Spin-Off Mac Thread . . . Tags

[Lyd]

Okay Lynette. I want to hear all about Tags. It looks pretty cool. I downloaded the trial version. I want to know what keywords you actually use. How specific do you get with your tags? Do you tag your entire stash, or just particular items? Do you do your searches in Spotlight or the Finder Window or in the Tags Search? Fill me in chica!

[joelsgirl]

Yes. More please.

[strawberryredhead]

I think I missed something. I have a Mac. Do I need this? lol

[dana]

Originally Posted by strawberryredhead

I think I missed something. I have a Mac. Do I need this? lol

ditto!

[Nettio]

Tags is a program I had mentioned in the Mac thread. It's a program that will allow you to tag your files and then find them using Spotlight. I've been playing around with it for awhile as an option for organizing digi supplies on a Mac. You can check it out HERE - they have a screencast that explains what it's all about.

I'll be back in a little bit with a more through explanation of how I'm using it.

[Nettio]

Originally Posted by ltarbox

Okay Lynnette. I want to hear all about Tags. It looks pretty cool. I downloaded the trial version. I want to know what keywords you actually use. How specific do you get with your tags? Do you tag your entire stash, or just particular items? Do you do your searches in Spotlight or the Finder Window or in the Tags Search? Fill me in chica!

Do you tag your entire stash, or just particular items?
Right now I've just been tagging random things here and there to test out whether this is something worth investing my time in. But I don't think I'm going to try to tag my entire stash. I'll likely tag my favorite items and then focus on CT products since those are what I use most.

Ideally what I'd love to figure out is if there's a way to automate the tags using the file names so that you could run a script on a folder and it would search the file names for certain words (like say "ribbon") and then add the ribbon tag for you. That would be awesome.

I want to know what keywords you actually use. How specific do you get with your tags?
My whole reason for wanting to use Spotlight was so that when I was scrapping, I could just go up to the search bar and find what I needed. I don't want to have to open up another program and sort through a long list of tags. So I've been trying to keep my tags limited to just the types of things I'd search for off the top of my head.

So I have color tags and then fairly generic categories like Papers, Elements, Alphas, Kits, Templates, Flower, Ribbon, etc. Right now that works for me but if the categories become too big or it becomes hard to find things, I might break things down more. But if you're the kind of person who likes really specific tags, you can save your Spotlight searches as Smart Folders for any searches you do a lot. I have ones for Solid Papers and Flowers for example.

I don't bother tagging by designersince I can narrow down the products by designer just using the file name. I do have a SSD tag though so I can narrow down my results for just products sold here which comes in handy for TOTM layouts.

Do you do your searches in Spotlight or the Finder Window or in the Tags Search?
I primarily use the Spotlight search bar or occasionally a Finder Window. If you type "tag:" before your tag, like tag:ribbon, Spotlight will limit the items to just those items that have been tagged.

I don't bother using the Tags Tag Browser or their Enhanced Spotlight search because there is no way to view the results in Thumbnail view using either of them. Plus the feature I use most from the Spotlight bar is "Show All" and they didn't include that in their enhanced search. But by using either tag: in Spotlight or setting up Smart Folders you really never need to use their browser or search bar. It's a shame because both of those features could be way more powerful than they currently are.

But to end on a more positive note, what I find really cool about Tags is that it will work with any program that supports Applescript - that includes programs like Safari, Mail, Photoshop, iPhoto, etc.

So for example, if you're in Photoshop and have a flower or paper file open and you decide you just love it and want to tag it to find again, you can do that without leaving Photoshop. You just select the file in Photoshop, bring up the Tag window using the hot key and add your tags. Super easy.

You can also tag across programs so let's say you wanted to keep track of what you're doing for your monthly portfolio, you could create a Challenge#1 tag and then you could tag the Portfolio PDF you downloaded, tag the kit and photos you want to use in Finder and tag a link to your post in the portfolio thread using Safari. You could even set up a Smart Folder to collect everything for that specific challenge so you have it all in one place when you want to work on it.

Anyway, I hope that helps! If you have any other questions or anything, let me know. And if anyone decides they'd like to buy the program, The Unofficial Apple Blog did a short write up of Tags earlier this month and if you scroll to the bottom of the post HERE, there's a 15% off coupon good until the end of the month.

[Lyd]

Thanks so much Lynette! I'm going to play around with the demo for a few days and then decide if I want to buy it. Having the 15% off coupon definitely makes it that much more appealing, so thanks for that link.

[strawberryredhead]

Very cool!