I think I've been doing something stupid for years (well, I do lots of stupid things; this post refers to one of the AW-related stupid things), and I just need you guys to confirm it's stupid, so I can stop doing it.

Every six months or so, I go into the folder where I put my auction images (sorted by date), and I delete the ones for items that have sold. Problem is....I have to look at each one, and though the decision is easy for some (I can definitely remember shipping that ugly vase), for others, I have to find the item in AW and confirm it was shipped and isn't actually still languishing in my Store or something. This means I have to run a Find on some bit of text I think I would have put in the title or description (whole other issue on how image files are named; probably there are better ways to name them so they can be tracked to their Lots).

Then a light bulb goes on over my head, and I remember AW makes duplicates of all the images and stores them in the AW Images datebase. So really, other than wanting to view the images on the chance I'd like to keep a few of them for some other reasons (for making a greeting card, etc.), I can just delete them all, right? Doesn't even matter if their Status is Sold or Online or whatever? If I delete them and then decide to relist the auction, I can still do that, correct? The duplicates will still be available for relists? Do you guys delete your old image files/folders routinely?

Thanks, Sue

Sue,

If you add Images to AW2K, then you really don't need to save images somewhere else on your hard drive and save them forever. The images are saved in AW2K.

I don't store images on my hard drive anymore other than in AW2K. Takes up too much hard drive space. And I found like you, it was very time consuming to go back and delete all those images. We use removable media here. An SD card or Memory stick depending on the camera used. When the card gets full, it is just formatted again as the items are added when images are taken.

Does that help?

Judy/blue

Sue:
Not stupid at all. As long as you don't delete the item in aw2k the image is there forever for you to relist. In my case I do keep the images for a while. But as you know I'm selling stamps for collectors and the image only works for one auction. Once the auction is over the image now is deleted from the hard drive and deleted (image only) from aw2k. That is because if I get that stamp again it will have to be rescanned anyway.

Sometimes I will archive the original scans on a CD or DVD. But have found only one time where it was helpful to go back to the archive.

So nope, what you have chosen to do is hardly stupid at all. It works for you and you figured out the image is stored in aw2k.

Garry

Yes, helps totally.

My habit is to transfer images from my camera's SD card to my computer and then edit them in PSP. I then add them into AW, so there are never any auction-related images that aren't IN AW -- none that are sitting in folders waiting to be added to AW.

And the fact that your "raw" images are just on cards or sticks tells me there is no reason to even save them to folders on my hard drive (I mean I'd still do that because I edit them in a different program, but otherwise the originals are irrelevant). I'm not getting short on HD space, but it just annoys me to have image files I no longer need.

Thanks. Nice to be able to stop doing a time-consuming and needless thing.

Sue

Sue,

And I don't think your question is dumb at all.

I don't ever delete any images from AW2K. None. I do archive about once a quarter to keep my database smaller and get rid of Sold stuff. I know some users delete the Auction lots etc after everything is Sold and Shipped. But I don't. I had a nightmare problem a time or two doing it so I stopped deleting a long time ago and just archive records instead.

Judy/blue

Sue,

I do not use any other image editor other than AW2K for image editing. I have considered using something so I can watermark my images but never have.

Judy/blue

The main reason I like using PSP is the perspective correction tool. When I take a pic of something like a mirror or glass surface at an oblique angle to eliminate the reflection of my camera and hands/face, I can then correct it so it appears totally square/rectangular. It looks like I scanned it.

Other than that, it's nice sometimes to be able to run the same edits over and over (scripts) and to add digital picture frames around paper items (to suggest how it would look framed). Oh, and I also like to be able to clone out crud on the background (camera sees everything)!

But AW's built-in image editor is very decent considering it's not a stand-alone program. That sounded snobbish -- not meant that way.

Sue

Sue,

I don't think you sounded snobbish at all. One of the reasons I do not use another image editor, I can't imagine trying to teach new help how to use another image editing program. Why some of these people have a hard enough time turning the computer on The items that have to have difficult pictures taken, I have my experienced girl do. Not the newbies.

Judy'blue

Sue brings up a good point. Paint Shop Pro allows scripts to automate the processing of images. I manually crop and then turn PSP loose to resize, downsample, and put a border on the image. Watermark's a good idea. If you didn't want to manually crop, you could script the processing of entire folders of images.

PSP scripts are written in Python, for what it's worth.

PSP is just as effective for what we do as PhotoShop, and way cheaper. I like it.

Ned

SOOO, you are using Paint Shop Pro first, saving the changes to the image and then adding the image to Aw2K. Do you ever use the editing tool in AW2K?

Judy/blue