catalog problems photos gone

[Monty Kerr]

I am a new user of Photoshop elements 3.0 I have about 1000 pictures in MY Picture files and put them all in my Elements organizer. For a couple of months I was able to turn on the computer, click on adobe photoshop and my organizer would come up with my catalog and my pictures all there as
thumbnails. Well recently, to my dismay, all I can see on my catalog organizer are my creations, a couple of cards and a slide show. I cannot see my pictures. I know they are in the catalog because I drag the pictures in to the empty catalog space from "my pictures" and a message comes up that they are already in this catalog. I even tried to make a new catalog, I called CATALOG 2, and reloaded all my pictures to it. I know they all went in, I WATCHED THEM GO, BUT WHEN I TRY TO CALL THEM BACK AS CATALOG 2 I GET A BLANK SCREEN AGAIN. Plus I will probably want to DELETE this Catalog 2 when I get this all sorted out, HOW DOES ONE DELAETE A CATALOG???? SO MY 2 QUESTIONS....HOW DO I SEE MY PICTURES IN THE CATALOG,,,,,AND HOW DO I DELETE A CATALOG?????
I hope someone can help,,

monty

[Barb O]

My first thought when reading the post is that your results of seeing only the
creations are what would happen if you set View > Media types to only have Creations checked.

So I suggest that you go to the View menu of the Organizer to see what your settings are for View > Media Types. Do you have Photos checked? If not, of course, check Photos and any other choice you wish displayed. Does that resolve your problem?

[troush]

The other thing to try is a File->Catalog->Recover and see if that fixes your database.

-Trish

[Ward Grant]

As for deleting a catalog:
Open the catalog you do NOT want to delete.
File>Catalog>Open to bring up a list of your catalogs
Highlight the one you WANT to delete and Right Click
Pick Delete from the pop-out menu.

[NickLewis]

Ward,

Does that process delete the catalog cache files as well?

Nick

[Monty Kerr]

THANK YOU SO MUCH I have been without my photos for about a month now, and after just a few minutes with you and this site, I have them back. Also I can delete my extra catalog that I made.

I notice when I go to Catalog there is a MY CATALOG there, what is this and what does it do or what is in it??

Thanks again...from the cold snowy north in Canada.

Monty:) :)

[NickLewis]

The Organiser works by keeping a database of all your images. It doesn't store the images themselves, just a reference to where they are on your hard drive.

That database is called a "catalog". The default name for it is "My Catalog". Then when you create a new one, it calls it "My Catalog 2" and so on, unless you choose a different name.

The catalog file holds the information to tell Organiser where your images are stored, and also all the data about tags, collections, creations etc etc. Everything you do in Organiser. So, in your case, "My Catalog" is almost certainly the file that holds all the details of what you'd been doing in Organiser until you created "Catalog 2"

DON'T delete a catalog file unless you are absolutely sure that you don't want it anymore.......!! You won't lose your images, but you'll have to start again from scratch with all your tags etc. The name of the catalog file you are actually viewing appears in the Title Bar at the top of the Organiser window.

Nick

[mom to 4]

Monty:

Welcome!!! Frequent this forum often. You will be amazed at the wealth of talent and knowledge here! I found that out after struggling for weeks on an issue. When I posted my question I had an answer in seconds!!!

[Wendy]

Hi Monty ....

... and welcome to the forum :)

Wendy

[Ward Grant]

Ward,

Does that process delete the catalog cache files as well?

Nick

Nick-not sure what you are referring to as "cache" files? Do you mean the thumbnails files and stuff? A good question-offhand, I'm thinking No but I'll have to confirm with a test catalog.