I'm really frustrated! I hardly ever use elements on my lo's because I find them so hard to find. I've gone through most of the elements on SBB and downloaded the ones that I think might want. That works well. The problem comes when I'm doing a layout and I want a specific element. How the heck can I find it in cyberspace? I bought a clipart cd, but wouldn't you know it, I lost it. Can anyone offer me and suggestions?

if you keep all your elements in a folder in my documents called elements or something like that I keep all mine by creator and site like all the sbb elements > ali amy kristie members etc... and then sometiems i'll seperate those too if there are a lot like a lot of papers or backgrounds. even if you have them burned to disk you can use the serach function of your computers operating system. your search will be dramatcially faster if you keep the elements in one area and only search the area they are in just type a key word like fiber or stencil or blue and see what pops up. if you don't remember how you sorted them or have so many this is an easy way to search them out but it's so much easier to keep them in one place

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DH is finally home! God Bless the troops that replaced him

I use Photoshop Album. I have tags for fibers, papers, letters/words, metal, etc. So I import the elements into PSA and then tag them (often with more than one tag) so I can find them later. I also add a caption to each element that says the creators name and where I downloaded the element from. These captions are searchable too.

In PSA, you can see a thumbnail of the element or click on it to see a full screen version. Some of the PNG files don't show up too well, but other than that I like handling my elements this way.

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Stacy
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Stacy-

Have you had problems with PSA complaining about files being too large to import?

-Barb

Is Photoshop Album something that comes separately from Photoshop 7.0? It sounds like a pretty good program.

Actually, though, I was wondering more where to find elements on the internet. For example, right now I'm looking for a camera element, which I don't have on my hard drive. Do most people buy elements or use free ones, and either way, how do you find specific elements on the net?

Bonnie

Barb- I haven't had any problem with file size when importing to PSA. I've imported JPG, PNG, and PSD files.

Bonnie- Yes, PSA is a seperate program but it works well with PS and PSE. Sorry to misread your post though! LOL I am mostly a freebie person, becuase though I have downloaded tons of elements I don't use that many of them. It's kind of the same problem I had with paper scrapping. I horded things and didn't know when to use them. I recently wanted a bandana element so I searched all over. Scrapbook-elements does have a search feature you just have to hope that the creators used the same word you're using in your search. I couldn't find a bandana element and ended up creating my own. Then about a week later I saw that one of the element designers just came out with one. LOL I have great timing. Oh and I'd swear that I've seen a camera element somewhere, but I can't think of where right now. I'll post if I find it. HTH now that I'm in sync with your question.

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Stacy
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Stacy, I hadn't even thought of using PS Album to store my elements. I'm gonna give it a try. Do you eventually put them on CD and then delete them? I've been doing that with my photos and it still leaves a thumbnail and let's me know which CD they're on. I wonder if I could send them to Album from the file I have them in already on my hard drive?.....hmm.

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Kerri

Kerri- I'm spoiled. I have a REALLY large hard drive (~140 Gigabytes!) and it's less than a quarter full. So right now I'm not burning anything to CDs for storage reasons. But you definitely could.

I've been trying to figure out how to have my elements available for my laptop when I'm going to a crop. So I've been trying different methods of moving elements to CDs to use on the laptop. I haven't come up with a great solution yet though.

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