How do you remember all the filters you have in your FF library ?

Hello,

I do not know if I have a very bad memory and have problems to remember names and filters, but I have a bad time having to remember all the amazing, useful and interesting filters I have downloaded to my Filter Library inside FF.

I only remember and know the name of only a few of them, although I have to use the search feature because I do not remember in which category was them.

Please, I want to ask you, what is your own experience ?

How do you remember all the filters you have in your FF library ? their name and what they do

How do you know that you have already a filter that is able to do the thing that you want to do ?

Even when looking at the thumbnails on the filter library I do not remember what this filter effects looks like and I must go to the online filter library to see what is this about and have graphic previews.

CUSTOMIZED CATEGORIZATION

I think that with so many thousands of interesting and useful filters, I find it very hard, at least for me, to really enjoy and use them as I can´t find and remember the names and what it is used for.

It would be really good and very useful if you could reorganize and make custom categories or folders with your own names and that you could make a custom categorization in whatever way you would like and then copy inside them all the filters you want.

MEMORY PILLS ?

Probably I should take some memory pills to help maintain healthy brain function and be able to remember more things

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Crapadilla wrote: Personally, I don't. I mostly use the website to search for filters, and I find proper tagging on filters to be a real boon

So you make the same as I make, as I also use the website to find filters using the keyword tags and then find it in my own library or click on download and as it should be already downloaded it will take me to the filter inside FF

But I think that this is a bad way to find forgoten ones and remember filters

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Crapadilla wrote: User-centric tags and tag clouds +1

I suposse that these are not available in FF so I would not be able to use them, and I do not want to wait until sometime in the far future that they will be probably and possibly implemented if they are considered a priority and needed.

Please see also this thread hereCould I in some way organize filters using my own keywords ?

It is a real pity and that I do not have a better and greater memory and can be able to remember more of the many excellent filter there are available in the FF library.

I still have a very big problem with this topic and have searched ways and possible solutions to be able to solve or find way to know what filters I like most and wich of them are the best to choose for a determined design BUT I can´t find a way to do it because of the hundreds (or thousands) I have already and do not recognize and remember the effect made and can´t remember from the really very tiny mini thumbnail that is on the left filter list.

The only thing I could find useful and interesting to browse through the most important and most useful filters I have is to have a printed collection of the filters with a BIG preview thumbnail, I mean to print the filter´s online website page that comes with the name, description and a big thumbnails and the variations and presets.

BUT to be able to print each of all these filters (at least 200 as the main ones) would take a lot of time to search for each one and then print it, and as you can´t use anything inside Filter Forge to have a printed preview of the filters thumbnails I think this is the only possible solution.

The search window in FF3 works for me. I can type in a word or words or author name, etc. and it finds according to that. I can also search for a partial word using standard wild card characters (asterisk and question mark). And it finds phrases by putting them in quotes.

I do snapshots of filtered images. Images (named as filters) i can categorise as i want.
When I want to find filter, i find image, copy its filename and find filter

I did this by the macros, not by hands.
Not a couple of years. Just one night.
it is not funny. this our common grief

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Morgantao wrote: So now all I have to do is save 8500+ images, and save them by filter name. See ya in a couple of years....

Yes, you are right

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Equator wrote: Posts: 32 I do snapshots of filtered images. Images (named as filters) i can categorise as i want. When I want to find filter, i find image, copy its filename and find filter

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Equator wrote: I did this by the macros, not by hands. Not a couple of years. Just one night.

Please, could you be so kind to tell us HOW have you done the snapshots of the filtered images and categorize them using the macros in just one night ????

I think it could be probably very helpful to know your own personal solution to this

Thanks very much

SpaceRay, as I posted in another thread, I will soon upload a little tool that will scan your drive for all the filters you have, and let you categorize them in your own custom folders, add your own keywords, and rate the filters from 1 to 5.
Then you will be able to search the catalog just like you do inside FF.
Each filter will have the 600x600 preview image of the default preset.
The tool I will upload will be at a Pre-Alpha stage at best, but I will include all the source files so anyone and everyone can improve it and upload their better version.
Who knows, maybe even the FF dev team will learn something (like the fact that custom folders and keywords don't necessarily mean restructuring the whole library)

Just to clarify a few things... Read what I said HERE (Top post)

IMPORTANT: The tool is not connected to FF itself in any way. It can't modify any of your filters.

Here are a few other things to know, so you don't get too excited:
1) It's not me who's doing the programing, it's my genius brother-in-law. He's doing it for us AS A FAVOUR, so I will not ask him to develop it any more than a basic tool. I'm counting on the great community we have here to contribute to the tool, as I will upload the source with the tool.
2) You won't see a bunch of thumbnails, you'll only see filter names. When you click a filter you'll see the 600x600 image of the default preset. Maybe after I upload the source someone will keep developing the tool so it will be able to show a thumbnail gallery (like the one in the filter browser).
3) You will not be able to make subfolders in the current version. Again, it's not hard to add this feature, so if anyone wants to add to it you're more than welcome.
4) You can see a mockup below that shows roughly what the tool will look like.
5) This tool will only show the filters you currently have on your system. It will not show you all the filters found in the FF library, nor will it download filters from the FF library.
6) Making of this tool is NOT an excuse for the FF dev team to ignore us as we're asking for custom keywords and folders as an integral part of FF!

EDIT: Forgot to mention that each filter can be associated to more than one folder. So you can put Cookies in food, round stuff, brown stuff, crumbly stuff, yum yum, etc.
When you select any of these folders you will see Cookies in it.

First of all I want to thank you for confirming that this is REALLY true and belongs to the real world and it will really happen, because after reading your news, I felt like this was a dream and that it was to good to be true, and then I would wake up and see that I still had to wait until FF 4.0

BUT NO, from your second post I can see that THIS IS FOR REAL and is not false A DREAM, is really a DREAM COME TRUE !!!

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Morgantao wrote: IMPORTANT: The tool is not connected to FF itself in any way. It can't modify any of your filters.

Well, I do not care at all that it is NOT connected to FF and can´t modify my filters inside the FF itself.

Because what I really want is ANY WAY that could give me the opportunity and ability to be able to KNOW what filters I HAVE DOWNLOADED IN MY OWN FF LIBRARY with BIGGER thumbnails, and NOT have the ONLY option as the Filter Forge Browser than ONLY have the "HIDE already downloaded" and NOT have the opposite, "SHOW ONLY DOWNLOADED FILTERS" !!!!!!! Which I find it silly, why not have both ?

So if you said that wit your tool you will have a copy of all the files AND have the big, detailed, great and lovely 600 x 600 preview that appears in the online FF library, this is totally enough for me.

If you see above I wanted to make a PRINTED list of those 600 x 600, so obviously the printed paper will NOT have any connection with the FF software.

If I CAN CHANGE THE KEYWORDS in your tool I do not mind and is NOT important for me that they do not get changed in the FF filter library, because I could use you lifesaving and heaven sent tool to FIND the filter I want to use in a MUCH easier way and then search for it inside the FF application using just part of the name (which I do not to keep remembering as now) and use * wildcard

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Morgantao wrote: Here are a few other things to know, so you don't get too excited: 1) It's not me who's doing the programing, it's my genius brother-in-law. He's doing it for us AS A FAVOUR, so I will not ask him to develop it any more than a basic tool. I'm counting on the great community we have here to contribute to the tool, as I will upload the source with the tool.

Well, for me is exactly the same if it is made by you, or by your genius brother-in-law or by any other company, what is really important is that is going to be made and available and will be a lifesaving help and peace making for finding and using the great, huge and very useful filters all of you have made, but is really unmanageable and difficult to find as it is now.

PLEASE, PLEASE, give also a million thanks for his work, skills and time that he is taking for making this very useful and timesaving tool, I send all my love and grateful to him too.

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Morgantao wrote: Here are a few other things to know, so you don't get too excited: 2) You won't see a bunch of thumbnails, you'll only see filter names. When you click a filter you'll see the 600x600 image of the default preset. Maybe after I upload the source someone will keep developing the tool so it will be able to show a thumbnail gallery (like the one in the filter browser).

I suposse that you are refering to the Presets thumbnails that appears below the 600 x 600 preview on the FF online library. Well although this would be nice to have is not very important and is not really essential.

What is not soo good is that you will only see the names and not any kind of preview BEFORE clicking on a filter, BUT this could be solved and could NOT be important if you can make your own folders and organize the filters in a customized way and NOT through the default misleading and confusing FF categories.

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Morgantao wrote: 3) You will not be able to make subfolders in the current version. Again, it's not hard to add this feature, so if anyone wants to add to it you're more than welcome. What do you mean that you will not be able to make SUBFOLDERS ? Is it that you will not be able to have a folder with the name "BRICKS" and then inside this folder you could have subfolders for example "OLD BRICKS", "NEW BRICKS", "TEXTURED BRICKS" and "ALIEN BRICKS" ? Well If this is what you mean and YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN MAIN FOLDERS as you can see in the screen shot you have put as "custom folders pane" I do not care at all, even I prefer NOT to have subfolders because probably you will have to OPEN the main folder to see the subfolders inside so I do not like much this. If you will be able to make folders with names "BRICKS - OLD" , "BRICKS - NEW", "BRICKS - TEXTURED" and "BRICKS - ALIEN" is more than enough for me and is really what I want and need to be able to organize all the FF filters library. And if you say that would be easy to add the subfolders option in another version, well this would be perhaps useful too.

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Morgantao wrote: 4) You can see a mockup below that shows roughly what the tool will look like.

Well, it looks very simple and not very stylish BUT who cares about design if this is made for free and will be a great help and made the FF life MUCH easier and MUCH better ?

What is important here is not really the looks, is the USABILITY and the help that it will give you for organizing and have the FF library in a MUCH BETTER way.

And I like what I am seeing as the mockup, it has all the needed information and if YOU can ADD your OWN KEYWORDS and it will ONLY show the filters you have downloaded in YOUR own FF library is enough for me.

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Morgantao wrote: 5) This tool will only show the filters you currently have on your system. It will not show you all the filters found in the FF library, nor will it download filters from the FF library.

Perfect, and is NOT important at all for me.

WHY WOULD I LIKE to see the filters I DO NOT HAVE inside my own library?

For this I have already available the FF Filter Browser that show ONLY the filters you have NOT downloaded yet, and have MISSING the very important "show ONLY the downloaded"

I do not care at all that I will not be able to download filters from the FF library with this tool. Why would I want to do that ? For this, I have already the Filter Library Browser that shows ONLY your all your filters you have not downloaded yet and can download them using this FF Filter Browser downloader.

HAVE A EASY WAY TO UPDATE THE LIBRARY INSIDE THIS TOOL

Instead of this what I think I find very important is that you can import or update incrementally the database inside this tool in a easy way.

I mean that, if you have already made and organized all the filters in folders and added the new keywords and now is all very nicely and easy to find, I would like to be able to update this database when I download a new filter from the FF online library and then be able to copy/import/update the database of the tool with just this new filter and put it inside the folder I want and be able to add my own keywords to it.

VERY IMPORTANT ALSO IS TO HAVE A WAY TO MAKE A BACKUP OF THE WHOLE DATABASE AND FOLDERS CONFIGURATION

Also I think is very important ot have a easy way to make a backup of all the important and needed data for the toold to work in case the very bad happens and you will have to install again this tool, so you will NOT loose all the work you have done already before.

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Morgantao wrote: 6) Making of this tool is NOT an excuse for the FF dev team to ignore us as we're asking for custom keywords and folders as an integral part of FF!

YES !!!! YES !!! YES !!! Of course this is NOT an excuse at all for the FF developers to ignore the VERY IMPORTANT thing for making ALL THIS in the same way INSIDE FF application and should be a integral part of FF.

AND update the FF filter Browser to "SHOW ONLY DOWNLOADED FILTERS"

OR at least if needed, it could be also a separate tool like this BUT with a integrated connection link or bridge with FF aplication itself.

This is wonderful news. Thank you to all who are working on this project. I've been hoping someone would do this.

I don't know how this tool is installed. But if it's set up in such a way that it's database can be stored in in a routine place (such as under My Documents or under Appdata), then backup up will happen during our routine computer backups. There will be no need to a special backup feature.

Thanks very much for the news updates and having more details about your very helpful, incredibly useful and time-saving and life-saving tool. Thanks for caring and be so helpful.

The major problem with the tool I'm working on, in my oppinion, is that you need to manualy go through each and every one of your filters and assign it to the folders you want it in, and add your keywords and rating...
If you have all 8700+ filters, or the library backup DVD, it's gonna take some time.

Let's get the tool running first, then, maybe, IF there will be filter managment in FF 4.0, it will be possible to import the data from my tool to FF 4.0.

I'm hoping that releasing the code will help the FF dev team allow keywords and folders import to FF4.0

I'm not really sure what's the difference CC, GNU, GPL, etc. licences, but I'm going to release the code as a free for all, do what you want, give no credit, use as you wish in your projects kind of license...