Things I'd love to see EVERY designer do

[landofoz]

Kim, i have Bridge and i am trying too find an easier way to find my kits.
i dont know what you mean with a template?
please enlighten me if you can ,LOL

[KimisKreations]

I'm not much help because the process confused me immensely, but if you fill out the meta data in Bridge kn the left side, you can right click and say File Info. In that window I was somehow able to save my information as aprofile or template (not sure of the exact terminology). Now when I
open that window it shows a dropdown at the bottom with my PU or CU meta data. Hope that helps! If not, PM me a reminder and I'll try and hunt through the process again and write a real tutorial.

[tessthescrapper]

Seems to me like lately, the downloads are no longer put into files by the designers. This is not a good thing! I usually put my kits under the store name but if it is from a blog then it goes into the main folder and I have to make a file and go find the items I just downloaded to put into the folder. I have come to hate blog trains for this reason! Love the kits, but hate that I have to dig through a number of mini's to find the tou for the part I am using

[Gem]

What would be super to see is a listing that could be easily downloaded of everything the designer has created. Then when someone purchased products from them the purchaser could check it off. This would save me hours of looking through files and folders to see if the particular kit, etc had already been purchased. A list or an Excel type file would be easy enough to maintain. Then it could be updated when there were more products added. This probably could be done from the database that is probably already in place that causes the store and shopping cart to function.

Also, it would be extremely helpful if the designer chose to use the same file identifying name or letters for each of their products so it would be easy to find everything that had been purchased or created by them.

[triciacurtis]

Originally Posted by KimisKreations

I'm not much help because the process confused me immensely, but if you fill out the meta data in Bridge kn the left side, you can right click and say File Info. In that window I was somehow able to save my information as aprofile or template (not sure of the exact terminology). Now when I
open that window it shows a dropdown at the bottom with my PU or CU meta data. Hope that helps! If not, PM me a reminder and I'll try and hunt through the process again and write a real tutorial.

Kimi - do you mean Bridge keywords or labels? Or a filter?

[triciacurtis]

Originally Posted by Gem

What would be super to see is a listing that could be easily downloaded of everything the designer has created. Then when someone purchased products from them the purchaser could check it off. This would save me hours of looking through files and folders to see if the particular kit, etc had already been purchased. A list or an Excel type file would be easy enough to maintain. Then it could be updated when there were more products added. This probably could be done from the database that is probably already in place that causes the store and shopping cart to function.

Also, it would be extremely helpful if the designer chose to use the same file identifying name or letters for each of their products so it would be easy to find everything that had been purchased or created by them.

Gem - you are like a shiny little happy star! I have been working on creating a PDF document catalog of all my products and was wondering if other designers would find the service useful. Now that I know that at least one person would find it useful, I will work on completing it and seeing if there is a market - thanks!

[donakat]

Tricia, I love the idea, too!

[KimisKreations]

Originally Posted by triciacurtis

Kimi - do you mean Bridge keywords or labels? Or a filter?

I walked myself through the process again to get it all settled in my head.

In Bridge, when you click on any file, you'll see a menu pop down on the left that's called "IPTC Core" -- where you can edit the meta data. I entered in a bunch of my info here, but you can also just skip to the next step.

At the top, select Tools > Create Metadata Template... and you will have the option to fill in all that same information (it will automatically fill in whatever you've already done if that file is still selected).

I created one of these and named it Commercial Use, and another for Personal Use, adjusting the meta data accordingly.

To add the template to a file or set of files, select all the ones you want to fill in, then right click on any one of them and select "File Info..." from the drop-down menu.

At the bottom of the screen that pops up, there should now be a little drop down next to the OK and Cancel buttons, where you can select the name of your template. When the confirmation window pops up, select the top radio button (or whichever one applies) and click OK.

Note: If you have a lot of files selected, be sure to wait a few moments before navigating to the other files; Bridge doesn't tell you when it's done. You'll know it's finished when, with all of those files selected, the metadata showing on the left is filled in properly. If it says "Multiple Values," it means one or many of your files haven't got the updated metadata yet.

I hope that helps and wasn't too wordy/confusing!!

[triciacurtis]

Originally Posted by KimisKreations

I walked myself through the process again to get it all settled in my head.

In Bridge, when you click on any file, you'll see a menu pop down on the left that's called "IPTC Core" -- where you can edit the meta data. I entered in a bunch of my info here, but you can also just skip to the next step.

At the top, select Tools > Create Metadata Template... and you will have the option to fill in all that same information (it will automatically fill in whatever you've already done if that file is still selected).

I created one of these and named it Commercial Use, and another for Personal Use, adjusting the meta data accordingly.

To add the template to a file or set of files, select all the ones you want to fill in, then right click on any one of them and select "File Info..." from the drop-down menu.

At the bottom of the screen that pops up, there should now be a little drop down next to the OK and Cancel buttons, where you can select the name of your template. When the confirmation window pops up, select the top radio button (or whichever one applies) and click OK.

Note: If you have a lot of files selected, be sure to wait a few moments before navigating to the other files; Bridge doesn't tell you when it's done. You'll know it's finished when, with all of those files selected, the metadata showing on the left is filled in properly. If it says "Multiple Values," it means one or many of your files haven't got the updated metadata yet.

I hope that helps and wasn't too wordy/confusing!!

Thanks - I only use the metadata on photos. I set something up a long time ago, but haven't done anything recently. You do the metadata for all your previews, or even every file?

[KimisKreations]

As I make a kit, I name it with just the name of the item (ie button1.png, etc) because I usually don't know what it will be called right away. *lol* So I use Bridge to batch-rename my files when I'm done. It's just a simple click from there to add the meta data. So yep, I add the data to each and every file in the kit.