Organizing your Elements

When you download a digital element (and unzip it), you need some place to keep it.  Those kits add up pretty quickly and all of a sudden you have 114 different kits sitting in your downloads folder.

Different scrappers have different ideas about how your elements should be organized.  If you have a fabulous system for this would like to share in the comments of this post, feel free. 

Here's my top advice
:: Have ONE place that you keep ALL your digital scrapbooking stuff.  A folder can have several sub-folders in it, but you need to have one place where you KNOW all your stuff is
:: Organize first and foremost by designer, first name first.  (This is how they are listed in the stores.)  Keep the kits intact and keep the designer's Terms of Use WITH the kit.  Make sure the kit folder name has the designer's name in the folder if possible (for example: the kit I used to make the elements for this page?  I named the folder ShabbyPrincess_ShabbyCitrus.)

Here's an idea to easily find the kit you want to use: create an additional folder containing copies of just the previews of all the kit you have.  (Usually a preview will come with a kit that shows a good representation if not all the elements of a kit.  If one didn't COME with the kit, you can snag it from the designer's website by right-clicking on the picture and saving -- remember, we only right-click to save for good and legitimate purposes!!!)  If you keep a copy of the kit previews to all the kits you own in one folder, you can flip through THAT when you're trying to figure out what to do with a layout.  Then once you choose a kit, sort through your wonderfully organized files and grab it! 

(You can also keep a copy of the kit previews that you WANT to own, to make it easier to choose when you have extra money to go shopping.  Just be sure if the preview doesn't say where to buy them, change the file name to help you remember.)

Within a particular designer's folder -- if it's a designer I buy a lot from and who has a lot of different products -- I do even MORE organizing.  For example, Miss Mint not only sells great kits but she also has amazing Alpha sets, and stand-alone embellishment sets.  Here are some examples:   

   

I like for my folders to make sense to me -- I like all the alphas together, all the embellishment packs together, then all the kits together.  This way when I'm looking for a Miss Mint alpha, I don't have to search all over my Miss Mint folder (which is VERY full!)  So I change the file name of the kit -- instead of "MissMint_Alpha_Ripped Jean" I add an "A" to the beginning of the file name.  ("AMissMint_Alpha_Ripped Jean")  This way the folder will be at the front of the file names, alphabetically.  All the embellishment packs get a "B" in front of their name.  The kits naturally follow below them.  See example below.

If everything in your folder ever seems totally out of order, go to "View > Arrange Icons By > Name."

There are several programs available to help organize your files.  2022 update: Or there used to be.  I don't know.  I just don't happen to have any details about them. You can probably Google it :D

One last thing: BACK UP YOUR DATA!  This is SUCH an important part of the organizational process.  Computers crash.  Or get stolen!  Hard drives fail.  Back up on a regular basis, and don't use just one back-up source.  I use a second internal hard drive, plus an external hard drive.  (Gotta keep my bases covered!)

Comments

[Christina Bartholomew]

Good information, Jen! Those that use Photoshop Elements 3 Organizer to tag their elements and things might be interested in downloading a free tags file I have up on my website -- it saves the work of creating the tags & sub-tags and things. The link is here: http://members.networld.com/christina

The Organizer is SO cool.

[Rianne]

Great entry! I've tried many different ways to organize stuff, including wrong ones. I'll echo the sentiment of keeping kits together. I never used to do that with the freebie kits I downloaded and am now left with the mess of trying to figure out what elements from a particular designer are part of a kit and which ones aren't...

Currently my system is as follows: I have a folder called scrapbooking. In that folder I have three folders named inspiration, supplies and templates. Inspiration holds sketches and quotes and ads and other stuff to get inspiration from. Templates holds a lot of page division templates and such while supplies is the important folder where I store everything I dowload in.
I have that one subdivided in four folders:
paid kits
paid elements
free kits
free elements

Both pay folder and free kits have everything sorted on designer, and for the paid ones I also put the site I bought it at in the filename (in case of major stores like sbb or dsp). Free elements however has everything sorted on what it is. This because I only story single freebies here and organising that by topic instead of designer easifies (not a word but who cares :D) my searching for something.

I hope this all made sense and was useful in any way. Oh and by the way, Picasa is from Google itself; you can find it here:
http://picasa.google.com/index.html.

Rianne