changing the

I couldn't agree more with Papa Echo's reply that saving images within the folder of the program that you use to display or change them is not a good idea. That way leads to a badly designed storage and retrieval system and may cause problems later on.

You have to understand what programs do. Programs are "helpers", to allow you to do the task you want. If you want to write a document, you will use a word processor. If you want to play music, you use a media player. If you want to look at and/or change photos or images, you use an image program. If you want to surf the internet, you use a browser program, (like Internet Explorer).

But these programs are not storage devices. Your hard disk is the storage device and you can configure it to hold your important files wherever you want. If you really want to hold your important documents within the program folders, that is your choice, but that is messy and confusing.

Consider this. You may have a TV and Video Tape player. You may have a lot of videos that you watch occasionally. Where do you store the videos when you don't watch them? Inside the TV? Inside the Video Player? Most people stack the video tapes elsewhere, on a table or a shelf where they can be easily seen and picked out when they are wanted. It is the same with your important documents.

Your hard disk is a filing system and there is a very useful tool to help you look after your filing system. It is called "Windows Explorer" and you can find it in Start > Programs, (or All Programs), > Accessories > Windows Explorer.

Note, this is WIndows Explorer, not Internet Explorer. They are different programs for different functions.

Open up Windows Explorer and look at how your files are arranged on your hard disk. Programs are mostly stored in a main folder called "Program Files". But this is not the best place to store your important documents. If you don't like your My Documents folder for storing your important documents, create a folder of your choice elsewhere. Highlight the C drive, then goto File > New > New Folder, and a new folder will be created. It is highlighted so you can change it's name and press enter.

You can create a shortcut on your desktop to this new folder. Right click the new folder and select "Send to" then "Desktop as a shortcut".

You can create sub-folders within the new folder. Highlight the new folder in Windows Explorer, then goto File > New > New folder.

WIndows Explorer, in my opinion, is the single most useful tool with which to get to know your computer.

Back to your question.

When you use Save As a "Save As" dialogue window opens. Where it says "Save in:" there is a pull down arrow on the right. Click that and a mini Windows Explorer opens where you can navigate to the folder you want to save your images in. In this Save As dialogue you can also create new folders using the "new folder" button to the right of the Save in option.

Mark

Good point glb

Mark

Note:
Just because an application becomes unuseable or
damaged in some way, does not cause the files within it's folder to become damaged. So if you inadvertently store something there as many people do, it does not hurt the files inside the folder.

Case in point is this, Quicken and Quickbooks both by default store the data files within the folder that hold the program as well. This is not a bad system because there are usually only a few data files and it is very easy to find them when needed.
Many times the program needs reinstalling for some reason, but the data is still just fine.

You would not want this same system for 500 doc files intermingled with Microsoft Office program files, and I agree with others to store your pictures somewhere in there own folders, but make sure you backup everything.

In addition to the good advice already given I just want to add that My Documents | My Pictures would be where I'd save these images.

This makes it easier to backup your files onto CD-Rs.

I've seen it happen many times when someone stores all kinds of data/files on the Desktops, C Drive, Program Folders or even in the Root of WINDOWS folder and the computer crashed and they forgot where all the data is saved. They bring it to the shop and only My Documents is back up before the HDD is wiped to clean install the OS!

When I work on such a case I always look all over the HDD while it is attached to another PC and extract whatever files I can find and often find them scattered through out the HDD.

To avoid this and since current HDDs are 40GB or larger I would create a D Drive to store all the documents.
Then after setup I relocate the default My Documents to the D Drive so that when any file is saved to My Document it automatically gets stored in the D Drive.

Thus if the OS crashed and is not recoverable one simply format the C Drive and reinstall the OS and the files are safe in the D Drive.

But the files still have to be backup onto CD-Rs as the HDD can fail any moment!

Hi mark. That was a very thorough and useful response.

This is in reply to all those who have posted attempting to help with my issue. I want to thank you all for your efforts and for the advice. I apologize for any misunderstanding, but I am not saving a file created by an application back to that applications folder.
Here is what I am doing in detail. I am creating music libraries and using MusicMatch Jukebox as my player/organizer. I have several music "libraries" for the collected music files. Part of these libraries are .jpg files, pictures of the cover art for the LPs or CDs involved. I want to put thses .jpg files into the single CD ART subfolder used by MusicMatch Jukebox. When I find these images on the internet I right click on them and click on "Save Picture as.." in the pop up menu. The "Save Picture As.." always defaults to the My Documents/My Pictures folder, I want to change that so it default to the CD Art folder used by MusicMatch. I do this selection and saving often enough that my desired change, if possible, would save me a lot of time. I do use the dialog's buttons and tools to manually change the directory to the one used by MusicMatch but I go through this procedure enough the changing the default directory from "My Documents/My Pictures" to "MusicMatch Jukebox/CD Art" would sure help.
I agree completely with all the advice that has been given regarding saving data files with the applications that created them and I don't do that myself. MusicMatch does allow you to designate the folder used to store your music files but not the CD Art files. Like other software that claims to be flexible and modular, they have made an attempt at it but are a long way from adopting this approach throughout. Thanks again and any further assistance would be appreciated.

Take time to read through this:MS KB Article ID 310147

Hi topgun.

Thanks for the further information. Knowing this now, I perhaps would not have written my "epic" above,

There may be a way to do as you want. other than Papa Echo's method. Especially if you don't want to change the My Documents properties.

Have a go at this, and see if it helps. In the My Documents folder, create a "shortcut" to the folder you want to store the art graphic files in.

I'm not sure if you know how to do this, so at the risk of insulting your knowledge do it this way.

In Windows Explorer highlight the folder you want to make a shortcut for. Right click the folder, then choose "Send to" then click "Desktop (Create shortcut)".

On your desktop, highlight the new shortcut, right click it and choose "Cut".

In Windows Explorer, navigate to your My Documents folder, highlight it, and in the right hand pane, right click an empty space and click "Paste".

What does this do? It doesn't change the defaulty folder for Save As in MMJB, but in the pull down box you will see a shortcut to the folder you want, and instead of navigating there, this shortcut takes you straight there.

See if that works. If not, then you can delete the shortcut of course.

Mark

Many thanks to all who attempted to help with my question. I just returned from an out of town Turkey trip and was thankful indeed for the last two responders, both offered excellent solutions. I decided to use the method suggested by Mark as it allows me to leave the My Documents folder where it currently resides. If I have learned (and relearned it) anything over the years it just might be the value of "do no harm". So I'm not moving anything if I don't have to. I created the shortcut and renamed it "0001" I wanted to make sure it was visible in the alphabetically arranged My Pictures folder. The "Save Picture As" dialog defaults to the My Pictures folder. By creating and renaming a shortcut to the MMJB cover art folder and then placing it in My Pictures, I now have only one additional "click" to get to the folder where the cover art needs to be stored. Navigating to this folder used to waste so much time, it involved at least eight clicks and sliding the scroll bar button, whew!
There were some other ideas I received from other sources but nothing was as good as Mark's suggestion. So thank you Mark and all the others as well.

I've found over the years that there are many different ways to do single things in windows.

This one I sorted out myself at work. The PC's we use at work are dumb PC's, networked to a server, and all of our documents are saved on the server as the dumb PC's don't have their own storage space.

It was a pain navigating through the maze of Windows Explorer or the Open or Save dialogues so I created my own shortcuts to them. Soon, everyone was doing it.

BTW, did the turkey enjoy the trip?



Mark