apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

i do the same thing!

I just have folders on an external hard drive titled things like, DETAILS, BEDROOM, KITCHEN, COLOURS etc and I can scroll through when I feel like it and easily find what I want. :)

I use Evernote (evernote.com) for this very thing. It is made just for this purpose, so its really easy to organize & categorize everything. I've found it especially useful for keeping track of the decorating inspiration I see on AT. Another cool thing is that when you save something from the web, it saves a link to the original post for future reference.

MyDeco by Domino Magzine rules for this
You can scan & upload your own photos, & upload any photo from anywhere on the web with a bookmark

Good to do this for your own personal use, but in terms of preserving history it can be bad to destroy the paper. The days of magazines are numbered. One would wish that some insttution would take the real paper. The problem with memory devices that they become obsolete. The information is lost to posterity, We have paper from the ancient Egyptians. Plus glossy magazine pages are so wonderfully crisp and colorful.

How do you always find great photos like these? They always seem to match the post perfectly, but they don't have to do with the post originally.

Just curious! :)

-- Keep the clippings. I have a big ole large-ring binder for original (scanned) placed in clear sleeves. Label/ categorize however you desire (ie. by room, style, magazine etc). It's wonderfully delightful to peruse!! Jazz it up, and it makes a fabulous coffee table book!! I spend many hours flipping through mine (I have more than one!). It's like my own personal design book!
-- I save my design images from sites or scanning in labelled folders on my desktop. I refer to these often for ideas.
-- For sharing, flickr is awesome. You can bookmark your favourite images from other flickr users too!

i have a huge 3 ring binder and i keep them in those plastic sleeves too. i enjoy it because when i want some inspiration i can flip through it just like a book. for images i find online i use dominos deco-file, which is is sooooo quick and easy. ive gone through my clippings recently and gotten rid of a lot images that didnt speak to me anymore (that i had started during design school). it was cool because before all the clippings were sooo different, and now that im getting a little more specific in what my design style is its showing in my binder!

I put all my cutouts in a nice 3 ring binder with magnetic pages... easy to group photos on both sides of a page, or add pages to binder. (If I have double sided images I use a sleve.) Not necessarily archival friendly but I am constantly pulling out for reference or to show someone my 'book'. There's something about a glossy magazine clipping...

Picasa has been my favorite. I found flickr & Evernote to be unecessarily complicated.

I do the same, so I have scanned all my clippings and I use Adobe Lightroom, I give to each pichure some key words, so I can find what I want in few seconds and similar picture withe the same key words. You can add comments in the EXIF of your picture (file/properties/...)

evernote.com is crazy cool for this.

If you have a Mac, iPhoto is perfect for this. You can make separate albums and add descriptions for individual photos in the info section. Flickr sounds like a good idea too. For your existing hard copies - why not use a large 3-ring binder and tape them onto plain paper with 3-holes punched. I know you'd like to save paper, but don't drive yourself crazy with perfectionism!

I've been doing this since I can remember. I actually made a post on my blog about it the other day! here's what works for me:

Physical paper scraps - Nothing is like holding your inspiration in your own hands! I sort them into groups and then tape them (not from the back, I mean the whole surface of the image!!) into one of those blank sketchbooks you can find at borders or waldenbooks. I use the crystal scotch tape that's about 2" wide. It does take some work, but you know the images are never going to tear, they'll stay in place, and it's almost like laminating them. What's kind of funny is whenever I have guests over, they almost always find my book I'm currently putting stuff in and have a great time flipping through it. I have a few of these books that are full, and it's interesting to see what i was into one, two, five years ago! If I find a full page in a magazine that I like and wouldn't really work in the sketchbook manner, I file it by subject in a little accordion file I bought for like $1.

With images on my computer, I've tried every program. It got too complicated. I tried uploading them....too complicated. I started kind of a "branch" system with lots of sub files. If I'm looking for a picture of a cool bathroom I saw on here, it'd be in this sort of sequence in my organization - (inspiration -> awesome interiors -> bathrooms) or something like that. I have this with artists, tattoos, geisha (i collect images of geisha!!), japanese magazines, everything. once you sit down and get it all organized by subject, it's really easy to find stuff. I never even have to rename an image or use the search feature. Oh, you may also want to view all your images by thumbnail, too. that really helps!

okay, that was a huge post.

if you want to invest in an amazing scanner, fujitso makes the scan snap that scans images and converts them into PDF files at the touch of one button. its expensive though, $300, but you can put a bunch of clips together and it works as a feeder and you can feed and scan the stuff into your computer.

Along these lines, I've been looking for a site that will let you do a digital collage/inspiration board, where you can overlap images and such. Either with your own photos uploaded, or ones you find on the net. I can't find a free website that does this - anyone have a recommendation?

(I have Photoshop, but ideally this would be easier to put images together, and kept online rather than a program downloaded to my PC.)

Thanks in advance.