How do you manage your reference?

Axi5

Heya,

I was curious how you guys managed your textures or inspiration/influence or other images.

I don't mean during production, Kuadro, layers and plane scripts in 3D packages are fine for that. I mean when just gathering images at the beginning of a project.

Of course you could just dump them into folders but I was wondering if anyone knew of any programs that you can drop them in that can tag images, sort them, arrange them in a gallery and annotate really fast? I was considering building a web app just for this.

One Note seems to be really good for annotations but that's the best I think it does when handling this stuff, it's not really a dynamic app.

Edit: I've got like 50+ tabs of images open. This happens far too often haha.

ghaztehschmexeh

i put dem in a folder. If I find a website full of images I want to download, I might use HTTrack to rip them all. I then load up pureref, add the images that are relevant to the part I'm modelling, and save that combination of images if need be. but erryting goes in a folder, nothing fancy.

Axi5

PureRef looks amazing, pretty much exactly what I'm after! Thanks

Marshkin

I've actually been using http://www.pinterest.com/ and just pin various references as I come across them. This means that whereever I see something that inspires me, I can toss it in there for reference once I start a project, regardless if I am at my personal computer, work, browsing on my phone while waiting for the bus..

Axi5

Marshkin wrote: »

I've actually been using http://www.pinterest.com/ and just pin various references as I come across them. This means that whereever I see something that inspires me, I can toss it in there for reference once I start a project, regardless if I am at my personal computer, work, browsing on my phone while waiting for the bus..

I've got a few boards on Pinterest as well, maybe I should take a second look at it's features because I've literally just used it to repin things I've found interesting. I find it's context menu in it's extension reaaaaally slow. Also takes a good few seconds to pin something through the site too because it opens up a pop up. Not that I'm too bothered by it, gathering reference should be a relaxing experience haha.

SuperFranky

Folders. Folders inside folders. It's that easy.

[Deleted User]

Tags doesn't translate very good between operating systems, so what I like to do is to add square brackets to the file name, where I put key words that describe what is in the file, author etc. For example.

// basic format is:
fileName-[author,more,more,more...].extension

// example
bridge-[mantragora,connecting,polygons,sop,vex,modeling].hip
pineWood-[reference,wood,damaged,old].jpg

this way I can take files to any operating system and filter them in the same way on each.

Axi5

mantragora wrote: »

Tags doesn't translate very good between operating systems, so what I like to do is to add square brackets to the file name, where I put key words that describe what is in the file, author etc. For example.

// basic format is:
fileName-[author,more,more,more...].extension

// example
bridge-[mantragora,connecting,polygons,sop,vex,modeling].hip
pineWood-[reference,wood,damaged,old].jpg

this way I can take files to any operating system and filter them in the same way on each.

Oo that's really cool. I wouldn't have minded if the tags were app-specific. I.e. I could have lots of textures of wood but I might have dropped one or two in a "general use" folder instead but could still type "wood" and have them appear really quickly.

So far PureRef seems to be really awesome. The scene thing works really well and it stores sources. But for textures etc. your method seems to be best, or even adobe bridge.

marks

I've used adobe bridge quite a bit before, very useful I found