Hello! My name is Liz Staley and I’m a long-time user of Clip Studio Paint (I started using the program back when it was known as Manga Studio 4!). I was a beta-tester on the Manga Studio 5 program and for Clip Studio Paint, and I have written three books and several video courses about the program. Many of you probably know my name from those books, in fact. I write weekly posts on Graphixly.com and on CSP Tips, so be sure to come back every week to learn more Clip Studio Tips and Tricks from me!

I’ve been going through my Projects page quite a bit recently and realized that this little part of the Clip Studio app can be a real powerhouse of organization, but finding info on how to set it up was difficult. So this week I thought I would rectify that by writing my own article!

In this article we will cover the following topics:

Where to Find the Projects Manager

Organizing Projects with Folders

Adding Search Tags and Story Information

Fixing “Not Found” Projects

Deleting Projects

Syncing Projects to the Cloud

Let’s get organized!

Where to Find the Projects Manager

You can find the Projects tab in the Clip Studio app. Note that this is not Clip Studio Paint, but the application that opens with news from Celsys, Tips, Materials, and your account information in it. If you are in Clip Studio Paint and can not find the Clip Studio app, go to File - Open Clip Studio to bring it up.

The Clip Studio app looks like the screen below. On the left side click on the “Projects” icon.

In the Projects tab you will see all of your recent Clip Studio files as thumbnails. If you don’t see anything listed, make sure that you are in the “This Device” tab and not the “Cloud” tab (found above the projects folders on the left side of this window).

Organizing Projects with Folders

You can organize your Projects into folders, four of which are shown by default on the left side. These are “All”, “Favorite”, “Teamwork”, and “Work”. All shows all your projects. Favorite shows any projects that you have marked as favorite. Teamwork shows any projects that you have marked as having multiple contributors using the Teamwork function. 

To add a project to any folder, you can simply click the thumbnail and drag it over to the folder you wish to add it to. (To quickly add a project to the Favorites folder, click the Heart icon below the thumbnail!)

You can also add multiple projects to a folder by clicking the checkboxes at the top left of the thumbnails. 

Once you have selected as many Projects as you wish to add to the folder, click and drag the selected files to the folder you wish to add them to. You will see the number of files you are adding to this folder in a red square next to your cursor. 

You can add your own folders to organize your Projects by clicking the “+” icon at the top of the folder list. Type in the name for your new folder and then you are ready to add projects to it!

Note that adding projects into folders such as Favorite will NOT remove them from the “All” folder. 

Adding Search Tags and Story Information

If you have a lot of Projects in the Clip Studio app, you may find it easier to add search tags to your projects to find them quickly instead of scrolling endlessly through thumbnails!

Find the project you wish to add search tags to and click on the “>” icon in the lower right of the thumbnail, next to the heart icon. Then click on “File Information”.

This will bring up the Story Information editor screen (which is different from the Story Editor in Clip Studio Paint EX, so it’s a little confusing that they share a name!). In the lower left corner you will see the Tags section. Click the “+” symbol to enter a new tag. Continue this for as many tags as you wish to add to the file. Note that tags cannot contain spaces.

In the text box on the right you can add other information about your file, format text, and even add images if you wish. I do not have anyone I am doing Teamwork files with, but I could see where this would be useful in an instance where multiple artists are contributing on one project to share info, keep track of character information and references, and more.

Clicking Save in the above screen will take you to the project screen for this specific file, where you can open the file in Clip Studio Paint, send to Clip Studio Share, and more.

Fixing “Not Found” Projects

I tend to move files around on my computer, which then makes Projects come up as “Not Found” in the Projects list since it breaks the shortcut. I find this annoying, but thankfully it’s very easy to fix! 

Click on the “>” icon in the lower right under the “Not Found” thumbnail. Then click on “Manage Works”.

This will bring up the file explorer on your device. I chose to use the search folder on my Windows PC and simply entered the name of the file I was looking for rather than searching through all my folders. 

Click on the correct file and then click “Open” to complete the task.

Do this with any Projects that are coming up as Not Found so that your projects list looks beautiful!

Deleting Projects

You can delete projects from the Projects manager, however there are two effects to doing this. To Delete, click on the “>” icon in the lower right beneath the project thumbnail.

If the project is showing as “Not Found”, as in the example above, you will be notified that the file could not be found because it has likely been moved from where it was the last time it was opened in Clip Studio, and that the project will be deleted from the Projects list. This will NOT affect any files on your device.

If the Project is not coming up as Not Found, then selecting Delete from this list will move the files to the Trash on your computer. If the files are on External storage, they will be deleted without being moved to the Trash folder. This cannot be undone so be certain that you wish to delete this project!

Syncing Projects to the Cloud

You can sync projects to the Cloud either to work on them with a team or to have them available on multiple devices if you switch back and forth between machines.

For more information on using sync to work with a Team, see this previous post that I wrote: https://tips.clip-studio.com/en-us/articles/5047 

To start syncing a file, make sure you are signed in to your Clip Studio account. Then click on the “Switch syncing” icon below the project’s thumbnail.

Once you turn on syncing you may need to click on the cloud icon next to the sync switch to start uploading the file now. Once the sync starts Clip Studio will begin uploading your project to the Cloud. Depending on your internet connection and device this process may take several minutes.

To open a project that is in the Cloud, go to the Projects window and then click on the “Cloud” tab at the top of the project list. This will show any projects you have synced to your cloud storage.

To download a project from the cloud, click on the checkbox at the top left of the thumbnail, then select either “Download as new” or “Download and overwrite” from the icons at the top. If the project does not exist on the current device you will use Download as New. If there is a different version of the project in the Cloud storage and you wish to overwrite the version on this device with the newer version, use ‘Download and overwrite’ to update the old file on this device.

Conclusion

Of course this is not an exhaustive overview of the features of the Projects tab in Clip Studio, but I hope it gives you an idea of just how powerful of an organization tool this often-overlooked feature can be!

For more information on CLIP Studio Paint, please visit https://www.clipstudio.net/en or https://graphixly.com