Help needed with PE4 Organizer

[hbear]

Have just upgraded to PE4 from PE2. OK...so I'm trying to wrap my head around the Browser/Relational Database way of doing things. It sucks! The biggest headache I have with it is when I import all my photos, it fails on about 20 of them telling me they're already in the catalog. This is because the same photo may be in another folder. IS THIS ALLOWED!!! Surely you can have a couple of copies of the same photo on your computer without this software ignoring the 2nd instance. It shows the whole folder contents MINUS the 2nd occurence of the photo. Very very annoying. I just want a browser/anything that shows me my photos in the folder as they are. I don't need protecting from myself...I KNOW I have copies in other folders...rant rant rant.

Am I going mad or is this a "feature"? :eek:

Also...when I've imported say a few thousand photos...it says at the bottom that 13 files are already in the catalog...press show all to view the rest. I'm assuming the 13 are the ones staring me in the face on the screen from the import.

I can live with that...but not the first feature.

Please help guys!!! I thought PE5 might solve this...but reading the forums it seems that nothing has changed. I like the workflow of being able to drag and drop to the editor. I can always have another brand of browser open but then I have to navigate twice to edit the file.

[Ward Grant]

Welcome to the forum

I bookmarked this explanation months ago and have referenced it several times since then. I thought it might give you some background on how Elements look at files.

Yes, Elements does not like duplicates (even though some will sneak in on occassion). It goes toward the database theory that you should capture the same data only once. (Although I too, think, a different folder is a different file).


Barb Olson (http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?224@@2ccf36bd@.3bbe7ce3/4) - 9:22pm Feb 12, 06 PST (#5 (http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@@.3bbe7ce3/4) of 8) Edited: 12-Feb-2006 at 08:23pm
The intent for the Organizer is that the same photo will not be imported twice. However, don't draw the conclusion that this means that the same file name alone will cause the Organizer to consider a photo file a duplicate.

Multiple factors are considered for identifying a photo as a duplicate - same name, size, date, time are the notes I found.

Because duplicates of photos are often in different folders, the fact that one file is in a different folder than another does not prevent it from being identified as a duplicate photo.

If you want to get around the characterization of a given photo as a duplicate of anther, a minor change in the file name will accomplish that.

Barb O

[Wendy]

Hi ...

... and welcome to the forum :)

The organiser does take some getting used to ... hope that you manage to sort out your issues...

Wendy

[NickLewis]

Personally, I think the Organiser is an excellent tool. Especially if you want to to keep your files offline. I really like it, now I'm used to it. There's a lot of power in there.

But it does take getting used to. It seems to me that its underlying design philosophy is that PSE provides a turnkey image management and manipulation solution. And that you follow its model of working. E.g. if you want to keep multiple copies of the same image you do it via PSE. Which will prompt you with name changes, and offer to keep images in version sets.

Importing your own pre-existing structure into this model can be problematic. Not impossible, but you have to make compromises. Once they're in, you're fine. As long as you then don't make changes outside PSE. If you do, and you want to revert to using PSE, then you may run into the model again.

Since you're keeping identically named copies in different places, I'm guessing that you want to be able to work outside PSE for some purposes, perhaps with other tools. Nothing wrong with that, but it runs across the PSE philosophy that it catalogues and manages your images from camera to output for you.

Nick

P.S. I don't know what the issue with your 13 photos is - but I don't think it's as simple as they are the ones staring you in the face.