ACD See organization tips?

My categories are pretty detailed. I do take the extra step and tag a lot of things by color because I find I look for things that way. (I need a little something orange over here in this spot...) I have papers with a lot of subcategories like floral, dots/circles, stripes, plaid, with text, lined etc. I have a fastener category, a notions category for ribbons, bows, stitching, a word art category with alpha, word art and quotes, photo accessories with frames, masks, mats etc and an embellishment category with lots of sub categories. I have a template category with size subcategories and number of photo spot categories. I also have it tagged by store. Then in a whole separate section I tag by theme, season, sport, art journal, holiday, etc.

Lots of people only tag their previews. I say think about how YOU look for things and tag that way so it is custom tailored for you. Maybe you only tag the papers, the flowers, the word art and buttons if that's how you look for stuff. Also, don't be afraid to keep tweaking your system as you progress, it will only make it better.

Hope that helps.

 

First of all I definitely recommend using Designer and Store designations. Makes it easier to find that "one kit by _____" that you need. Or if you are doing a challenge at a certain store you know you are using product from that store. I didn't go into colors, patterns, stripes, solids or those minute details. I did do flowers, ric rac, chevrons. Things that are "go to" items for me.

 

Right now I'm just tagging previews, and only my Lilypad kits so far. I make sure that the preview is renamed with the designer's name and the product name. If it's a collab I decide which name to put first depending on who I'm most likely to look for the kit under (ex. if one of the designers is someone that I CT for I'll put that name first). I sort everything alphabetically so it makes it easy to find the kits by a certain designer.

I do want to go through and tag stuff that I look for often that aren't always included in kits such as staples and brads...just to find those elements a little easier. Also, in the past I've tagged the Aas in an alpha since not all alphas have their own preview.

 

I also do the one's too so that I know if it includes numbers.

 

What a great idea...I'm going to start doing that as well.

 

If an alpha doesn't have a preview, I build a contact sheet in ACDSEE. Just select them all and go Create -> Contact sheet. Then I tag that as "alpha" and if it has numbers I tag "numbers", too.

 

I just had to re-tag my stash after moving to a Mac. I kept it a lot simpler this time. I used to have lots of subcategories. I also used to tag everything by designer - but I haven't decided whether I want to do that yet. Maybe I will for my CT designers. I also grouped a lot more stuff this time around - ribbon, ric rac, trim are all lumped together, for example.

I am not sure if it's because I'm working on a Mac or if the program's just gotten a lot easier, but ACDsee tagging works so much faster now! I love it! I do miss the image basket though. That was my favorite thing for scrapping.

 

For designer, I just select all the items and put the designer in as the "author". Works perfectly.

 

Well it's already in a folder by designer name. My stuff is organized by designer.

But by tagging them as author... lets say I'm doing a layout for Allison and the kit doesn't have a button and I want a button (you can tell this is fictitious already, I think). I can search my button tags, then scroll down to the Allison section (or at the top since they're alphabetical) and then I'm using a button from the same designer rather than some willy nilly button from some other fly-by-night designer like One Little Bird or something.

 

I only tag designers if I CT for them. I tag TLP kits because I keep telling myself I'm going to do the challenges here since I've decided I'm going to make this my digi home. I've never gone so far as to tag by color but I could see how that would be helpful. I do tag some "themes". Winter & Christmas are one category, Travel, School, Birthday, etc.

 

"fly by night" + One Little Bird... I found that hilarious for some reason.

 

This isn't quite what you're asking, but I took this class on ACDSee at Jessica Sprague before Kayla moved it to her site. (Now it's free.). It helped me a ton, though I do think I need to dial back the number of categories I use... Thought I would share! http://www.kaylalamoreaux.com/creatively-organized-in-acdsee/

 

I was pretty proud of it.

 

You're welcome! I went back through the notes a little when I posted this and relearned a few things myself, so it helped us both!

 

My organization system is pretty simple and "high-level". I only tag previews now which is a huge time-saver for me. I tag like this:

STORE -> Designer Names
PRODUCT -> Alphas / Kits / Templates / Elements

Under some of them, I have sub categories, like:

Elements -> Arrows / Birthdays / Borders / Brushes / Butterflies / Christmas / Doodles / Fasteners / Flowers / Frames / Hearts / Journal Spots / Masks / Misc / Paint / Ribbon / Stars / Stitches / Word Art

When a designer moves stores, I just select all their tagged previews and "untag" the old store and tag the new store. Takes 2 seconds.

Don't forget to embed the tags into the metadata from time to time. You can do it by Tools > Embed ACDSee MetaData.