new user needs help

[Jo-Jo]

I'm a new user of Elements (and am loving it so far), but have a couple of problems when creating online photo galleries.
1. When I change photos to be vertically oriented within my catalog, they revert to horizontal orientation when I create my gallery. (I used to be able to make this work and now it doesn't). How can I do this?
2. Is there a way to order my photos for a gallery from within the catalog (instead of within the create gallery section)?
3. Is there a way to configure the galleries to display the photo date/time along with the captions?
Any help would be much appreciated.
Jo-jo

[troush]

Jo-jo,

1. Sounds like Organizer/Elements isn't reading the orientation data in the EXIF information in your photos correctly. Usually rotating it once right, and then back left in the Organizer fixes this.

2. I usually create a Collection in the organizer, order my photos there, and then create my gallery. That should do it for you.

3. I'm not sure. I don't think it will. I usually rename my photos to yyyymmdd_hhmmss.jpg so the date and time is embedded in my name. (I actually use a different organizer program to do this, and just import into Elements for Creations as I need them.)

-Trish

[Sissy]

Trish, What other organizer do you use? I love the organizer that comes with PSE, but it's so slow and locks up a lot. I'd like to investigate other options.

Thanks,

[troush]

Sissy, I use IMatch (see www.photools.com) - it can handle TONS of data, has proper IPTC/EXIF support, and has the ability to write scripts, and has properties you can assign to images as well. Supports all image types, and most document types. I usually use a script someone wrote for IMatch to create my html gallery.

It's not a simple/easy program to use - and it is $60 new, and doesn't have stacks and version sets yet, but the program writer is working on it.

I've used it since I found that Album 1 really didn't support category (tag) heirarchies like I wanted. They fixed that in PSE 3.0, but by then I had 2 years worth of stuff in IMatch. You can even set IMatch up to launch the Editor. The only downside is you have to use the Organizer for some creations. But, you can just make copies and put them into a folder, and then have Organizer import them, do your creation, and when you're done, get rid of the folder.

If you rely on version sets, it can be a little of a pain using IMatch. But, if you name your images: image0001.jpg, image0002-edited1.jpg, image0003-edited.jpeg, etc - they line up nicely in Imatch. Works for me.

-Trish

[Jo-Jo]

Thanks for the advice.

Ordering photos using collections works well. I still can't seem to get the vertical photos appearing properly, however. I tried over-rotating them in both the collection and tag view as you suggested, but this didn't work.

Any other ideas?

Thanks again.

Jo-jo

[TonyW]

One way that I've used for flipping images (if your using Windows XP) is from the Organizer use Alt-Enter to see the file properties and click on the folder icon. That opens up Windows Explorer and if you have it in Filmstrip View you can rotate the image there - back in Organizer if you Update Thumbnail (Ctrl-Shift-U) the Organizer thumbnail flips. The problem you're having is that PSE is flipping the thumbnail but not updating the image itself. Doing it in Windows changes the actual image.

Tony

[Jo-Jo]

Thanks for the tip. It seems to have worked, although I also tried a different template which may also have corrected the problem. I'll have to remember to "update" the thumbnails in the Organizer. I suppose a more efficient way to do this would be to ensure that the photos are already properly oriented on my hard drive.

Thanks again.