Elements 6 and Mac

[gmroczek]

All -- I've been on a bit of a hiatus from Elements for a while.

I'm running PSE3 on a Mac.
I just was at the Apple store yesterday and saw they had PSE4.

And I saw the press release that Adobe is releasing PSE6.

Are Mac users doomed to be 2 PSE releases behind PC users?
If yes, how concerned should I be about this?
Especially as it relates to the info on the PSE User site?

Thanks all.

Greg

[troush]

Greg,

Adobe says a Mac version for PSE 6.0 will be out early 2008.

-Trish

[gmroczek]

Thanks Trish.

So is Adobe skipping PSE 5 for Mac users and jumping right from PSE4 to PSE6? or am I missing something here?

Has Adobe released PSE5 for Mac users?

Greg

[TonyW]

There was no PSE5 for Mac. If you want my speculation it's that the Organizer has been the problem so PSE4 for Mac substituted Bridge for the Organizer. Now that Adobe have switched database engines from OBDC/Microsoft Acess to SQLite I'm guessing (and I know nothing about Macs) that a Mac version of PSE6 with an Organizer will be feasible. BTW I believe Lightroom uses SQLite so makes sense that Adobe would use it for Elements.

Tony

[Wendy]

Hi ...

I suspect that the missing Mac version was because of the introduction of Intel Macs ... and the issue of Photoshop Elements running without using Rosetta. Its only with the introduction of CS3 that that has happened for Photoshop so PSE6 was the next version after that.

I actually don't think that the Organiser will be added as the Mac already has its own organiser in iPhoto. I think that once again the Mac version will have Bridge as a filebrower ..

... but hey I am just guessing and I may be wrong :)

Wendy

[Sasparilla]

Waiting on it is what we'll have to do. But I'm going to side with TonyW and bet we'll see the Organizer added to the Mac version of PSE with 6 as well. Tony, great point about the Mac version of Lightroom already using this DB engine - it makes it a nobrainer for Adobe to do version 6 on the Mac using it.

When maintaining different versions of software, its always less expensive when you can make them as similar as possible - Adobe has always coded full Photoshop (and Lightroom) to be as similar as possible between the Mac and PC.

With prior versions of PSE the organizer wasn't compatible because of Adobe's astoundingly bad choice of Windows only Microsoft Access as its database engine. Creating a new version of Organizer with a different DB for the Mac would have been very expensive - so they went for a version without Organizer dropping in a version of Bridge instead (cheapest alternative).

Now with 6 they have integrated Organizer much more tightly into the product and its going to be way less expensive for them to develop and maintain (now and in the future) if they use the version of SQLite they already modified to run in the Mac version of Lightroom and keep the Windows/Mac codebases as similar as possible.

One thing is for sure, if Adobe does add Organizer to the Mac version - I (and I'm sure others) will run screaming from iPhoto 08! Man I'd be sooooo happy.

[Teacher617]

One thing is for sure, if Adobe does add Organizer to the Mac version - I (and I'm sure others) will run screaming from iPhoto 08! Man I'd be sooooo happy.

No screaming and running for this Mac user! ;) iPhoto integrates so well with other Mac applications (both native and 3rd party) that leaving it would not work for me. I use it more for the album organization and integration with my .Mac and iWeb. Detailed metadata is not important to me.

Tricia

[Sasparilla]

No screaming and running for this Mac user! ;) iPhoto integrates so well with other Mac applications (both native and 3rd party) that leaving it would not work for me. I use it more for the album organization and integration with my .Mac and iWeb. Detailed metadata is not important to me.

Tricia

Sorry Tricia, I should have said "I and some other iPhoto 08 user's" in my statement. You are right iPhoto's integration with the other Apple apps is great and I use it with iWeb.

That said, I cannot stand having all of my photo's locked away in the new iPhoto 08 photo directory "package" (just try and browse into it with Elements File/Open and where you use to be able to go into the directories for the photo's to edit with iPhoto 06 and earlier, now its this blocked off "package", no browsing or easy editing in there) - there was no purpose for this other than to dissuade people from independently using other Non Apple products like Elements. Now you can get to them, but its a pain. I don't like having my photo's locked away for Apple's convenience. For some of Apple's products there's a real, often unnecessary, "my way or the highway" attitude about the design choices they make and this is a great example of that.

With my growing 8k of photo's, I really do use the metadata and when they redid the keyword interface with 08, breaking it from 1 simple, always available easily usable interface to 2 not always available interfaces with smaller buttons (so you can't see what your existing keywords say if they're much more than a word long), makes it a pain. The fact that this part of the update wasn't necessary for 08, the original space the old interface uses is still there and available, makes it such a waste.

I'd definately be back in iLife 06 if it was easy - to get my photo's un"packaged" and keyword interface back - unfortunately that option wasn't available after the 08 upgrade. When I finally go over to OS X 10.5, I'll probably do a wipe install and go through the pain of unmigrating back to iLife 06.

So I'm sure there'll be alot of Elements/iPhoto users (like yourself) who wouldn't care about Organizer in Elements for Mac, but I (and some others out there) sure will.

[Teacher617]

All great points! I actually prefer iLife 06 for just about everything, especially iMovie. I agree with your assessment of Apple's way of doing things. My personal opinion is that Mr. Jobs is getting quite full of himself and forgetting who butters his bread - his customers!

As for getting iLife 06 back, if you have a boxed copy of it, you could uninstall iLife 08 and then install '06. I'm sure there would be some things to watch out for, but it might be worth consideration.

Tricia

[Teacher617]

I think I'm seeing double ... :eek:

Tricia

[Sasparilla]

All great points! I actually prefer iLife 06 for just about everything, especially iMovie. I agree with your assessment of Apple's way of doing things. My personal opinion is that Mr. Jobs is getting quite full of himself and forgetting who butters his bread - his customers!

As for getting iLife 06 back, if you have a boxed copy of it, you could uninstall iLife 08 and then install '06. I'm sure there would be some things to watch out for, but it might be worth consideration.

Tricia

Sorry for the momentary double post there, I deleted it, I didn't realize clicking back could do that. :eek:

You're right about iLife/iPhoto 06, it has all the integration without locking your photo's away like iPhoto 08 does, and it works well with Elements 4 - I loved it. It, iLife 06, is a great product. Unfortunately I upgraded to iLife/iPhoto 08.

The problem with trying to go back from iPhoto 08 to 06 is that 08 literally takes your old Photo directory (and subdirectories where your photo's are) on upgrade and turns it into this non directory type of object (you can't browse into it looking for photo's like a normal directory, except from inside of iPhoto <and probably Aperture, which I don't have>) and 06 won't be able to read it - so I'm essentially stuck.

If I had realized it did this right away, I could have used my backup to go back to 06, but I didn't realize it till after I'd done alot in 08 - so it will be a time consuming pain to get out of. This whole discussion is reminding me how much I disliked my iPhoto 08 upgrade experience and will probably motivate me to try and switch back somehow. :cool:

I had started out in Elements on Windows and the keywords on iPhoto were a workable substitute (not as good, you can't subcategorize keywords, but workable). But after the iPhoto 08 directory "packaging" issue, non needed/less usable keyword interface redesign and lack of an uninstall path from 08, I would truly love, love to have Organizer on the Mac (if its in Elements 6) to store my photo's out in real directories that I can browse with other applications, instead.

So this whole thing with Elements 6 using SQLite for its database engine has me very excited with its Mac possiblities. :)

[Teacher617]

Thanks for sharing that knowledge! I didn't realize that 08 did that. So sorry it messed up your file system that way. Yikes! Now you have me looking forward to the possibility of Organizer on PSE version 6! :)

Tricia

[jonknee]

You're right about iLife/iPhoto 06, it has all the integration without locking your photo's away like iPhoto 08 does, and it works well with Elements 4 - I loved it. It, iLife 06, is a great product. Unfortunately I upgraded to iLife/iPhoto 08.

The problem with trying to go back from iPhoto 08 to 06 is that 08 literally takes your old Photo directory (and subdirectories where your photo's are) on upgrade and turns it into this non directory type of object (you can't browse into it looking for photo's like a normal directory, except from inside of iPhoto <and probably Aperture, which I don't have>) and 06 won't be able to read it - so I'm essentially stuck.

It's just a package, so you can still access the data inside. Control-click (or if you have a third-party mouse--right click) on the iPhoto Library package and choose "Show Package Contents". All your images are inside the folder "Data" which you can easily make an alias to so that Photoshop can browse them. I don't have Elements, but I just tried this with Bridge and it worked fine.

To quickly make an alias, hold option and command while dragging the folder somewhere else, the cursor will turn into the alias arrow icon which lets you know you have the right keys held down.

All that said, SQLite is really good software and it can only be a good thing to have integrated inside Elements.

[Teacher617]

Jon, I've met many "IT" folks who really know their stuff technically, but they are unable to make it as easily-understandable as you do. Thanks for the way you explain things like this to us on the forum. I learn a lot!

Tricia

[Wendy]

Hi ...

Must admit that this change wouldn't bother me too much as I tend to use iPhoto to view the images in there anyway .. I run a mixture of images in iPhoto libraries and a folder system for things I don't want in iPhoto,

Can you still use iPhoto Buddy with iPhoto8 ??

Wendy :)

[bnk1953]

Wendy - according to the iphoto buddy website - the newest version - 1.2.8 works with iLife '08.
~bruce.

[Sasparilla]

It's just a package, so you can still access the data inside. Control-click (or if you have a third-party mouse--right click) on the iPhoto Library package and choose "Show Package Contents". All your images are inside the folder "Data" which you can easily make an alias to so that Photoshop can browse them. I don't have Elements, but I just tried this with Bridge and it worked fine.

Thanks for the tip Jon, now I can get in there when I need to do some Photoshop work on the library pics.

[jonknee]

Thanks for the tip Jon, now I can get in there when I need to do some Photoshop work on the library pics.

Just as a forewarning, I am not sure what this technique would do in iPhoto. It most likely caches some thumbnail data and that would not be updated by Photoshop and there could be other weird behavior (perhaps meta data changes and so forth). So I would test it out on some images you don't care about first. In theory it will work perfectly... :)

[Wendy]

Hi ...

Must admit that I have always dragged things out of iPhoto worked on them in Elements and then dragged them back. I think its a little safer that way :)

Wendy

[jonknee]

Thanks for the tip Jon, now I can get in there when I need to do some Photoshop work on the library pics.

Disregard my previous technique--I have a better one. Open iPhoto and go to iPhoto>Preferences. In the general pane, which should come up by default, there is an option to choose what happens when you hit "Edit photo". The last option in the pulldown is an application, go ahead and choose Elements.

Now when you click edit it will pop the photo open in Elements and when you save it your changes will be directly routed to iPhoto. My other technique still has some good use cases (you get a directory listing, so scripting can be accomplished quite easily), but this is probably a better solution for most people.

Note: I don't have Elements so you will see it says Photoshop CS 3. It should work with any application that can handle images, but just keep it in mind that your screen will look a little different.