...is that you end up with drives and cds full of downloads and forget what they all look like. Is there some little program that would allow me to scan though all my stash, seperate the images and put 'em all in a browsable series of folders, lets say..guns, hats, underwear etc? This is part of my ongoing sorting out my Poser stuff and general housekeeping of that whole runtime area :) I've just downloaded p3d explorer..is that the thing I need? Thanks for your time Mon

P3dO Explorer will do it for you - it's just like Windows Explorer, but you can see the Poser library thumbnails. I made a separate Runtime-like folder structure where Poser can't see it, and I use P3dO to shift stuff back and forth - it keeps the library size manageable. All that stuff I downloaded and never use stays out of the way. :)

Thanks :) Looks like a busy weekend for me!

Although P3dO is a great solution, I always find it a good idea to include a thumbnail image with my props - one that can be seen in an image displayer (like Firehand Ember). Otherwise, I agree totally about this problem. In the end, I decided to categorize all of my Poser items (props, figures, clothes, hair, etc.) into sub categories (such as furniture, weapons, jewelry, for props) and rename them when the given name was, let's say, cryptic. :)

It's not little, and it's not free but take a look at PBoost. It may be exactly what you want-- it alos allows you to remove folders from your libraries and put them back in while running Poser. You can consolidate and rename all your libraries folders while you are at it. New versio just came out available here at RMP. The designer is very accessible and helps in any problems most courtiestly. Too early for me to spell :(( Emily

P3dO is very good but I don't think it will create "albums," so you have to have the disk in the drive to view what's on it. There is a shareware program called "Polyview" that will let you create albums of all your files no matter where they are: hard drive, CD, floppy, ZIP, etc. The nice thing about it is you don't need the disk in the drive to view the albums. That way you can browse your albums, find what you're looking for and it will tell you which disk it's on.

or you could spend half your life writing an Access database, like me (11,400 items and counting..;)

Some weeks ago, it came to my mind (why so late???) to save always the thumbnail images with the zips. I give the images the same name as the zip, so that they are easy to find. It's a little bit more effort, but it pays a lot.

If you've got Pro Pack or P5 then you can use an image gallery program like ThumbsPlus to add keywords and descriptions to the PNG thumbnails, making it easier to search through your library. It does take a long time to add all the index comments the first time through, but if you get into the habbit of always categorising new items as you add them, then maintenance isn't too bad.

--
Mark

BekaVal, If you point P3DO at your zip directory it will display the first image in each zip - and relatively quickly too. Most Zips have an image that's somewhat meanfully. If not, if you click on the zip icon, P3Do will display all the images in that Zip (click again to hide them). You'll need the ZipExplorer plugin for this functionality, but you'll definately need the Rsr2Png and PatRenamer plugins sooner or later anyway, so just grab the lot and install them in P3DO.

...adding to BekaVal's suggestion about saving the thumbs, I think you'll also find that adding the author's name and/or download source, (as many zips have no readmes) and sometimes a descriptive search term, often comes in handy as well.

• so "palette.zip" got saved as: "palette_painter_geralday.zip" along with his thumbnail using the same name.

I figure that when it comes time to search for it again I'm bound to remember one of the three terms properly.

Wish I'd been doing this from the very start, but downloaded a year's worth of stuff willy-nilly before it occurred to me that I was never going to be able to find things again.

Layingback, thank you for the tip about P3Do. I have this tool and I have Thumbs 2000, which can do the same. Thumbs 2000 shows me all images included in zips. But not all have meaningful images included and I find it more comfortable to browse through the promotional thumbs, I have saved with the zips. Sometimes I save also sample renders of the object, if provided. And I try to keep track of the creators, the way Nancy proposed. Especially, when no readme is included as is in many cases of 3DS objects.

What everyone said. I'll add that when you save downloads, save them to an organized directory structure. All my downloads to go into one folder: Downloads in MyDocuments. Within that folder are sub-folders for Poser, Bryce, etc. Within Download/Poser folder are sub-folders for Props, Vicky 3, Animals, etc. You can make your folder structure as complex or simple as your needs dictate. Backing off to CD is easy. Your Downloads folder :) After backup if you want to keep the stuff on your harddrive, move them over to an Archives folder with the same structure. And start over. Your stuff is organized from the beginning and you know what's backed up and what's not.

"Backing off to CD is easy. Your Downloads folder :) After backup if you want to keep the stuff on your harddrive, move them over to an Archives folder with the same structure. And start over." That's exactly how I handle that. I have a special folder structure for my downloads and I move the zip-files from there - after backup - to an archive folder with the same struc to have the files still on my HD. Interesting to hear, that s.o. does the same. :)

Look everyone, don't worry..I've decided to give up 3D art LOL. Seriously you people are so helpful and I really do appreciate it. I've taken a little of the advice from everyone and brought a small amount of order into my chaos. A repeated comment at our house over the weekend was 'Ooh I didn't know I had that!' A big thank you to all Mon