As a recap you might want to read this article on how I set up my Category Drawers digitally in Photoshop Elements.  Now while Elements lets you set up sub-categories and keywords at different levels, it turns out that when you write them to the files, that they are not hierarchical at all. (And of course, if you don't write them to the files, you won't have any at all).

This means that when you read them in Bridge, they are all jumbled up because they are sorted alphabetically by keyword, and the categories are actually ignored.  To some people this is OK, but in the Library of Memories this is not helpful.

Bridge can support Hierarchical keywording which is just what you need for the LOM system.  To check it is switched on, select Edit, Preferences, Keywords.  I suggest that you uncheck the "automatically apply parent keywords", and check the other two boxes (Write and Read hierarchical keywords).

So I had to look for a way to bring those hierarchies over from Elements to Bridge.  So this is what I did.

1. First you need to open Elements Organizer and make sure that your categories/keywords are all cleaned up, no duplicates etc.  You cannot have 2 tags the same even if they are in different categories.  To fix this, rename the tag to incorporate it's parent category so that the duplicates are now unique.

2. Use the Edit, Write Keyword Tag and Properties Info to file function to ensure that all the keywords are written in the metadata of your files.  You will need to do a Ctrl+A to select All before chosing to do this.  This process can take a really really long time in Elements so be prepared to walk away from the computer for an hour or two.

3. Next open a spreadsheet program (Excel, Works, whatever).  Starting with the top of your LOM categories (in my case People) open up your categories and sub-categories in the Organizer so you can see them all.  Back in the spreadsheet, start typing in each category/tag vertically in column A.  I had around 200 entries by the time I was done.  Phew!

4. Save your spreadsheet if you haven't already!

5. In your spreadsheet program, select File, Save As, and choose a text document (.txt) format with tab delimitation.  In Works this looks like Text & Tabs.

6. Now open Bridge CS4.  You are probably on the default "Essentials" view.  Select the "Metadata" view.  You should have a Keywords pane on the right side of the screen.

7. If there are any keywords displaying in the Keywords pane, right click on them to remove them from the keywords list. You can select multiple keywords if necessary.  It is best to start from scratch to avoid confusion.

8. In the keywords pane, on the right top corner is a drop down menu icon.  Click on it and select Import.  Navigate your way to the .txt file you saved earlier.  And select it, click Ok and import it into Bridge.  You will eventually see your keywords show up in a list.  This list appears alphabetically and is jumbled because there is no hierarchy, all tags are at the top level.

9. Using "drag & drop" mouse technique, go about recreating the same structure you had in Photoshop Elements.  Simply drag the sub-categories onto the top level categories, and the keywords onto their parent categories.

Now when I go to a photo, I can see the keywords with their correct hierarchy, a la Library of Memories.

I've written several tutorials about using Photoshop Elements for the Library of Memories system taught at BigPictureScrapbooking.com and detailed in the book "Photo Freedom" by Stacy Julian.

As a LOM 2009 alumni, I get to take the course for free again this year.  This is just as well because I never did finish "everything" in the course.  To recap, I organized my photos, created my cold storage, my binders etc all in PSE and even created some layouts with my newly organized photos.  But every organization system needs an overhaul once in a while and taking the course again this year is an opportunity to take a fresh look at what I've been doing, and how it can be improved (or not).

One big change for me since last year, is Photoshop CS4.  I purchased Photoshop CS4 back in July of last year.  It was a great deal as part of the Wacom tablet owners program, you can get a full version of Photoshop CS4 for $299 USD.  Anyway, I have to admit that I haven't fully made the leap from PSE to PS CS4.  This mainly boils down to the high comfort level I have with PSE7 Editor over the newly designed Photoshop Editor CS4.  The second reason is that my photos are currently organized in the PSE7 Organizer.

For those that aren't aware, Photoshop CS4 comes with it's own organizer called Bridge.  Bridge isn't a database driven organizer (like PSE Organizer, Lightroom, ACDSee).  It is simply a powerful file browser, more like the File Explorer in Windows or iPhoto on a Mac.  And I've been a little put off by the process of figuring out a new workflow for my photo organization/editing.

But a new year is a new year, and I'm feeling inspired, so I've embarked on the journey of switching my workflow from PSE7 to Photoshop / Bridge CS4 and I'm going to document the process, through in some tutorials and (hopefully) you'll follow me on this journey.

More to come....

I've been getting a few "Library of Memories" questions from people wanting to do a digital version of this system originally developed by Stacy Julian and published in the book "Photo Freedom". I have been responding to their comments by leaving my own comments on those posts. You can read all my Digital Library of Memories posts here.

However, I haven't documented my workflow so here it is:

I use Photoshop Elements 7 for scrapbooking and organizing my digital photos (including those I've scanned) but not for organizing my digital scrapbook supplies (I use ACDSee Pro 2).


My workflow is to find photos in Elements using my LOM Digital Storage Binders (smart albums) or my LOM Category Drawers (tags) and then select "Full Edit" which open them into the Elements Editor photo bin.

I then go into ACDSee Pro 2 and use my categories to find the supplies I need, then select "Edit" (I have configured my default editor to be Elements Editor). This opens the supplies into the Elements Editor photo bin.

So now all my photos and supplies are sitting in the photo bin under the editor work area where I can see them all at the same time. I create a new document in the editor work area and drag my photos and supplies into the new document.

This workflow is efficient with only two programs open (Elements and ACDSee Pro).

Note: I have heard that there can be problems with using Elements to manage your scrapbooking supplies because of the huge quantity of supplies and the fact that Elements will generate a thumbnail for everything in its catalog (basically the system would grind to a halt). That is why I've opted to use ACDSee Pro to manage the supplies.

At the top are my smart album "binders" which are divided into quarters and only containt the 2 star or higher rated images. I have also chosen to put my completely digital pages into their own album.

Underneath, I have my keyword tags "categories drawers" which enable me to find any photo (everything is tagged). You can use the Find, Find Untagged Items function to make sure all photos have been tagged at least once.

The imported keyword tags represent new photos that have been tagged in another application and where the given tag does not match an existing one in Elements. This doesn't happen very often but I check to make sure there are no photos in there every once in a while.

The printed/scrapped tag is given to an image once it has been printed for paper scrapping or scrapped digitally. This tag is so that I can avoid re-scrapping the same photo as it alerts me to that fact, although I can choose to scrap it again if I want to.

I've noticed a few misunderstandings on the LOMGroup at Yahoo Groups concerning Photoshop Elements which I've addressed there but want to address here too.

First is the myth that keywording/tagging in Elements 5/6 cannot be transferred to other applications. Wrong! Keywording/tagging is very easily transferred although Elements does not do it automatically (neither do some other popular programs such as ACDSee).

To write your keywords/tag info:
1. Select File menu.
2. Select Write Keyword and Tag Info to Photos.

Photos in jpg, tiff, psd format will then be written to with the new information in the IPTC keywords field which can be read by any other IPTC compatible program (Bridge, Lightroom, ACDSee, Elements, etc).

Second, if you have an older version of Photoshop which didn't ship with an organization tool called Bridge, there are some cheap/free solutions for you to keyword/tag your photos.

Free
Windows Vista Photo Gallery allows you to keyword your photos.
Mac users can use iPhoto.

Cheap
ACDSee Photo Manager is $50 and allows you to tag and sort your photos.
Photoshop Elements (around $99) also allows tagging (as well as editing).

There probably other solutions, but these are the ones I am familiar with and can be used easily/quickly.

One of Stacy's optional extra's are Cold Storage Photo Boxes. She removes photos that have remained unscrapped for years into boxes for long term storage without bogging down her storage binders or her category drawers.

In a digital world I comtemplated the necessity of doing this when I could simply filter out the less worthy photos by rating them lower or sorting by date. However, I figured if you had 1000s of photos that fell into this category you might want to archive them off of your hard drive to save space. So here is my plan for doing this.

In Photoshop Elements 6 there is an option to archive photos to CD. Simply select the photos you want to archive then use this feature. The photos are moved to the CD/DVD and removed from the hard drive. Elements keeps a thumbnail of the image and marks this image with a flag that indicates you need to retrieve the CD to edit/print the full size image.

When doing this I will archive one year at a time and create a CD/DVD label that has the year but also opens to show a bulleted list of events/themes of whatever is on the disc.


Photo Credit: Taken from "The Organized and Inspired Scrapbooker" - Wendy Smedley & Abbey Garvey

The advantage to doing this in Elements is simply to keep the thumbnails and still be able to search for a file. Bridge and Lightroom both give you the ability to export files and you can simply copy them to the CD/DVD. Lightroom will continue to reference the original location in its catalog and display thumbnails. However, if you try to use a photo it will tell you that the photo is missing from the referenced location and prompt you for a new location at which point you can tell it to look on the CD/DVD you used.

Stacy's 3rd essential item are her Library Albums, this is where her completed layouts are stored. Stacy's LOM albums are divided into the four categories: People, Us, Places, Things.

Once my layouts are created in Photoshop Elements then I print them usually at Costco in the 18x12 size. The neat thing about this size is that you can print 1 12x12 and then 3 4x6 photos on the remaining 6x12 strip. I insert these 12x12 layouts into my albums.

My albums aren't quite organized like Stacy's yet. I have albums for each child (Us) but need to add albums for both C and me. I have not separated out People We Love, Places or Things although I do have a Family album as well as a Marina's stuff album. My next step is to do this separation.

To do this I am going to purchase sticky colored flags from Staples and use a different color for each of the 4 themes. I will then go through my albums flagging the various layouts and pulling them out of their albums and into new ones. This will be a time consuming process so my next blog entry will skip to the next step (gasp!).

For more long term storage, Stacy Julian takes her photos out of her storage binders and puts them in category drawers.The next step in my implementation of the Library of Memories is to create digital category drawers.

In digital category drawers give you a different way of searching on your photos. The digital storage albums we created allow you to search by date, but this isn't always the way you want to scrapbook your photos. What if you want to find all the photos of your kids swimming, or all the photos of you kids with Grandpa. This is where the category drawers are particularly powerful. And the advantage to doing this digitally is that a photo can reside in more than one category, whereas a physical photo can only live in one category (although it can be moved around).

To set up my digital category drawers, I used Photoshop Elements 6 Keyword tags. I used these because (for the most part) I have already keyworded my photos and it was a simple process to select an existing tag and move it around in a hierarchical structure, rename it or combine it with another tag.

I usually keyword my photos as I import them of the camera (as you can do them in batches). For example, Christmas photos might be tagged with Winter, Christmas, home on import. This speeds up the process of tagging tremendously. Then I would go through and individually tag and rate them. I always try to do this at the time of import as it doesn't take long to do then but if you let the number of photos build up it seems to take forever and is one of those tasks you tend to put off.

If you don't want to use PSE6, then what you need to make sure of is that your tagging or categorizing program will allow you to make hierarchical lists of tags. It is also advantageous if you can convert a keyword to a category (you put keywords inside the category) if you later discovered you wanted to subdivide it further.

I ruled out using Creative Memories Memory Manager program because it would not convert a folder to a sort box. The other reason I ruled out Memory Manager is that it wouldn't read my already existing ITPC keyword tags. ITPC is an industry standard that allows keywords to be embedded directly in jpg, psd, tiff files allowing them to be read by any ITPC compatible program.

I ruled out ACDSee 10 for a similar reason, it won't allow its categories to be written to the ITPC keyword field (ACDSee Pro 2 will do this, as will PSE6).

Other alternative programs that will work include Lightroom and Bridge.

This is the top and middle level structure I used. Each bulleted sub-category has individual tags inside it (for example, Grandparents contains Grandma, Grandpa, Grandad, Nanna).

People

• Family
• Friends
• Grandparents

Places

• Around Town
• Far Away
• Home

Things

• Accomplishments
• Everyday Life
• Seasons and Colors
• Special Days
• Sports & Recreation

Us

• All in the Family
• Family Relationships
• Personality

And this is what it actually looks like in PSE6.

To add a category, sub-category or keyword tag in PSE6, simply click on the green plus "+" sign shown in the image above. You can also move tags around in the structure by click and dragging them.

To search on a particular tag, click in the empty box on the left of the tag name. A pair of binoculars will appear indicating that you are currently searching on that tag.

The first step in Stacy Julian's workflow is to print her pictures by Season. She organizes her digital photos on her computer then send the faves (the ones she *might* scrapbook) out for printing. Once these come back she then organizes them into storage binders which are chronological.

As a mostly digital scrapbooker, I don't want to actually print any photos. When I download my photos they automatically get put into folders with the date. However, this doesn't mean that I can't organize them by season too.

In Photoshop Elements Organizer, I have created Smart Albums for each quarter, Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun, Jul-Sep, Oct-Dec. In addition, each smart album is filtered to show only photos that are rated 2 or higher (my rating system is 0=no good, 1=ok, 2=good, 3=fabulous portfolio worthy).
This enables me to quickly look through what I have and see anything that is scrapworthy that I know that I haven't scrapped yet. I would like to implement a way to record what has been scrapped (or printed for traditional layouts) but haven't worked on this yet but have a couple of ideas I'll discuss in a later post.

I figure a couple of years worth of photos in these "storage binder" smart albums gives me plenty of fodder for scrapbooking.

Stacy clears out her storage binders after four years. I will just delete the smart albums instead.

How to create a digital storage binder in Photoshop Elements 6

1. First make sure you have no filters or search in progress and that you are starting a new search.
2. In the top right of the photo area select the number of stars you want to filter on. If you don't use a rating system them you won't need this step.
3. On the timeline put the left and right sliders to select your date range. Each column represents one month.
4. In the Albums pane, click on the plus "+" sign and select "Save Search Criteria As Smart Album". You will be prompted to name your album which will now show in the Album pane.
5. To use your smart album, click on the name in the Album pane.

If you need to make changes to your album criteria:

1. Select the album from the Album pane.
2. Make changes to the search criteria as desired.
3. Right click on the album name and select Save Changes to Album name.

The advantage to using a smart album is that what is shown is dynamically generated. So if you change the ratings of your photos or upload more photos for those dates, they will automatically appear/disappear from the album.

A similar system can be made in Lightroom and Bridge. Instead of Smart Albums you can use Collections to save your filter criteria.

I have been reading Stacy Julian's "Photo Freedom" book which encourages scrapbookers to scrapbook in a non-chronological order and provides a theme/category system to allow you do this in a guilt-free way.

I have to say, scrapping chronologically has never really been a problem for me. I usually print the photos I think I'll use, shove them in the albums' page protectors in chronological order and then scrap what I want as I've left enough space (and I can always shuffle the pages later). I guess this would be harder if you used a strap hinge system and didn't calculate the space you'd need.

But what I did like about her book was:

• the idea of putting "like" photos with "like" to draw comparisons;
• the idea of using the remaining photos from an event in a different context;
• the idea of storing layouts relating to the same person (like grandma) together;
• the idea of having themed albums so that you can see how many layouts you do of each type (Us, Things, Places, People We Love) and can balance this as you see fit.

What I noticed from mentally subdiving my existing layouts into these 4 categories, is that I don't really scapbook Places or People We Love, and even my Things was looking decidedly skimpy.

I think this is where I can expand what I am scrapbooking and provide more meaningful insight into our lives. And I think this explains why I have a box of memorabilia, newspaper cuttings and other stuff that hasn't been scrapbooked (and I doubt will ever be, using my current system).

I thought it would be fun to document my journey in creating a Library of Memories especially as I am a mostly digital (but not completely) scrapbooker. I have done extensive searches online to find out about implementing a digital LOM system and have found nothing at all. So I hope to help other digiscrappers who want to do this.

Plan
To implement Stacy's LOM system, I am going to implement her four categories:

• All About Us,
• People We Love,
• Places We've Been,
• Things We Do

with subcategories based on those in the book.

Separate to this I will keep my heritage photos (i.e. any photos from before I was born) in with my genealogy files. Stacy keeps Family History Drawers but obviously she doesn't have the 20 years worth of genealogical research that I do :) I already have a great binder based filing system for my genealogy files which is published here. I am now including my heritage page layouts as I have switched to 12x12 ring binders from American Crafts instead of 8.5x11 binders from Staples (although I could have scrapped them in the smaller size).

As a digital scrapbooker I currently use Photoshop Elements 6 to find my photos and ACDSee Pro 2 to manage my digital scrapbooking supplies. I use Photoshop CS3/Bridge and Lightroom only occasionally as I find PSE6 does almost everything I need. My plan is to use the organizer where it makes sense to do so but am willing to use other programs as necessary and I will discuss some of the alternative programs I have looked at and why they will or won't work for me.