Elements 5 - Insufficient capacity?

[Photobug]

I just bought E5. I want to be able to navigate to my albums on my external hard drive, click on an album, and produce the photos. I have hundreds of albums containing a total of 100,000 photos -- almost 300GB. I clicked on Folder Location in the browser, clicked on Get Photos, highlighted all albums on my hard drive, and clicked on Get Photos. I imported around 80-90% of the albums and got a window saying that there was no more memory. I checked and found that both the external hard drive and the computer hard drive had plenty of memory left. I think I exceeded the capacity of the E5 software.

The folder tree on the left side of the screen shows all my albums. For most albums, I click on the album name and the photos appear. For some of the albums, clicking on the album name does not produce the photos. I did not have this problem with E2 or E3.

Is there a better method of loading my photos into the browser that will avoid this problem? I want to be able to click on any album in the tree and produce the photos.

If I am right about the E5 capacity problem, does CS2 or CS3 have the same problem?

[troush]

CS2 or CS3 does not have the organizer feature built in, that is only in Elements. If you used organizer in PSE3, then you should have a catalog that you can import into PSE 5. If you did not use it in PSE 3, then here is what I would do.

1. Delete the catalog you just created.
2. Use folder view.
3. Import ONE album at a time. For example, if you have something like:
E:\Albums\2006\January
E:\Albums\2006\February
... (etc)
Then, just get the January folder first. Then get the February folder.
4. After doing several folders, do a File->Catalog->Recover. This will do some clean up. Then, continue with step 3 and 4.

If you still cannot import all your photos, then you may need some more advanced software. I use IMatch, and while it is more complicated, it is much more powerful too. If there is a functionality I want to use from the PSE organizer, then I copy the pictures to a temporary directory, use PSE to do what I need, and then delete the temporary directory.

-Trish

[Photobug]

CS2 or CS3 does not have the organizer feature built in, that is only in Elements. If you used organizer in PSE3, then you should have a catalog that you can import into PSE 5. If you did not use it in PSE 3, then here is what I would do.

1. Delete the catalog you just created.
2. Use folder view.
3. Import ONE album at a time. For example, if you have something like:
E:\Albums\2006\January
E:\Albums\2006\February
... (etc)
Then, just get the January folder first. Then get the February folder.
4. After doing several folders, do a File->Catalog->Recover. This will do some clean up. Then, continue with step 3 and 4.

If you still cannot import all your photos, then you may need some more advanced software. I use IMatch, and while it is more complicated, it is much more powerful too. If there is a functionality I want to use from the PSE organizer, then I copy the pictures to a temporary directory, use PSE to do what I need, and then delete the temporary directory.

-Trish

Hi Trish,

I have several hundred albums. Are you suggesting that I import each album separately? I was trying to avoid this, especially on the possibility that this will not work either. If I can avoid all this by getting CS2 or CS3, I would prefer it.

[Wendy]

Hi Photobug ...

CS2 doesn't have the organiser at all ... it has bridge which, in the past, has been called a filebrowser on steriods :)

Here is a link to some more information about it:

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshop/ss/cs2adobebridge.htm

Wendy

[Photobug]

Hi Photobug ...

CS2 doesn't have the organiser at all ... it has bridge which, in the past, has been called a filebrowser on steriods :)

Here is a link to some more information about it:

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshop/ss/cs2adobebridge.htm

Wendy

Hi Wendy,

Thanks for the link. I checked it out, but it didn't specifically say anything about the two things I need: (1) capacity to take well over 100,000 photos and (2) ability for me to navigate, using the album tree on my hard drive, to any album (where I can click on the album and produce the photos). I assume that CS2 or CS3, created for professionals, can do both.

[troush]

Photobug,

I think your terminology of an "Album" is a little confusing. Have you created some kind of album in other software? Or, do you have folders with pictures that you have grouped together that you are calling an album?

-Trish

[Wendy]

Hi ...

Yes that is confusing me too ... :confused:

To address your individual points: In CS2 the Bridge is a filebrowser so it doesn't matter how many imges you have. As long as your computer or external hard drives can store them then you can look at them via the Bridge.

On your second point ... if by album tree you mean a tree of folders then you would be just using CS2 to negotiate your way to any of the folders.

Maybe you could clarify what you mean by album tree :)

Wendy

[Photobug]

Photobug,

I think your terminology of an "Album" is a little confusing. Have you created some kind of album in other software? Or, do you have folders with pictures that you have grouped together that you are calling an album?
-Trish

Hi Trish and Wendy,

I use Nikon View to download from a Compact Flash card. When I download a card, I use Nikon View to give those photos a name. This is an album. Each card gets a distinct album name. An example of an album name is: Chicago Art Institute vol 2. The album contains 300-400 photos shot at the Institute using that card. I have several hundred such albums, all of them in My Pictures on my hard drive. I would like to use Elements 5 to show this list of albums on my hard drive.

I would like to click on an album and produce the photos from that album. I was unable to import all the albums into the E5 browser. But I had no problem with E2 or E3 producing these albums. E2 and E3 did not require the specific act of importing the albums into the browser.

Here's what I did with E5 to import the albums into the browser: In E5, I clicked on Folder Location, clicked on the Get Photos icon at the top, clicked on From Files and Folders, highlighted all my albums, and finally clicked on Get Photos. It took a long time to do this import. After 80-90% of the albums were imported, I got a window something to the effect of running out of memory.

I checked my computer hard drive and the external hard drive (the albums are stored on an external hard drive) and both had plenty of memory left. Now, when using Folder Location, I can navigate to my list of albums under My Pictures. All of the albums appear on the tree at the left of the screen. And for most of the albums, when I click on the album, the photos appear. But for some albums, clicking on the album does not produce the photos. My diagnosis is that the E5 software cannot handle all of my 100,000 photos. But E2 and E3 could. And CS2 and CS3 probably can.

[Photobug]

Hi Trish and Wendy,

Been thinking some more. I think "album" is simply Nikon View's fancy name for "folder."

[Wendy]

Hi ...

If they are just folders then Adobe Bridge would have no problems with them ... hopefully one of the windows users will be able to comment on using the Organiser with lots of different folders :)

Wendy

[Photobug]

Hi ...

If they are just folders then Adobe Bridge would have no problems with them ... hopefully one of the windows users will be able to comment on using the Organiser with lots of different folders :)

Wendy

Hi Wendy,

Sounds like CS3 will work for me. How difficult do you think the learning will be going from Elements 3 to CS3?

[Wendy]

Hi ...

Photoshop is a much more powerful software and I supposr that the main question is would you use the extra features in it ... to be honest if the only thing you want it for is so that you can use your folder system then its a very expensive way of dealing with it ...

I would hang on and first see if one of the windows users can help you sort of the organiser side :)

Wendy

[Photobug]

Hi ...

Photoshop is a much more powerful software and I supposr that the main question is would you use the extra features in it ... to be honest if the only thing you want it for is so that you can use your folder system then its a very expensive way of dealing with it ...

I would hang on and first see if one of the windows users can help you sort of the organiser side :)

Wendy

Hi Wendy,

I can get CS3 at an educational discount, which is very large. Price is not an issue. But if someone can solve my organiser problem in Elements 5, that would be preferred.

[Juergen D]

I would say, the only problem here, as Trish said above, is trying to import all 100,000 images at once. The computer is probably running out of scratch memory in the process, and it should be. Also, if any of the picture files are defective, that would cause hiccups.
I would follow Trish's advice and start over with a new catalog. Follow her steps, except going with 10 or so folders at a time.

Juergen

[NickLewis]

I agree entirely with Trish and Juergen. I strongly suspect the problem is created by trying to import all 100,000 images at once.

Adobe don't publish a upper limit for the number of images that Organiser can handle - its capacity is apparently set by the 2Gb maximum size of the Access database that the Organiser uses to maintain its catalog. Since the catalog is more complex than a simple list of images, there isn't a rigid relationship between number of images and catalog size.

But one user has posted here that they maintain 250,000 image catalogs, so you should be OK.

Are you clear on what Organiser is? It is not simply a window for browsing the folder structure on your discs in the way that File Browser was in PSE3, or Bridge is in CS2 and CS3. (I know Bridge does other things as well). Organiser is a substantially more sophisticated way of organising and managing your photo collection. Amongst other things, it allows you to adopt multi-dimensional keyword/tagging systems which are very much more powerful in terms of controlling and accessing photos than the one-dimensional approach that is all that is possible with the use of folders (or albums as Nikon appear to be calling them).

Whether you need these depends on your particular circumstances, but it may well repay the time spent on its learning curve.

Nick

[Juergen D]

It is not simply a window for browsing the folder structure on your discs in the way that File Browser was in PSE3, or Bridge is in CS2 and CS3.
To follow up on Nick's remarks, if all you want is a browser, you can download IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/), a free graphics viewer, which comes with a thumbnail browser. It does not write anything to any catalog, it just displays the thumbnails in a folder (album).

Juergen

[Photobug]

How do I delete the catalog? I went to File>Catalog>open and highlighted the catalog. I right clicked to bring up the menu containing delete. I clicked on delete and was told I couldn't delete it because it was in use.

[NickLewis]

You can't delete the current catalog from within Organiser, because Organiser itself has it in use.

You've got a few options:

1) Delete the catalog from outside PSE, without PSE running. The catalog is stored in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Catalogs (You need to enable View hidden files & folders in Explorer in order to navigate all the way down that tree.)

2) Hold the Shift key down as you start Organiser. This will bring up an Open File dialog, which enables you to choose which catalog to open (should you have multiple catalogs). If you click on Cancel in this dialog box, you'll be offered the chance to create a new catalog.

3) Create a new catalog directly from within Organiser by using File>Catalog>New.

Once you are using the new catalog, you can delete the old one from within Organiser.

Nick

[genevh]

Sounds like the error you are getting is a Windows memory error, and not an error from PSE5 itself. I can't speak to the import function as I've never used it and my photo collection is nowhere near the size of the one that you have. :( But I can see where Windows could possibly have a problem with handling the size of the import you are trying to do. I would try grabbing it in smaller chunks. You say it gets 80 - 90% of the way before you get the error? Divide the task in half then. Other things you can do is shut down any programs on your PC that you do not need running at the time you do the import to free up any RAM memory those programs are using so the PC can dedicate its RAM memory to the task of running the import. Hope this helps!! :D