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

[Swan82]

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?

[Saar]

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.

[KingsQueen82]

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.

[Swan82]

thank you all for your answers and support of my thread

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))

[fruitysuet]

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.

[angiekey]

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.