Photoshop Elements 15 Organizer: Uploading photos from your Camera

This exercise covers uploading images from your digital camera or card reader to your computer using the Organizer of Photoshop Elements. Click here to see how to import pictures already on your computer.

What follows assumes that you have previously set the desired PSE preferences. To download a PDF file of this tutorial, please click here.

1.     Open the Organizer of Photoshop Elements.

2.     Connect your camera or a card reader to one of your computer’s USB connectors before turning on your camera or inserting your card into the reader.

3.     For a camera, put it in the normal Playback mode and turn it on if required. If you are using a card reader, insert the memory card into the appropriate slot.

4.     The Windows Auto Play dialog box similar to the one below may appear. If/when it does, click on the red X in the upper right hand corner to close it.

 

Auto Play Dialog With Camera/Card Reader Connected

 

5.     On the Menu bar, click on Import > From Camera or Card Reader as shown below.

 

 

 

 

6.     The simplified Photo Downloader dialog may open as shown in the figure below. If it does, click on the Advanced Dialog button as shown in the figure.

 

 

The Advanced Dialog is shown in the next figure.

 

 

 

7.     You should then see a bright blue bar at the top of the dialog that says Select Your Device. Click on the down arrow and select your camera/card reader in the drop down list. PSE 15 immediately reads your card reader/camera and displays thumbnails of each of the images it finds as shown in the figure below. Note, in the figure below, I have connected my iPhone to the computer. PSE 15 treats it as a camera. Also note that for an iPhone/iPad, it displays all of the photos and videos in your Camera Roll.

 

Also, since you will probably have far more photos on your iPhone than you want to upload, you will probably want to click on Uncheck All in the lower left of the dialog, and then click on the small square by each photo you want to upload.

 

 

 

Note, no images have been copied to the computer yet.

 

8.     Each of the thumbnails has a small white box just outside of its lower right corner which has a green check indicating that image will be copied to the computer. To skip any images, click on its white box to remove the green check.

9.     On the right side of the dialog are the options (storage location, red eye removal etc.) that will be used during the upload process. For our purposes, we will assume that you have already set these using the desired Edit > Preferences and are satisfied with the choices shown. See the figure below.

 

 

 

10.   Click on the Get Media button in the lower right corner of the dialog to begin copying the photos to your computer.

 

 

11.   After a short time, a small brief message appears for a second or so indicating how many images were imported. The imported images are then displayed in the grid and are ready for tagging etc.

12.   You can now disconnect the camera or card reader in the appropriate manner. For an iPhone/iPad, out can simply remove the device.

If you found this tutorial helpful, please rate it accordingly, and share it with others.

Until next time.

 

 

Overview of Photoshop Elements 15 Organizer Views

When Adobe introduced Photoshop Elements 11 several years ago now, they totally redesigned the user interface, and the workflows that are used to effectively use the Organizer. One of the main additions that were introduced were Views.

The views are shown at the top of the Organizer’s screen and are eLive, Media, People, Places, and Events. These views and the features they contain have continued to evolve since then.

A PDF tutorial that overviews these views can be opened by clicking on the figure below. Future posts will go into more detail on using these views and their features.

If you found this post helpful, please let me know with your comments and rating it.

Until next time.

 

PSE 15’s Organizer is Like a Public Library

One of the great things about Photoshop Elements 15 (and all versions) is that not only is it a powerful photo editor, but it makes managing your image library relatively simple, and yes, even fun. But you need to understand how it works.

By far, the biggest frustration I have observed with new and sometimes experienced users of Elements is using the Organizer. Somewhere along the way, they have done something that has caused the Organizer to lose track of where their photos are located. They get frustrated, and may even stop using the Organizer altogether. This denies them the opportunity to take advantage of the vast number of easy to use features that the Organizer provides.

Here is the Cardinal Rule for effective and stress free use of the Organizer.

Once you have imported images into the Catalog, you must not delete, move, or rename them, unless you use the applicable commands within the Organizer.

That means you cannot use Windows Explorer (File Explorer in Windows 10) to do these things.

Here is a link to a video that explains why this is the case.

Understanding this concept will make using the Organizer so much easier and pain free.

Stay tuned for more tutorials on how to use the Organizer and the Photo Editor of PSE 15 in future posts.

Quick Video Tip Via Movie Moments

In Windows 8.1, Microsoft added a free app called Movie Moments. It is available in the MS Store. The app is easy to use for the most part, although trimming something from the middle of the input clip is tricky – at least it was for me. The final video can only be one minute in length. That may seem really short, but it may work well for many subjects. The input video clip can be longer, but it must be reduced to one minute prior to saving it.

For some time, I have been thinking about routinely posting short videos covering just a single tip or hint. Maybe this is one way to do that. Below is my first attempt. Admittedly, the tip is trivial, but I’m sure that better tips can be provided within the one minute limit.

https://vimeo.com/82318177

Let me know what you think via a comment or liking the post. Thanks.

The Case for Multiple Photoshop Elements Catalogs

My general advice to my students is to use only one Catalog. Do not be tempted to organize your photos into different Catalogs. The Organizer of Photoshop Elements provides a number of ways to help you. The obvious one is to use Categories as a way to separate your media. For example, you could define one high level Category to business photos and another one for your personal photos. And then use Sub-Categories, and Keyword Tags to refine your organization structure beneath each of your two Categories.

Another possibility is to use folders to keep your personal pictures separate from those devoted to your business. Given the significant improvements made to the Folder View in PSE 11/12, this approach has some real merit, especially if you are comfortable using folders and files to organize your other documents. Even Albums and Album Groups can be used.

Any of these methods or a combination of them can be used to organize your media, so that you can find a given item quickly, without the added complications arising from using multiple catalogs.

Well, I’m afraid I do not always practice what I preach, is illustrated in the figure below from clicking on File > Manage Catalogs in my installation of PSE 12.

I rationalize my use of multiple Catalogs in a variety of ways. After all, I teach Photoshop classes and sometimes I need a Catalog devoted to that. At some point, I felt I needed a separate Catalog just for my video files, or one just for testing. I even have a Catalog that only contains MP3 files I have downloaded over the years – this one has proven quite useful, by the way.

But by and in the large, I have more Catalogs than I need and this has made my life more complicated than need be. Granted, one large Catalog does require long back-up times when using the PSE Backup command. And there are certain dangers of putting all of those photos into the same basket.

All that being said, I recently made yet another Catalog, and it has worked out quite well. Recently, my high school graduating class celebrated our 50^th Reunion, and I volunteered to produce a DVD to commemorate the reunion weekend, as well as highlighting what life was like back in the early 60s for us. As part of this project, several of my fellow classmates submitted their pictures to be part of the DVD. Additionally there were photos from our high school years, as well as Super 8 movies. All and all, I had over five hundred files from which to choose for inclusion on our DVD. The project grew to include more than seven hundred items by the time the DVD was completed.

 

I have been active on this project for a couple of months. During that time, I have also been taking a ton of personal pictures that I import into my prime photo Catalog. Using a new Catalog for the photos, videos, and music files for my reunion project made keeping everything straight much easier. I used the Backup command quite often throughout the project, since I was constantly changing the content and versions of the photos and video clips quite often. Backing up my prime photo Catalog (about 40K items) takes between three and four hours, while backing up my project catalog takes a matter of minutes.

Now that the project is winding down, and the DVD is completed, another advantage of using a separate catalog is becoming apparent. I have already begun to delete a lot of the content that I did not use to make the DVD. I will retain the photo CDs that were contributed by fellow classmates. Also, the pictures/videos that I took that became part of the project were Exported from my prime Catalog, so they are still part of that. As part of my final wrap-up of this project, I will Move all of the media in the reunion catalog to a DVD or Blu-Ray disk, using the File > Copy/Move to Removable Drive command. I will retain the Catalog, but the disk space it takes will be quite small. If I ever want to resurrect the project, it will be quite simple to get the media back.

So, there is a time and place for using multiple Catalogs. Just don’t overdo it as one could argue I have.

An Aside: As of right now, my initial backup to Carbonite is 56% complete with about 7,550 files to go. See my prior post on this subject.

 

Be Careful Moving Files in Elements

My Photoshop Elements Catalog has gone through multiple back-up/Restore, conversion, and rename changes over the past twelve years. Additionally, its physical location and that of the photos themselves have also changed.

My hard drives that contain the photos and videos are not that well organized. That does not really matter to PSE, it has no problem quickly sorting through the rubble to find me the picture I want.

But I do want to get my drives somewhat organized. It’s one of my goals for the new year. The primary tool I use is the Move command in the Organizer. I also make use of the Folder Location view to do this task. I do not use the drag and drop method in this view for a couple of reasons. First, I am not good at the technique, often dropping the files into the wrong folder. Secondly, I have heard there is/was a bug in some versions of PSE that under certain conditions, duplicate files can be deleted without warning if they are in the destination folder when you you use the drag and drop method.

So I have relied on the Move command, and almost and stay away from the situation where I move an image from one folder to another that has an image with the same file name.

Recent Problem

As part of my efforts to clean up my disk drives I did move several videos from one folder to anther. Apparently, there was a copy of those files  Or files with the same name) already in the destination folder. No files were deleted, but it appears a “-1” was added to the file name of the file that was originally in the folder. But the shot date of the file (the date you see in the Organizer) was changed, by a few days, (not to the move date) however. Because it was a surprise, I did not document the details. I tried to duplicate what I had done in a test Catalog, but I could not.

So as I write this, my understanding of the problem is incomplete at best. That be as it may, I wanted to fill you in on my experience and what I do know. I plan to look into this more fully and I’m sure there are a lot of forum threads where similar problems have been discussed.

I will continue to use the Move command. It has served me well for many years. But I will make darn sure the destination folder does not contain files with the same name.

By the way, I have purposely used “same file name” and not duplicate here. One reason I did is that my 7D camera filenames are over 8000 now. At 10,000 it will restart the counter.

I always welcome your comments to  these posts. But this time I really hope one of you reading this can help share your knowledge on this problem. Or if you have seen something similar happening to you, please share your experiences.

If you like this post and want to see others, please click on the Like and/or give it a high number of stars.

Thanks for dropping by.

Check Out My New Photoshop Elements: The Organizer eBook

As many of you know, I have been using Photoshop Elements from its beginning, which must be over ten years now. I began using its Organizer when it was first introduced in PSE 3. To manage my images before that, I used  Adobe’s Photoshop Album, which became the Organizer with PSE 3’s introduction.

Over the years my photo and video collection has grown to over 33,000 items. PSE’s Organizer is not perfect (no software program is), but it has served me well for a long time. Although there have been many excellent Photoshop Elements books over the past ten years, almost all of them devote most of their coverage to its editing capabilities. Michael Slater wrote what I feel to be the definitive book covering the Organizer (Organize Your Photos With Adobe Photoshop Elements 3), but it was written when PSE 3 was first introduced.

I decided last summer to write an eBook strictly devoted to the Organizer. I have been using and teaching it for the past ten years. Don’t get me wrong, my intent was not to replace Slater’s book. I do not cover every detail and feature within the program. Instead, I have tried to focus on those things that I have used over and over throughout the years, and which I feel are the most important.

That being said, my eBook ended up taking longer to complete and grew in size more than I had envisioned. It ended up containing eight chapters, consisting of over 160 pages and 200 illustrations. Please click on the following link to find out more about my eBook and how you can purchase it.

Photoshop Elements: The Organizer

Working With Scandinavia Photos–Part 4

In this post, I am going to explain how I chose to break down the photos I took on this trip into smaller groups. As I mentioned in an earlier post of this series, I initially tagged all of my photos and videos with the Photoshop Elements Sub-Category of “Scandinavia 2011” under the default Category “Events”. PSE allows three layers of keywords, Categories, Sub-Categories, and Tags. So, I have one more layer, Tags, that I can use to keep a strict outline appearance to my organization structure. So to begin with, I defined three Tags underneath the Sub-Category, “Scandinavia 2011”. These are the three countries we visited, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. So my Outline or hierarchy of keywords at this point looks like this:

• Events (Category)
• Scandinavia 2011 (Sub-Category)
• Denmark (Tag)
• Sweden
• Norway

This is all well and good, but I seemingly cannot go any lower in detail. True, I could have made Scandinavia a Category, and that would have allowed me to have cities/sites within each country being assigned Tags. However, since any given photo can be assigned multiple keywords (categories, sub-categories, or tags), I don’t have to stay in a strict outline. For example, every picture I took in Copenhagen will be given a Tag, “Copenhagen”. It will also be assigned a Tag, “Denmark”. I am still in the process of defining/assigning these lower level keywords to my Scandinavian photos, but the figure below will give you an idea where I am going.

One could argue that better way to do this would be to make the Scandinavia trip a Category. That would give me the ability to assign countries as Sub-Categories, and cities/sites to Tags. But in my case, I long ago established the practice described above. That being said, there is nothing stopping me from changing my basic approach at any point, or even redoing what I have done for previous trips. However, the important thing here is that whatever structure you do choose to use, the acid test is can you quickly find that one picture you are looking for. I can do that. If I have any idea what I am looking for, I can find that picture in my Catalog within one or two minutes.

Currently, I am working through my Scandinavian pictures, rating them and assigning keywords to them. Some I remember exactly what they are and where I took them. However, I have to admit there are many many photos I took that I cannot remember exactly what I took or why I took them. Obviously, I need that type of information to assign my keywords.

I am using a variety of information to identify my photos. The time stamp on each photo plays a major role here. I am using the tour’s itinerary to correlate with this information. I’m also using Google, searching for images of the many castles, churches, palaces and other landmarks we visited or quickly drove by. Not all of these get a keyword assigned, but I will try to get the major ones identified and tagged. I also use maps. What I am not using are my notes; I don’t have any. I did travel with two friends, Tom and Judy. Judy took extensive notes, which she is going to make a copy for me. She is my ace in the hole to fill in the blanks.

I’m sure I will think of things I left out of this post, and will try to include them in a later one. But in the meantime, please exercise the Like button and use the Comments for any questions or comments you may have.