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The best thing about the PSE 3 Organizer is that you can customize it to fit
your own needs. The following is just how I organized my files; you can do this
however you like, using my steps as a rough framework.
So here's my screen I see when I open the Photo Browser in PSE3.
You can click
on the thumbnail to see a bigger image. Here's how you can go about setting it
up yourself. First, if you've already installed PSE3, your organizer probably
automatically imported all the pictures you have on your entire hard drive. You
want to get rid of that and start over with a clean slate. So select them all
and hit delete (and for heaven's sake DO NOT click the box that says check here
to delete from hard drive -- repeat DO NOT ever, ever do this unless you are
absolutely sure that's what you want to do. I prefer to manually delete always.
)
So now you've got your blank slate, time to start creating tags. Use your own
knowledge of how you scrap to create tags. For example, I have a "Backgrounds"
category, then the sub-categories are plaid, dotted, circles, stripe. These tags
all make sense to me, but some of you are probably asking what the difference is
between dotted and circles. Don't worry, I know. So when I hit the backgrounds
tag, I'll get all my backgrounds. If I just hit the dotted tag, I'll just get
the backgrounds I've marked as dotted. Cool, huh? Other categories I have are
"Accents" which includes anything fun that I might want to use as a doo-dad,
embellishment, or finishing touch. Under accents, I have a tag for bottlecaps,
paper clips, stamps, labels. Other categories, with sub-categories in
parenthesis:
Borders
Buttons
Eyelets and Brads
Journaling ~here I put anything I might use for journaling... strips, mats,
blocks~
Ribbons and Fibers (printed text, tag ties)
Slide Mounts
Tags (circle tags, jewelry tags)
Word art (accent phrases, dymo labels) ~ I put all kinds of stuff here. That's
why the "accent phrases" category. Anything with a word on it that doesn't fit
anywhere else gets lumped under accent phrases.
Kit previews
Overlays (Grunge/Inking, Stitching)
Then I do colors. Y'all can figure those out for yourself. Finally, I have
events/themes. I only tag items by event/theme if it is screaming "Halloween" or
"Christmas." I don't necessarily tag them that way just because they're red and
were in a Christmas kit. My final large category is Photos. I just lump it all
in under photos. I don't have those sub-divided and tagged by event or person,
but you can do that, too.
Then I set up collections (see the collections tab) for all my favorite
designers. So if I know I want a ribbon by Jen, I click on her name and it
brings up everything I have of hers (which is not an insignificant amount).
OK, that done, you're ready to start tagging. My advice? Do it either all at
once and push your scrapping aside (and set aside a week or so), or do it in
small bursts. 15 minutes at a time, several times a week (if not a day). To do
this, go to File>Get Photos>From Files or Folders. Point it to your first kit
folder. Your folder contents will be imported into PSE and a screen will open
with just those kit contents. First thing: Select everything. Then right click
on one of the selected items. A menu will come up and you should select "Add
caption to selected items" Then type in the designer's name and the kit name.
Later you'll find a background you really like and you'll wonder what else was
in the kit. If you add the caption, you can go to Find>By Caption and type in
the kit name and have an entire kit pop up on screen. So you want to do this.
When I first started I was also entering descriptions like "bottlecap" or "brad"
but I finally figured out to just add the tags and make my life easier. Much
easier to tag then to type individual captions. And here's some tricks, which
you probably know but I didn't at the beginning. You can select items in a row
by clicking on the first one, holding down the shift key, and clicking on the
last item in the row. So if you have 4 or 5 backgrounds in a row, use this
trick, then drag the background tag onto one of the selected items and it will
apply to all of them. Also, you can hold down the control key to select items
that are not next to each other. So if you're tagging all the red elements in a
kit, you can press control and then go through the entire kit, selecting only
the red elements. Then drag the red tag onto one item and you've got them all.
So easy!
The other thing you will need to do is change your watch folders. Otherwise, PSE
will keep importing all your picture. So go to File>Watch Folders and remove
everything from that box in there. You may still get messed up because the
editor wants to automatically add all .psd files to the organizer, but if you
watch when you're saving .psd files, there is a box you can uncheck if you don't
want your layouts in the organizer (which I don't).
Hope this helps you get started! If you have further questions, feel free to
post them on the PSE board, or PM me through the forums.
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