Move files without loosing tags?

[mathew]

The Situation Now
My parents are using photo elements (v3.0) to organise their photos, and Mum has spent heaps of time tagging photos. Unfortunately we have all been just coping photos into the same directory structure. :o This makes it hard to share photos between my parents, us and my sister's family. We have duplicated photos and it's just painful.

The Plan
I want to move to a situation where we have a sub-directory for each camera, to enable people to organise photos as they want to and copy photos as appropriate. Using some java code I've worked out how to identify the camera for each photo and move it into a directory based on the camera. (If you want a copy, contact me it's a single file).

The Issue
If I move the photos outside of photo elmements, I'm almost certain that the tags will be lost. If this happens, I will be in trouble :(.

The Potential Solution
I read in other posts that the catalogue is an access database. Does this mean that it might be possible for my java program to use sql statements to update the path for the image to the new directory?

[Ward Grant]

An interesting project, to say the least.
Yes, SQL statements can be used to manipulate data in the organizer database, if you are comfortable doing that. The main problem is no one, including myself, seem to have a definitive data dictionary on the Access tables or links. Other users have posted they have moved files outside of Elements and then updated the Access tables manually, so I am guessing the structure is not too difficult.

Good luck and wish I could be of more help.

EDIT: I'm back. You know you sometimes answer a post, but the question still stays in your mind? Could you clarify one thing about your sharing-are you saying one computer with three different users-parents, you and your sister? Or are you sending photos back and forth between three locations? Organizer does not like duplicate photos so I am curious how these photos are being duplicated if you have only one computer?

[mathew]

The main problem is no one, including myself, seem to have a definitive data dictionary on the Access tables or links. Other users have posted they have moved files outside of Elements and then updated the Access tables manually, so I am guessing the structure is not too difficult.

Can someone post a sample database? I don't have access to photo elements at the moment so having a sample database would be helpful.

Could you clarify one thing about your sharing-are you saying one computer with three different users-parents, you and your sister? Or are you sending photos back and forth between three locations?

We are sending photos back and forth between three locations.

[Ward Grant]

Me again-I see not much action on this question today.

Mathew-Have you thought about using Elements Move command to move the pictures? This will update the Organizer file and will keep all the tags intact. In Version 3, you can not move a folder so you would create the new folder and then move the files beneath that.

I am still being dense on your problem. If three people have three seperate computers and are sharing photos, where does the confusion come in? Let's go through this scenerio:

You take a picture called Nephews Fishing and tag it "fishing". You send this to your mother. She brings it into her unit. This should not cause confusion (unless she has a picture already called Nephews Fishing).

[Norm F]

Perhaps I'm wrong but I'm under the impression that keeping a backup copy of your catalog file will protect your tags, collections, etc.

[mathew]

The problem is we have several thousand photos that have been copied into the same directory, and now we want to split them appart into separate directories based on the camera.

I'll try the access approach and see if that works.

[romanik]

When you just keep an image in PSE 3 its EXIF data does not include the TAG, but when you do EXPORT from PSE into some folder - EXIF is updated by PSE asnd now includes your tags! Therefore when you move that JPEG to another folder or computer and do IMPORT - PSE will recognize and create those tags for you. No need to mess with Java code (as much as we all like it ;-).

[Codebreaker]

Mathew....

I'm not sure if this is in Version 3 but it is in Version 4 and your problem may justify the Upgrade.

Within V4 you can search the metadata for the camera type used to take the picture. Once you find all the images from one camera you can then Write the Tag info to the files and move them where ever you want.

I would suggest that each of you has their own Catalog and download folder. Once you've moved the images by camera then import them into a new Catalog.

Colin

[Daviskw]

Hi There

Not a database man but here is a screen shot of a blank 3.0 database showing the fields you would be interested in.

The file name is My Catalog.psa... I just renamed it with a mdb extension.

It is found in the... Shared_Assets/database/odbc...directory.

Butch

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/14N5aXbTLBV9LRXH9RTUs4RPoO46x_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=14N5aXbTLBV9LRXH9RTUs4RPoO46x)