Tutorials: Where are they? How do you organize yours?

[e.b.west]

I posted this over on dpreview where I know alot of you hang out too but I thought I'd ask it here too.

As you guys are compiling the different tutorials, download locations and other various tid bits of information, how do you keep track of what you have. More importantly, how do you find something that you ran across several months ago. Do you print things out and file them, keep them in a folder on your computer or what?

E.B.

[DannyRaphael]

If it's a general photo-art tutorial (not just a forum post somewhere), for the benefit of others I'll usually post the link HERE.

If it's a thread in a forum somewhere on photo-art topic of personal interest, I'll save the URL in the appropriate folder among my Internet Explorer favorites, e.g., Watercolor, Trimoon, Mike Finn Effie, etc.

Some tutorials are available in .pdf format, such as those from Shan Canfield's www.Shanzcan.com. I've downloaded a couple of those to my hard disk into applicable folders. I'll normally rename the file to something useful to me, e.g., sketch tutorial Shan Canfield, so related tutorials sort together within a folder.

Is this the kind of thing you meant?

~Danny~

[e.b.west]

Yep, that's what I was looking for.

I'm planning a couple years ahead here, when I retire I'm going to be (I hope) fulltime motorhoming and working off a lap top with only occasional internet access. I'm trying to figure out the best way to store things like tutorials for easy access.

I think it may be a combination of hard drive folders and printing some for more studying.

Of course, I could go for the $5000 internet satellite and solve all my problems.


Thanks,
E.B.

[Pam]

I usually copy 'n paste into word, then print it out because I find it easier to work off of a hardcopy while I'm in PS...BUT...this has resulted in a massive amount of paperwork that I'm having to organize in some manner. This makes for a never-ending chore.

I think Kent has the right idea. He copies 'n pastes everything into categorized word folders. The added advantage of that is the ability to search for keyword. How I envy Kent


Pam

[CJ Swartz]

I copy most of the tutorials that I want to keep into Acrobat pdf files because pdf files hold both the text and images, color and b/w, in the same format as originally written -- unless they were written without normal margins.

[jeaniesa]

I have lots of tutorials printed b/c I work better from the printed page, but almost all of the tutorials I've printed I have first copy/pasted into Word. So, those files are saved (with meaningful names) on my hard drive. If the tutorial is in PDF to begin with, I save to my hard drive and print it. I've got a folder in my filing cabinet for my printed tutorials. It's not too big (yet). I've also been known to use the "Save As... Web archive" from Internet Explorer which saves the HTML and all associated images in a folder on my hard drive. Saves me having to copy/paste into Word, but it doesn't always print well.

So far, this has worked for me. I'm able to remember 90% of what I've saved, esp. when I run across an image that would benefit from one of the tutorials. It's like a switch is turned on in my brain that reminds me I've got a tutorial that would work well on the image.

Jeanie

[e.b.west]

Thanks again.

Jeanie...my problem with your method is that I have found that I have no switches in my head.

E.B.

[jeaniesa]

Well, I'm afraid my switches are going to start malfunctioning any day now - then I'm really going to be in trouble!!

Jeanie