Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
If you have a “pick of the week” you would like us to share on the show, please call and leave a voicemail or fill out the form below. (digi)
Steph, Katie, and Peppermint answer the questions you’ve been asking. How to decide printing a book or individual layouts; why designers don’t continue to sell their stuff when they retire; why designers retire; organizing and organization software.
[jwplayer config=”iskin Player” mediaid=”284″]
You can download this episode by right clicking and saving this link.
Joining the Discussion
Steph
Katie Nelson
Peppermint Granberg
Support Our Sponsors:
For the best deal in digital scrapbooking, become a member atTheDailyDigi.com
Picks of The Week:
Peppermint: flashcardmachine .com
Katie: simpledesktops.com
S: Turbo Collage for Android, iPhone, iPad, and Mac
I love this desktop site! I’m browsing right now for some new ones.
I’m also totally embarrassed about the state of my desktop and I’ve added “clean desktop” to my to-do list.
Oh my! Me too. I recently had to “archive” a few things off the desktop because I RAN OUT OF ROOM! (Deep breaths Katie and Peppermint!)
It’s making me twitch just thinking about it! LOL!
I love the simpledesktop site too. There are so many good ones to choose from.
I used to listen to your show while you were still under the Paperclipping umbrella, but I took off most of last year from the world of digiscrap to prepare for moving abroad. Now that I’m settled in my new life I’ve picked back up where I left off – which of course includes listening to your show again! I love to listen while I’m scrapping, I find it inspirational, not to mention hilarious. Anyway, I have two questions for you:
1. Do you have an archive of shows you did while you were still the “Paperclipping Digi Show?” I searched the site and I can’t seem to find them – and unfortunately I can’t check iTunes because I run Linux. It would be nice to be able to go back through old episodes or see if there’s anything I missed during my hiatus. I think that revisiting an episode a year down the road could give some new insight and perspective now that I’m in such a different place in my digiscrap journey.
2. Since I’ve jumped full force back into scrapping instead of taking it slowly, like I probably should have, I’m already starting to feel a twinge of creative burnout. Does this ever happen to you? Could you share some tips on how to prevent it, or how to keep that spark of inspiration flowing?
Thanks again for all you do. I know there are many of us out here in digiland who appreciate your efforts!
You can find the old shows here:
/digishow
I have found a direct correlation between the amount of stress in my life and losing my mojo. Quite often when the stress is high, the mojo is gone. If I take the time and force myself to scrap, starting with a template and just using some supplies I love, I start to feel the creativity coming back and I always feel better emotionally when I’m done too.
Here’s a couple of resources for you:
/finding-your-mojo/
/get-inspired-from-your-own-archives/
/where-does-inspiration-come-from/
/pds041-bombarded-by-inspiration/
Awesome! Thanks for the response. I’m off to PLAY!
I use Photoshop Elements Organizer – and though it can be slow at times (I have 80 000 images in there!) I love the smart albums etc.
As for writing the metadata, it does very well with digiscrap stuff (there are some bugs with geolocation and time on photos) and I’ve reimported my JPG papers, previews, templates and more several times. Just select all images and click File – Write Metadata (and go away for an hour or two!)
HOWEVER, with PNG files they don’t have a ‘closet’ as Kayla says and it is difficult to write the metadata to them. I found a tool that worked to create metadata within PNGs call PSEDB tool.
Sadly this tool doesn’t work with PSE9 and above, but it is handy for those worried about moving tags into another system.
The only way to make sure you tag elements (or other PNG files) reliably is to change them to another format that supports metadata (eg TIF as Kayla does).
If you are planning to stay with PSE though, you can be assured of tags being upgraded as you upgrade. I’ve used PSE6, 7, 8 and 10 and have never lost my tags.
PSE does have a backup facility, and there are other ways to backup your catalogue by copying your Catalog folder on your PC
You can read more about the technical stuff here:
http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/#_Writing_File_Metadata
I’m also doing a free workshop on Organizing in PSE next week! Anyone is welcome to come along and ask more hard questions there: http://www.anymeeting.com/PIID=EB54D882884E
Steph the link for your name is going to another design.
Thanks for letting us know, it’s all fixed now!
Hi there!
Have a lovely day. I am off to eat breakfast with me family now.
I am listening to your show right now while making Saturday morning breakfast… and you ladies crack me up when talking about how you organize your books!!! I print photobooks of my layouts and I just slap them in there randomly more or less – not caring when I made the layouts or what they are about – for me it is more…. “I want them printed instead of on my laptop and I don’t think anyone cares how they are organized”.
I have made specific books of holidays for example, but in general I don’t worry too much about these things – it is more important to get them OUT there so my family can actually SEE my layouts and they are not only for me to look at on my laptop.
I love how different we all are……
This is exactly how I do it as well! Generally slapping them in there when Shutterfly announces a sale!
I do break them up by child, but that is as far as I go. And I need to be better and organizing pages because I noticed a couple of duplicates in my last book!
There is also Windows Photo Gallerie Live in Vista or windows 7. It tags and captions which are kept in the metadata. It also has people tags but this does not go with the metadata, so I just used it to tag people then batch added the tag afterward in the descriptive tags. The PNG files can be tagged, but it is not added to metadata see above post on that. Just wanted to throw out that option too.
Peppermint, your pick is AWESOME!!! This is going to help my 3rd grader soooo much. You are a life saver. I can’t wait to share it with my daughters teacher. I think she will want to use it with the class. I can’t wait to share it with my friends too.
Thank you so much,
I try not to be a “Flashcard Mom” but sometimes a woman needs some flashcards!
Glad it’s useful to you.
Thanks for addressing my question about retiring designers and their designs on the show. I really appreciate how thoroughly you answered it! Everything you said made a lot of sense, and shed a lot of light on the business side of what is just a hobby for me. I’m sure lots of other listeners were enlightened as well.
I find this so interesting. I consider myself an event scrapbooker, first and foremost, telling our stories with lots of photos, (love Janet Phillips templates for this.) I scrap one post-bound family album per year: this includes a cover, word for the year, back to school, valentines, birthdays, anniversary, mother’s day, fathers day etc…all chronologically and because digi is so quick I am up to date in these, when something else happens like my oldest got his first car – goes in there too.
Then we all have our own album where I do more emotional specific Lo’s.
The children all have their own school albums, these are 3 ring so I can go back and add in a sportsday or dance recital if I feel like doing a full LO about that as opposed to just the overview of that year.
I have family vacations in their own albums as well.
I have another one for my “week in the lifes”, all three years in order.
Each child also has their own birthday albums where I put their birthday parties ( their actual birthdays would go in the year album)
I have considered the photobook option but living in Africa it is much too expensive and what would I do if I wanted to add in something or correct a typo? I can so identify with Katie in this – but you guessed that didn’t you?
Getting inspiration everywhere is easy when Parade (from the Sunday paper) hands it to me on page 19: My Story in Five Faces. The author tells the story of her life based on five photos of her at different ages. What a great idea! Thanks for reading my comment on this week’s show. I made my husband come listen to that part and he was very impressed (or a good actor!).
That’s a really interesting idea – my story in 5 faces. You could get a pretty comprehensive portrait of a person’s history that way, I’d imagine.
That is a cool idea!
Great show. I have primarily printed photo books, but the books all have a beginning and an end such as years in review. And photo books make great gifts for grandparents. I plan to start printing layouts for albums for heritage pages and a general family album since these will be on going projects.
After taking Kayla’s class I now tag is PSE organizer and use picasa for finding supplies when scrapbooking. As long as I write the meta data to the files in PSE I have no problems with viewing the tags/captions in Picasa. I find it much easier to tag in pse organizer than in Picasa, but I like to search in Picasa when scrapbooking. Lightroom is on my list for the future, but will probably be a few years out.
I’m a chronological scrapper (always have been) and I make a photobook every year with events, random life pictures, and I’m starting to add in more “story” pages too. It made me feel a bit twitchy to hear Steph and Peppermint talk about their extreme non-chronological methods.
Photobooks work really well for me because I do scrap in order and I like the pages to be in order as well. I think if I scrapped out of order, I would still want the pages to be in the album in order, so I would probably follow Shimelle’s method, described here:
http://www.shimelle.com/paper/1071/afternoon-craft-project-sorting-scrapbook-pages-into-albums/
If you’re looking for listener picks, here’s one I have found very helpful. I recommend the video tutorials at Designer Digitals. They post a new one every two weeks with a helpful tip about Photoshop/PSE. Here is the link to the blog category that contains all the videos:
http://blog.designerdigitals.com/index.php/C25/
First, I want to say I love your show! I started paper scrapbooking around 2004 and switched to digital around 2007. When I was paper scrapping I had a close friends that scrapped and with classes and crops, I had others that I could share my passion with. When I found digital scrapbooking in 2007, I was ecstatic. I could still create, it eliminated all the clutter and space issues, and if I only had 30 minutes to scrap, I could still be productive. But, with digital scrapping, I lost the paper scrapping community. As I’m sure you know, when I started there wasn’t near the resources available and the online digital scrapbooking community was just developing. I tried unsuccessfully to get friends of mine interested in digital scrapping, as well. I found myself loving something that I couldn’t share with anyone, since I live in a rural area. I have scrapped very little in the past year, in part due to so much going on in my life and having very little free time, but also partially because I had lost some of my motivation because I had no one to share my love and enthusiasm for digital scrapbooking with. When my son got a new computer for Christmas and I started seeing so much about PSE 10, I thought I would like to get back into scrapbooking. I bought the program, subscribed to the The Daily Digi, and found the Digi Show. With the Digi Show I have found that community that I lost when I quit paper scrapping and I want to say “Thank You!!” I love the show and it keeps me inspired and motivated and I have learned about so many products and resources to make my scrapping easier and more productive. I look forward to the new show every week and listen to most of them more than once, just in case I missed something the first time. With all of that being said, I do actually have a question. I listened to you talk about Lightroom and I am now seriously considering purchasing the software. I use PSE10 to scrap and right now I only have my supplies organized in a folder system. But with the Daily Digi subscription and all of the awesome coupons, my stash if growing quite rapidly! I am considering Lightroom to organize my supplies, but I have also been reading about the photo editing capabilities of the software. I wondered if any of you use it to edit your photos, or just to organize your supplies? Do you use it to organize your pictures, as well? PSE10 has facial recognition software, but I haven’t had a chance to play with that, so maybe that would be a better option? The description of Lightroom says it has “world class noise reduction”. Is this true? I frequently have noise issues with my indoor sports photos and I would love to have a software that can help with this. It would be great if you could discuss the software a little more in depth on one of your shows. Thanks so much for the show and keep up the great work!!
For me, Lightroom’s primary responsibility is managing my photo library. I import all of my photos from my cameras directly into Lightroom and that’s where I organize them, keyword tag them and do some minor editing. I would say that photo editing is a close second for me to the photo library management (I don’t do a ton of editing on my photos, but I do adjust exposure, contrast and white balance in Lightroom almost exclusively.) Scrapbooking organization is a distant, WAY DISTANT, third in my case. I have my previews tagged in there purely because it’s nice to just have it all in one photo – but my main use for Lightroom is to use it as it was originally intended, to manage and edit my photos.
I bought Lightroom for the photo editing purposes and that’s still my favorite use. I also love how easy it is to organize photos and I use it now to keyword my previews. Here are some posts that might help:
/steph-katies-lightroom-showdown/
/lightroom/
I would encourage you to try the free trial to see if you like it. You can always do a 30 day trial of adobe products on their website. You are in luck right now because Lightroom 4 is in beta testing so you can play with it for free a little longer http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom4/
silly question off the topic of this show… I am traveling (long flight to CA from Pittsburgh) I am all caught up on the digi show, now I would love to go back and hear shows from when you were under the paperclipping umbrella. Is that possible? How can I do that?
Steph posted that a few comments above yours:
You can find the old shows here:
/digishow
I use PSE Organizer as well. When I first started digi scrapping, I downloaded every freebie I could find, and pulled all the kits apart into folder (i.e flowers, ribbons, word art, etc), but it was impossible finding things using a folder system. So about 6 months ago, I spent 4 days uploading everything to PSE organizer and tagging them by embellishment type, kit and designer. It was a nightmare, but everything was where I wanted it.
A few weeks ago, I started noticing the files were linking up between PSE Org and my folders, and I also started realizing that I had made the transition to being more a kit scrapper, due to time constraints imposed by my law school schedule, than someone who wanted to search for a ribbon here, and a flower there. I’d honestly rather be scrapping than searching when I find myself with a couple extra minutes. Plus it made it a nightmare to do kit credits. So this weekend I reorganized everything. I put all my supplies back together in folders by kit and designer, deleted a ton of stuff that I realized I was not going to use (even if I had bought it), then reloading everything back into PSE Org and retagging by kit/designer. Now I can browse in PSE Org by kit and see everything all at once, rather than clicking folder to folder. My only complaint is that you can’t really pull the files from PSE Org to PSE 9 without PSE Org changing the date of the file or it slowing my comp waaaaay down. Also, and this may be because it doesn’t run as well on a Mac as it does on a PC, bit crashes a lot, and moves REALLY slow when I have both it and PSE 9 open together. I honestly use it just to browse through the kits visually than a true organization tool. When I really have some money to invest, I am going to move into Lightroom or something else for my supplies.
I have a question about the Digi Files though. I do weekly layouts for what I call Project 2012 (what an interesting name, eh?). I am trying to do a layout a week just documenting the week, or something significant that happened (we are spending our last 6 months in our current state before we move to Nashville, and I graduate law school etc, so I thought this was a significant year to document and be able to look back on). I often use a Digi Files kit in one or more of them and sometimes post the layout to my blog. However, sometimes I use the kit before it is revealed on The Daily Digi. Would you prefer that I wait to post my layout, if I do, on my blog until that kit/designer has been revealed? It is important to me that I link to everyone’s designs when I post something but I don’t want to step on any toes!
Sorry so long winded
re: Tagging
If you are a MAC user, Quicksilver is a way to look up and tag files using just a few keystrokes. I’m not big on tagging individual elements, but I am a big fan of Quicksilver in all I do.
Commenting about Biograffiti (Molly) – I totally took advantage of downloading her product. I found out about it through Oscraps and have seen it on Pinterest. As a consumer I think it is an AWESOME deal and a great way to get her name out (unfortunately it won’t help in her case). Just like the idea with the dailydigi. I’m not sure about the fairness with other designers, but if all designers did that every once and a while, it would be a great way to get their name out (and might crash the site however).
Totally unrelated to topic, but I know Steph has a Lynda.com subscription and is trying to learn how to how to use an Apple computer so she can communicate better with those who use Apple Products. Lynda.com has a new class called Switching from Windows to Mac (2012).
Leslie
I love you more than you will ever know for sharing that!!! It’s still blowing my mind. I’m waiting to put PSCS on my Mac until CS6 comes out. Once I get PS and Lightroom on there, I’m sure I will spend a lot more time on it and become best buddies. I was helping a friend the other day and we couldn’t get a photo to clip to a template in her PSCS. Who knew it was the apple key + g instead of option+alt+g or anything else!? Took us a while, but we got it figured out!
Leslie and Steph. I am a school-librarian-media-specialist (whatever you want to call us) and I made the switch very reluctantly because I just didn’t want to assoc. myself with apple users! Ha! My boss got me to switch and I was scared about the learning curve.
2 weeks later I got it down and began to teach other reluctant teachers technology. I am soo glad I did.
Steph, if you are motivated to learn, you can totally learn yourself just by doing. The apple website is a good place to start – that is where I went first. Youtube or switchtoamac.com are also helpful. Start with understanding how files are organized, how to use finder, and print out some shortcuts.
I will never again buy a PC – not into having computer problems. My boss would be proud
Another option for tagging for Windows 7 users. You can add tags to the meta data right through the file explorer windows. I have my supplies organized in folders by designer and then the kit. (Been working this way for years) I love not having to open another program to tag. In the past the other program would take up memory I needed for my Paint Shop Pro. I have a faster computer now but still perfer not needing another program open. Plus if I do open Window Photo Gallery the tags show up as they are in the megadata.
We just purchased LR for my hubby’s photo needs so who know it might convince me to change eventually.
Yes! I have Windows Vista (or maybe XP…I don’t know!) and you can do the same thing there, too. I love how it automatically writes the tags to the metadata. Also, as a big Picasa fan, I have to say that Picasa automatically writes tags to metadata also, in exactly the same way that Windows does.
Sarah DG
I’m listening right now. I love you guys. I have always been a paper scrapper and recently went digital. I have cleaned most of my paper supplies out and have either sold them or given them away. I want to join a forum and was wondering what forums you belong to?
Thanks so much!
Hi Shannon
Not to speak for the girls on the show…
but the biggest forums is DigiShopTalk.com – they have 1000s of layouts going up there a day, and you may like to check out your favourite store.
I hang out a Scrapbookgraphics.com forum – smaller community there where you can get to know other scrappers
I have listened to every one of your shows from the beginning when you were part of Paperclipping. They are enjoyable, relaxing, fun and I have learned so much. I have many shows marked as favorites so I can listen again and again.
My question today is not regarding a specific show, but I would like to request that you talk more about clean and simple scrapbook pages, and also collage type pages (your pick of Turbo Collage reminded me of this). While I enjoy looking at the pages with only 1 or 2 photos and lots of stuff on them, this is not my personal style. I would love to see and hear about how folks use all the beautiful papers and embellishments to “dress up” the more clean and simple pages. I am also a Daily Digi member and would also like to see more examples of pages with multiple photos. I understand that you want to showcase the products, but I think many products will also look great with more simple, linear page designs.
You are all terrific and I look forward to listening to the shows each week! Thanks!
Andrea
When I was listening to Katie talk about this week’s sponsor – the Daily Digi – I kept waiting for her to say “but wait! there’s more!” Love your excitement.
Awesome
I really feel that way! lol!
Hi there I am so delighted I found your webpage, I really
found you by mistake, while I was researching on Askjeeve for something else, Regardless I
am here now and would just like to say thanks a lot for
a incredible post and a all round exciting blog (I also love
the theme/design), I don’t have time to look over it all at the moment but I have bookmarked it and also included your RSS feeds, so when I
have time I will be back to read much more, Please do keep up the awesome job.
Also visit my blog: garcinia cambogia reviews