back up too often!  Just go to Tools|Options and find the Database options in the list.  Check the reminder box, and pick a time interval…that’s all there is to it!

I hope you have fun this week playing with getting your workspace set up nice and comfy and get your back-up habit going.  Don’t forget to check our calendar to the left…and sign up for our newsletter if you haven’t done so already.  We have some big chats coming up that I know you won’t want to miss!

Happy Tagging!

I’ve been playing with setting up my categories, my preferred desktop layout, and other goodies in ACDSee Photo Manager and thought I’d share my top five ways to customize ACDSee.  So let’s get started!

5. Changing the font display text:

4. The minty-fresh background of my PNG thumbnails:

3. Speaking of thumbnails, I love my custom thumbnail information display:

Just click on Tools | Options and find the Thumbnail Info option under File List.  Click on Choose Thumbnail Info… then customize it to your liking.  I like mine with designer and kit names…of course, you have to fill in that information when you’re organizing.

2. Generated file listing details.

It’s the same options settings dialog we just looked at…just use Details View instead.   Generate a listing of your Image Basket to make giving credits easy.

1. My number one favorite thing to customize is setting up Photo Manager to start where I want it to start:

Yes, same box…Tools | Options again…click on Browser then pick a starting folder or have PM start wherever you left off last time you were using it.

Once you get your workspace all set the way you like it the tagging, searching, and crediting all goes pretty fast!  So what about you…what’s in your ‘Fave Five’?  Post a comment here and tell us what customizations you like best.

Perhaps I should call this Week 5-A. Or Week 5 Redo? Either way, I am reporting on my tasks that I assigned to myself on Week Four.Tasks for Week 4/5:
1. Back up and Optimize– Done! This one is easy. Has it become a natural habit for you as well?
2. If you use Photo Manager to view fonts, set up a system to keep you better organized. This was mostly done prior to this week, but I was able to work on getting some neater categories. I found the hardest part was deciding what fonts went into which folder.
3. If you find fonts that you know you will never use, have duplicate fonts or corrupted fonts, delete them and don’t look back! Whew! I really had a hard time, but I did find some that I was able to delete. It felt good- kind of like when you toss all of those “single” socks. and now I don’t have to look at them anymore!
4. If you have any credit information on these fonts, go ahead and put that information in the Caption or Notes section.

TIP: Try to get into the habit of doing this as soon as you download a font. Unfortunately, I has many credit files floating around, but I don’t know what fonts belong to them. It is going to take some hard detective work to figure this all out.

5. Check to see how many back-up files you have and delete as many as you feel comfortable. Done!

Ok- so it took me an extra week, but what is most important is that we don’t give up. Better to take an extra week to catch up than stop organizing completely and then fall way behind.
So are we ready to move on? I am!
I am glad that I am doing this as a “real” person- like all of you are. I’m a working mom with outside situations that take over a bit. Life isn’t perfect, life is busy and hectic- life throws us a lot of curves. This series in organizing it helping me- and hopefully you- to realize that it is easier to work around the craziness and accept it is for what it is.
Now who would have thought ACDSee and scrapping could be so Zen?
I had two separate tasks that I wanted to work on this week, one is a bit more complicated and time consuming than the other. I had planned to clean up our Alpha Files, and to begin organizing our Brushes. I am getting 4 impacted wisdom teeth removed on Tuesday and I think that trying to accomplish both goals in one week is biting off more than I can chew- no pun intended!
So let’s focus on our Alphas, and next week we can focus on the brushes. No stress allowed!

One thing that I did when I first started out with Photo Manager was to tag all of my Alpha files as “Alphas.” When I only had a few alpha sets, t was no big deal. but now- a year later, I really don’t need to see every letter of every alpha when I search for them using the Organize Pane.

To find everything that is tagged alpha, go to your Organize Pane, select the category Alpha. If you have sub-folders, you should also include them as well. To do this, go to the top of the Organize Pane, click on Match Any/All and select the Include Sub-Categories. If it is grayed out, you’ll need to select Alpha first.

When you have all of your alphas showing, scroll through the thumbnails. When you come to an alpha that is showing all of the letter files, right click on one of them and select Go To File. This brings you to the folder where they are located. Select All (Ctrl-A) and deselect the “A” file. (Ctrl-Click).
Go to the Properties pane, and uncheck the tags you had for them. This leaves just the “A” file with any alpha tags associated with it. To back to the previous window, click the Back button on the top left of your screen. F5 will refresh the screen.

TIP: Some Alphas have numbers. If this is the case, deselect the “A” File and one of the number files, I use the “1″ file.

Some scrappers prefer to have a preview or contact sheet for their alphas.That is easy enough to do with Photo Manager: Creating your own preview with ACDSee Photo Manager

Another way to help with searching for alphas is to have them tagged into styles/sub-categories. This image shows the sub-categories I have for my alphas:

You can obviously add in however many sub-categories as you want and need.
For DigiscrapInfo’s Tutorial on Organizing Alphas, read here.
Our Homework for this week is this:

1. Back up and Optimize
2. Clean up alphas- so that only one letter or contact sheet/preview comes up in a search
3. Create sub-categories and tag Alphas

I have a confession to make. This past week, I was a bad scrapper/organizer. At first, I was going to write about how much I had gotten done, because how can I help all of you get organized, if I can’t help myself? But you know what? Not only would that be dishonest, which I don’t like, it doesn’t help anyone with the reality that life sometimes gets in the way of our own best intentions. It does, and we have to be ok with that. In parenting, we would call this a “teachable moment.”

Let’s take a look at my tasks I had wanted to work on from last week:

Tasks for Week 4:
1. Back up and Optimize
2. If you use Photo Manager to view fonts, set up a system to keep you better organized.
3. If you find fonts that you know you will never use, have duplicate fonts or corrupted fonts, delete them and don’t look back!
4. If you have any credit information on these fonts, go ahead and put that information in the Caption or Notes section.
5. Check to see how many back- up files you have and delete as many as you feel comfortable.

I did back up and optimize. And I did work on tagging some things that I had running loose in my _To Be Tagged Folder. So all is not lost. But other than that- a big ol’ nothing.

Since I didn’t get to do any of the other tasks, I have them on my list for this week. If you did these, then you can continue “fine tuning” the rest of your stash. Perhaps you still have some categories that need to be cleaned up- go ahead and work on that. Or if you are still tagging your stash, shoot for 20-30 minutes a day, instead of the 15 minutes we had been doing.

Scrapping is supposed to be a fun, relaxing hobby. It is not supposed to be one more thing for us to beat ourselves up over, right? Right! So go to it, use this week to catch yourselves up- and definitely use some time to scrap!

I was very happy that I am in the “15 minutes a day tagging mode.” I was all caught up when I had a few CT kits and a huge Collab kit to download and get tagged. Even that didn’t set me back, I am all done and ready for the next set of kits. I am all backed-up and optimized, my author categories are cleaned up and I have much more streamlined tags and categories.
Today, I am going to get to work on a task that I have been dreading: Organizing Fonts
I want to remind everyone of my disclaimer that I stated the first week of this challenge. This is only my way of doing things. It works for me; however, it might not work for you . And that is 100% OK. If you have a different way to do any of, and would like to share, you can post in the “Organization Challenges with Chris Forum“.
I do not keep many of my fonts installed on my computer. I really like to collect fonts and I have a lot- at least a few thousands. Keeping them all installed makes my computer extremely angry with me. The system I have devised is to keep most of my fun fonts onto my second hard drive. You may choose to do this in a separate folder, on an external hard drive or on a different drive. All of my scrapping supplies are on my second hard drive so that is where I keep my fonts.
So first, what I did is figure out which fonts had to stay installed.

TIP: For a list of Windows Fonts that should not be uninstalled, read this first.

Second, I needed to choose a few fonts that I use all of the time, is several different programs to keep installed. These are the ones that would be more inconvenient to had uninstalled than installed. I chose a couple of script, and a couple of handwriting style fonts that I really consider as my favorites.
The rest of the fonts are then uninstalled. I used The Font Thing (TFT), which is what I used for my font browsing before Photo Manager. Once I was done with TFT, I uninstalled it as there was no need for it any more.
TIP: You can find The Font Thing here.

I have found that I like to keep my Fonts in Sub-Folders in different Categories rather than having them in one folder and being tagged. Feel free to try it this way or by tagging and see which one makes more sense to you.
What I did next was create a folder tree in Photo Manager for my fonts. On my second hard drive, where I have all of my scrap supplies, I created a folder called Ta-da! …. Fonts.
Under that, I made new folders for the different style fonts I use. Here you can see how my folders are set up in Photo Manager.

You can make as few or as many folder as you wish. It all depends on how many and what style fonts you have.
TIP: If you need ideas for font styles dafont.com has a very good list of font styles.

From there, I dragged all of my uninstalled fonts from where they originally were located, right on into the new Fonts folder. From there, I just scrolled on down,Ctrl-Clicked similar fonts and then dragged them into the appropriate folder.
To use these fonts when scrapping is really easy, even though they are not installed. Before you open your editing program, open Photo Manager, select the fonts you wish to use, then go to Database | Rebuild Thumbnails and Metadata.

Open your editing program. When you are ready to work with the fonts, simply drag them from Photo Manager into the program. The fonts will be loaded onto your computer only while your editing program is open. When you close it, the fonts automatically unload.
For more details you can read here:
Fonts: How can I view them?

How to use Uninstalled Fonts in your scrapbooking program

ACDSee Photo Manager can change the sample text of your font.

The other thing we are going to work on this week is to remove extra back ups that are stored on your hard drive. ACDSee does not overwrite the back up data, it makes a new folder each time you back up. So if you back up a lot, which is a very good idea, you may have a lot of back-ups on your hard drive that are taking up precious storage space.

To do this in Version 9, the default location is:

C:\Documents and Settings\yourusername\Local settings\Application Data\ACD Systems\Catalogs\90\ACDSeeBK

For Version 10, the default location is:

C:\Documents and Settings\yourusername\Local settings\Application Data\ACD Systems\Catalogs\100\ACDSeeBK

For a full explanation, click here.

Tasks for Week 4:
1. Back up and Optimize
2. If you use Photo Manager to view fonts, set up a system to keep you better organized.
3. If you find fonts that you know you will never use, have duplicate fonts or corrupted fonts, delete them and don’t look back!
4. If you have any credit information on these fonts, go ahead and put that information in the Caption or Notes section.
5. Check to see how many back- up files you have and delete as many as you feel comfortable.

I’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!

OK, I admit it, I was really really bad about doing 15 minutes a day. The early part of the week I was actually quite busy. If you haven’t seen, The ACDSee Team and I were planning a big birthday celebration. That ended up being priority for a few days. However, what I did was work for 15 minutes each on Monday and Thursday and 30 minutes on Friday. The rest of the weekend, I was able to get in at least 15 minutes each day. So it works out ok, right?

My Week Two Tasks:

• Back Up and Optimize Database: This is so routine now for me that I didn’t even have to think twice about doing this. I made sure that I backed up after each of my big tagging and purging sessions, since I didn’t want to lose any of the new information I had entered.
• Clean up at least two Categories: I kept on working on the Ribbons and Fibers and the Bow Categories. I really got so much of that cleaned up. I found some that still needed designers names, so I added them. The other category I worked on was Frames- I wanted to have better sub-categories. I added Wrapped Frames to the Cluster Sub-category. To do this: In the Organize Pane, Right Click on the Category you want to edit, then, Click on Edit Category. You can then rename that Category. When you right Click, you can also delete or add a new category.

Delete any files that you know that you will never use: Oh boy, I went through my Templates Folder. I guess when I first started digi-scrapping, templates were one of the big, hot items that were given out as freebies. I had a lot-lot-LOT of templates. A lot of them, I would never use, and some I could never use. Why was I saving PSP Templates? I don’t have PSP! I also has tiffs and psds of the same template. I was able to really toss out quite a bit of stuff. And you know what? It actually felt good!

• Continue to tag any files. Spend about 15 minutes a day doing this: Well, I did my best!

As you see, last week I was able to get a lot of miscellaneous files better organized. I hate that feeling of “things stuck in the corners” either in my home or in my computer folders. Do you have a stack pf papers that get shuffled from place to place or worse, simply ignored? That is what these files were like, so it felt refreshing to have them cleaned out and put in their proper place, even if it ended up being the recycle bin.
While I am sure we all have some more folder that can use some extra attention, but let’s move on to another problem that I know I have been ignoring: Duplicate Authors. In your Organize Pane, you will see a Section called Auto Categories.

Photo Manager comes with pre-installed categories for these that are not editable. However, there are two sub-categories, Commonly Used and Photo Properties and you can move them between these two sub-categories. To do this, right click on the category, and you can either “Add to Commonly Used” or “Remove from Commonly Used.”
To work in the Author Category, click on the on the +sign to the left of Author. This will drop down all of your authors.
TIP: This will only work if you have been adding the designer to the Author Box in the Properties Pane. If you have not been adding the Designer’s name, you can read how to do it here: Easily add Designer and Kit Name

As I am scrolling down, I see lots of duplicate authors. Here is a sample of the different entries I have for Danielle Young.

I have one in lower case and one misspelled.To combine these into one category, select all variations of the author by checking the box next to the name. Make sure that you have Match Any selected.

Select All or Ctrl-A.

Go to the Properties Pane. Click in the Author Box, the program will ask you to Reset Author for all selected files? Click Yes. Then type the correct name into the Author Box and hit Enter. When you go back to the Organize Pane, you should only see the one, correct Author name. If not, refresh the page (F5) and that should do the trick.

TIP: Sometimes, you’ll get a “stubborn” author that doesn’t want to go away. So far, I have not been able to figure out how to get rid of them- so if you know, email me digiscrapinfo@gmail.com or post in this thread.

This task is somewhat time consuming, but it really helps to when you want to search for a product made by a certain designer. For people on CT’s , this is especially helpful when creating a layout for a specific designer. Say I am creating a layout for Nina Scraps and I want to only use her products. All I have to do is click the box next her name and it will bring up all of her designs. If I want to further refine my search and look only for frames by her, I switch the Match Any/All to “All” and select both her name and Frames.

Tasks:

1. Back up and optimize your database.
2. Clean up duplicate or misspelled Authors.
3. Continue sorting out any other categories that you didn’t get to last week.
4. Continue tagging 15 minutes a day.

Organizational Challenge: Week Two
I had a very productive week. Really being committed to even just 15 minutes a day of getting organized really helped me out. Here is a run down of what I was able to accomplish:

Day One.

1. I was able to get my data base backed up and optimized.
2. Tomorrow when I have a bit more time, I am going to look over my categories and see what needs to be refined.
3. I already have my Unzip Routine all set and I am happy with the way it works for me so that is good to go.
4. I didn’t have all that much time to work on the actual organizing part. I did have a few paper packs that needed some attention and I did that.

Day Two.
It feels really good to be home from work and simply “have to” sit for 15 minutes with Photo Manager. For people who are dreading the organizing part of digi-scrapping, I have to be honest and tell you that it is actually fun! I put on some music and just go along with it. I really enjoy seeing all of the papers and elements that I get in a kit. It even helps me to remember which designer has something really neat that I want to play with or I make connections- for example I’ll see a great word art and know exactly which picture I want use it with on a Layout.

Day Three.
I had some CT kits to download and tag today. But I didn’t have time to do it all at once. I was able to get them downloaded into my _To Be Tagged Folder and was able to unzip and tag over the course of the day. And, while I was looking at the amazing word art, I realized I had a new picture of my and my hubby that would work perfect for them. Can’t wait to scrap it!

Day Four.
I was able to work on some more tagging today. I cleaned up some folders and got my _To Be Tagged folder just about empty. Tomorrow I am going to sort through the Zips Sub-Folder and get rid of the zip files that I have had for a while.

Day Five.
Wow, today was a really busy day for me, I didn’t have time to work on what I wanted to accomplish. I did have a few minutes to tag a new element pack. I was really happy however, even though I only worked on organizing for about 10 minutes today, I really don’t feel like I am all that far behind. And tomorrow is Saturday so I will hopefully have a bit of extra time to work.

Day Six.
Why do I always think that I’ll have extra time on the weekends? I never do- LOL But it is 3 pm and I have about 20-30 minutes of some quiet time where hopefully no one needs me and the phone doesn’t ring I have several kits to unzip for some CT work and I want to get rid of those older zip files. But no worries, I’ll do what I can. Everything will be right where I can find it when I am ready to get back to work.

Day Seven.
I am out of town, so no time to work on this. But no worries~ everything is under control!
Last week’s tasks focused on basic set up of your categories and keeping your database backed up and optimized. That is all well and good and very necessary. It is kind of like the foundation of your routine. And like a house’s foundation, it isn’t the most fun to work with, but you have to make sure it is sturdy and stable. This week, let’s get more into the “meat” of the program. Let’s clean up some of our messy categories.

When I first started out with Photo Manager, I had all of my ribbons and fibers and yarn and stitches and bows and…well, you get the picture… all of those elements were lumped into one folder. It defeated the benefits of being able to search for a ribbon when all of those extra files came up as well. Later on, I decided to add a new category for just bows. However, I never found the bows that were originally in the Ribbons et al Folder, and they were still lurking around in there.

My job to work on this week is going to be cleaning up some of these messy categories. My first priority is going to be to clean up my Ribbons & Fibers and Bows Categories. What I am going to do first is select my Ribbons Category by selecting that Category in the Organize Pane. This will bring up every file that I have tagged as “Ribbons & Fibers.” So I can be able to fit as many files as possible on my monitor, I can either click on the Slider on the top right side of the screen

Or you can Ctrl-Scroll to either reduce or enlarge the thumbnails. I want to be able to Select as many files at once so I want them pretty small. As I find the Bows that I want moved, I Ctrl-Click to select multiple files. After I have the ones I want to move, I will switch from the Organize Pane to the Properties Pane by using the tabs at the bottom right of my screen. Open the tree for categories so you can see what is checked. In this case I want to remove the “Ribbons & Fibers” category so I click n that check mark to remove it. Then I want to add these files to the Bow Category, so I will can either check the Bows box, or simply drag the files right over to it. Hit F5 to refresh your screen and the bows will be removed from this category. You might even see some other files that don’t belong in this category and they can be moved to the appropriate category in the same way.

TIP: Approach this the same way you do (or should!) clean out closets or drawers. Only work on one category at a time or you will have a bigger and more complicated mess on your hands!

TIP: You might find TOU’s as you go through the categories. If there are duplicate and/or jpg TOU’s, you may wish to delete some of these files.

As I am going through, I am evaluating some of the categories that only have a few files in them. For example, I have eight files in “Tiles.” and just a few in Zippers, and I don’t think I have ever used them. I am not sure what I want to do with them yet. However, I am making a note to myself so if I find a more appropriate category to move them to, I can do that.

As I am working on these categories, I am wondering, why did I ever think that I would be able to make a ribbon half as good as the designers? *shuddering at my early attempts at designing* Just like those bell bottoms in your closet from the 70’s, we hang onto scrap stuff because we wonder “what if I need this someday?” If you have had it longer than a year, and you haven’t used it yet…guess what? Chances are you won’t ever use it. Most of us started out digi-scrapping the same way. We would find all of the freebies we could collect, without truly considering if it was something we needed or would even use. Or perhaps our styles have changed as we develop our skills at scrapping. After a while, we lose track of what we have and buy more of the same stuff. (I promise, I won’t tell any of your husbands about that!!). As you are looking through your folders, if you haven’t used it, don’t think you will ever use or can’t see why you have twenty-five staples that look identical, it is time to purge.

TIP: I know, it really is hard to toss something out, in real life as well as in the digital realm. If you find that there are some files that you really don’t feel comfortable deleting, you can try this trick. Create a folder, make sure you do this in ACDSee) and name it something like “To be Deleted”. Or “This Folder will self destruct on (date.)” Drag any of those files you are unsure of into it. If after another month you find that you still haven’t used them, it is time to hit the Delete key. And if this is still too difficult, you can always make a Photo Disk in ACDSee and at least be able to get these files off of your hard drive. Here are directions on how to Make a Photo Disk .

That seems like a good start for us to do this week, don’t you?

Week Two Tasks:

1. Back Up and Optimize Database.
2. Clean up at least two Categories.
3. Delete any files that you know that you will never use.
4. Continue to tag any files. Spend about 15 minutes a day doing this.

If you have any questions or comments, you can post them at Photo Manager Challenges with Chris

See you next week!

Well, maybe “mistake” is too a harsh word. How about an “Airhead Moment?”

The other day, I was working on my computer and I was trying to save something to my C:\ drive. I got the little pop-up telling me that I had low disk space. So I try to clean up, compress and defrag my drive. Not happening. I only had 1% free space, way less than the 15% recommended for defragging.

I started deleted old documents, photos and so on, but it didn’t free up any significant amount of space. I am not sure what made me think about the back ups of ACDSee, but I am glad it occurred to me at one point. I went into my Local Setting Folder, and found man, many backups for ACDSee- over a year’s worth! I looked in my Version 9 Folder, and deleted all but the last four back ups. Then I went into Version 10 and did the same thing. I was able to free up over 25% of disk space, which has made my computer much happier!

What happens is that because ACDSee does not overwrite the back up data, it makes a new folder each time you back up. And since I am a compulsive backer-upper (Is that a word? ha ha!), I had lots and lots of folders.

From ACDSee’s Help File:

Backup location

It’s a good idea to consider where you back up your data, as well as how often. If you’re backing up to your hard drive, ACDSee creates a new folder for each day. This helps to avoid overwriting your backup, and gives you several increments from which you can restore. Backing up the database to a CD or DVD once a week will help protect you in case of hard drive failure. Also helpful is a monthly backup that is stored in a different physical location than your computer, such as a network drive.

To do this in Version 9, the default location is:

C:\Documents and Settings\yourusername\Local settings\Application Data\ACD Systems\Catalogs\90\ACDSeeBK

For Version 10, the default location is:

C:\Documents and Settings\yourusername\Local settings\Application Data\ACD Systems\Catalogs\100\ACDSeeBK

Here is a screen shot of where my folder is located:

Be careful that you only delete backup files. You do not want to delete the Default folder. This folder contains all your organizing information.

You should only delete as many back up folders as you feel comfortable with. I felt that four back ups was “safe” for me. ANd don’t forget it is a good idea to back up your database to a CD or DVD as well.

For more information of backing up your data, click here.