Organizer Help

[okron]

I loaded PSE5 and it brought in all my pics before I had them organized on my hard drive. I then used Windows Explorer to move and organize my pics. Now my PSE Organizer does not have all my files. How do I fix this? I don't have a lot of info invested in Organizer so I could create a new one but I couldn't get that to work either?

[Ward Grant]

Hello Okron and welcome to the forum,

Let's see if we can get you straightened out.

Just a clarification-Organizer really does not "bring in" pictures; it is just a window to view the images on your hard drive and the "stuff" you see in Organizer (tags, collections, etc) are just links written to a MS Access database.

Once you have made these links, it is best to make further changes in Organizer. By using Explorer, you made changes that were not written to the database. Not a big deal, but it does cause Organizer to become "confused".

Since you say you do not have much time invested in this catalog, I say we just start over. Open the catalog and then Cntrl+A to select all photos. Then Delete (I just use the keyboard delete key). You should get a popup asking if you want to delete from Hard Drive. Answer No as this permanently removes them from your PC. You should now have a clean catalog called My Catalog (look at the top of the screen to confirm the name).

If you go to the lower left corner, you can change to Folder View, my preference for working with bringing photos. In V5, you will see a visual list of all your folders. You can then do a Get Photos and select the photos you want to link; if you have a "master" folder (say My Pics), you can point to this and say Include Subfolders.

Once the phots are linked, the folders that have images in them will have a small frame icon on them. You can then use this visual form to drag and drop future changes to move images around.

Here is web link to some basics on the Organizer written by the man who developed the program for Adobe. It says V3, but most of the principles are the same (some new features added in V4 and V5).
http://www.photofanatic.com/about_book.php

[drileyapple]

I am just learning Elements Organizer also. I am going to take the above advice and delete everything currently in My Catalog. I don't understand what you meant by the statement above: "By using Explorer, you made changes that were not written to the database. Not a big deal, but it does cause Organizer to become "confused". I think I will have to first organize My Pictures. Does this make a difference for getting off to a good start in Organizer?

[okron]

Thanks Ward for the help...it took a couple of tries but I thiink I got it. I'll look at the link later also.:D

[drileyapple]

I did not mean to butt into your thread -- I'm new to this Forum and didn't post a new message at the correct location. Thank Heavens there's a beginners Forum! Diane