Lightroom Class: Keywording and Staying Organized

We're getting to the point in the class where I don't have extremely professional content.  So take it with a grain of salt and pretend you and I are sitting at my computer and I am teaching you my favorite tips and tricks.  This way there are no false expectations. :)

Today's video covers a lot and is all over the place with tips and tricks.  The short of what is covered: Importing new kits into your catalog after you've done your first BIG import, Keywording beyond designers and kits, and a few other extraneous details.

Teacher's Notes

After teaching photo organization and now taking on supply organization - they are two very different subjects.  With photos you have deleting and editing added to the equation and with supplies there is very little deleting and no editing so it boils down to keywording....lots of keywording - which can be very monotonous.

The reality is there is no magic pill to get your supplies organized.  It takes consistent effort and a vision of what you want and why you want it.  Sometimes it is so hard to stay motivated but I can tell you from experience it is more than worth it.

I'm leaving the rest of this week open to give you time to really work on your supply catalog - keywording, combing through, etc.

Next week we will talk about searching.  Or in other words using the capabilities of Lightroom to find exactly what you need - showing you what you will be able to do with all these keywords...

Comments

[Susan]

HI Kayla, Question - and I apologize if you discussed this and I missed it - After you are done with all you keywording - do you move the kit folder out of the Downloads folder and under the Designer name - I am guessing you do but wasn't sure if you had a tip on how to do that. Do you do it in LR or in the folder in your OS (Windows explorer or whatever the MAC one is called)?

[Kayla Lamoreaux]

This video shows exactly how you do it - http://www.digiscrap101.com/2011/03/lightroom-class-keywording-designer-kits-and-batch-renaming.html

I actually move the contents of each kit into the designer folders so all my items are stored in designer folder after they have been keyworded by designer and kit. With my new kits coming in I do all the keywording before I move the contents over to the Designer folder. I move everything in Lightroom.

The above video link will take you step by step and even show you what to do if your designer uses several same filenames in different kits. hth!

[Susan]

I get it now - thanks for repeating yourself.

[Carlaskipper]

Ooooo I found something that really helps me speed up some of my tagging and wanted to share. I found myself getting bogged down with colors. I'm pretty picky and was trying to tag each paper and element for all of the colors used but it was taking so long and trying to figure out which point to stop was a real challenge. Now for the tip, I shrunk my thumbnails down to get 9 across and saw that the base colors really POPPED! I have my color keyword list open right next to my library and go right down the color list, tagging each of the main colors. Then I finish up with the tagging details for the papers and elements by blowing up each item starting at the top and working my way down. I can spot check the colors while adding the rest of the tags. It's probably cut off about 25% of my tagging time and I don't have to stress over where to stop with the colors. Hope this helps someone else!
-c-

[Carlaskipper]

Hi Kayla I have a why question. If everything is getting tagged with minimum designer name and kit name, why do you move the items into big individual designer folders? Why not put everything into one BIG digiscrap folder? I know this system is highly personalized but I'm curious if there is some technical logic behind it. It seems if everything is tagged, separate folders on the hard drive wouldn't be necessary.
Thank You!
-c-

[Kayla Lamoreaux]

Great thought - I was originally intending to do that but so far I haven't because of PDF files and brush files - it just seemed it would be crazy trying to hunt those down when lightroom doesn't organize them - but time will tell. :)

[Kayla Lamoreaux]

Great idea! :)

[ava-j]

Thanks for the tip, I'm going to do just that when I get around to tagging. I just know I'm going to stress about each color paper and element!

[Carlaskipper]

I found the coolest thing and wanted to share but wasn't quite sure which post to share it on. I'm still working on tagging all of my scrapping supplies and keep running into "white" things; e.i. overlays, word art. Since there is no way to change the white thumbnail background, I came up with a nifty trick. I open the white item in Photoshop then add a plain background layer. I save this as a layered TIFF file and reimport to LR. VOILA! Now I can see all of my overlays and word art without changing the original colors. Now for the question, is there a way to batch process these files to automatically add a black background layer and then save as a layered TIFF? Thank you again for this GREAT class Kayla!!!
-c-

[Kayla Lamoreaux]

This is cool Carla - let me see what I can do! :) Thanks!!