QOTD: Do you use Elements Organizer or How do you organize your kits?
 

I tried to use Adobe Elements Organizer for organizing scrap kits. First, I imported all the kits into Organizer and the created sooo many tags and "smart albums"- for exapmle, I had smart albums by designers, then seasonal, and travel. On my tags I had so many - flowers (of course), papers, greenery, banners, alpha, ribbons, tags, word strips, etc. But the tagging process took me sooooo long time since I was analyzing each kit individually. Well, I noticed that my library is not doing good because of the heavy load (or maybe my system is weak). Then I created new catalog, where I import ONLY previews of kits, and just tag them into few categories like seasonal, travel, by designer, by colors, then I have SEA/BEACH for sure. This way I can easily find kits similar to one theme. It's really really helpful for me. Then I just open few windows of different kits behind photoshop and drag-n-drop elements into layout. SO the question is DO you use Elements Organizer and how? OR how do you manage your kits?

I don't have an organizing program either. I keep my kits by designer in my folder. I keep previews of the kits in a seperate folder.

I used to use Pixa for organizing my kits and I had pretty much the same experience as you. After awhile it was just sooooo slow to load that I gave up on it. I'm assuming it's because I was adding more and more to it all the time?

Now I just use a "Kit" folder and have all my kits separated by designer or by collab. I change my folders to a preview of the kit and I tag it with anything I'd want to search by (color, theme, designer, if it has journal cards, etc). It's been working well for me for the past few years. :)

thank you all for your answers and support of my thread :o

The more I scrap I find myself not using anything but folders as all of you do. I guess it comes with experience and understanding that perfectionism is your enemy))

The extent of my organising is by store and designer. If I'm looking to use something beyond the main kit for my page I just use the windows explorer to search eg for a tag, button, flair etc. Or I might just search for kit previews to see which kits would fit well with the main one I'm working with.

I know that I would be too anal about tagging (blue, flower, realistic, designer, store, tatty, rolled) and I'd never have time for anything else.

It took me a long time to find and refine an organizational system that works for me, one that allows me to find what I need when I need it, but not spend all my time doing the organizing.

I use lightroom to process my photographs, so it made the most sense for me to use lightroom to organize my digital supplies. First, I quickly tag all the files in a kit with the store, designer, and kit name. Then I flag the preview images. I have a folder for each designer, and drop all the files for all their kits into that single folder. I can quickly isolate all the files for particular kit by searching on that kit name; having everything in one folder makes it easy to find elements from other kits that match the designer’s style.

Then I add detailed keywords to the preview images: color, theme, people, places, things, etc. That takes me less than 60-90 seconds per preview, thanks to the keyword hierarchy system in Lightroom.

I have a couple Smart Collections in Lightroom (all kits by Store, all templates, etc). When I need all my princess kits, I search that keyword and get all the previews. Only want the ones with purple? I add that to the search. Once I settle on a kit, I right click the preview and choose “Show in Explorer”. Quick access to the files, which I can then drag and drop into Photoshop as needed.

I timed myself today as I organized my DSD purchases. In 5 minutes, I tagged 3 kits and 5 template packs.