Getting rid of defunct thumbnails

[theherkemer]

Hello, and thanks for having a look at my question.

I have Photoshop Elements 4.0.

I am running it on Windows XP.

My question is this:

Photoshop Elements seems to like to keep thumbnails of photos, even after the original files have been deleted from my hard drive.

This is resulting in a huge mess of completely irrelevant thumbs of files that no longer exist, and makes my workspace a real mess.

Is there any way to quickly get Photoshop Elements to "update" the thumbs, thus deleting the old ones and bringing in new ones for my recently added photos at the same time?


Thanks.

Hans

[Barb O]

You did not say how you deleted your photo files. It seems like you probably deleted the photo files outside of the PSE Organizer; Windows Explorer is often what people use.

I say that because if you delete the photo file using PS Elements Organizer then it will delete the photo file, remove the info about that photo from the Organizer catalog database, and also delete its thumbnail at the same time so that they all are consistent.

What to do now?
If you know which of the thumbnails represent photo files that no longer exist, I suggest that you right click on one of these thumbnails and choose Remove from Catalog.

After having confirmed that this resolves your problem, you can multiple select thumbnails to do more than one at a time.

[Jan Ruthig]

Hans,
BarbO is correct is stating that you must manage your photos in the Organizer if you are going to use the Organizer - meaning don't delete or move photos in Explorer. It could be a long process depending on how many you have moved or deleted but click File > Reconnect and the Organizer will find all the thumbs that have missing photos and pop up a dialog box that will allow you to delete or reconnect.

[Barb O]

Jan,

I agree that Reconnect can be used as you described. However, I think that if the requester knows which ones (thumbnails) he wants deleted, using the thumbnail right click would be faster than Reconnect searching for many files that are known not to exist.

Then the following statement could be examined
""bringing in new ones for my recently added photos at the same time"
I am not sure if this means
-thumbnails for recently added photos are missing or
-the recent ones are not in sight because the Oldest are displayed First or
-there are new photos on the hard drive that have not yet been imported.
So I don't think I know if this is a related problem or an entirely different problem.

[shanen7980]

I think there is an option under View or something that says "update thumbnails" That might work to delete out the ones that you have deleted from your computer.