PSE 6 Organizer improvements?

[world-in-union]

Hi all!

I am quite happy with my PSE 5 editor (and for that, I would not see any need to upgrade to PSE 6), but the PSE 5 organizer section does annoy me sometimes. I think it is not as user friendly as it could be. Are there any significant Organizer improvements in PSE 6 that would make an upgrade worthwhile?

Regards,

Hugo

[ATR]

Have you checked out the Smart Albums video in the Learning Center of this web site?

Also, have you reviewed the different comments that have been appearing in the posts in the General Forum here? Also, for Organizer upgrade issues, look at the following Thread:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb402592&sliceId=1

I think the party line is "easier photo handling", but, for hands on, my comments are confined to what I have read.

ATR

[world-in-union]

Thank you.

Hugo

[JeffL]

I'm new here but switched from version 5 to 6. I'm also heavy into the Organizer and I too really wanted a few things changed. Here is what I like in version 6 Organizer so far:

o Converted the data base just fine with about 8000 images/videos in it.

o Color - wouldn't think that would be a big thing but my image thumbnails look like they are jumping out at me now with the darker background. It looks just like real slides on a light box. So I like the color a lot.

o The Virtual Albums are a neat idea and I can tell already that I will use them a lot.

o Speed - Many actions seem about the same (on XP). But I have noticed that dragging a tag to an image is MUCH faster. I sure like this!

o I LOVE having the FIX tab right in the Organizer. Switching to that mode is instantaneous. On my system it takes forever to switch from Organizer to "Quick Edit" to make even a simple fix. Ok, maybe not forever but slower than I wanted so often a so-so image would just stay as-is. For a LOT of my images just a quick auto-fix or removing red-eye is fine (face it - most shots are not for printing or even displaying in slide-shows, etc). If it is a special image or requires more manual fixes than of course I still use Quick Edit or Full Edit. But I find I fix with the auto-fix stuff far more than I would before because I can do it so fast. I do wish they added a bit more manual control into the edit features in the Fix Tab though.

o I read somewhere that they switched to a more robust database and can support more images. If this is true, I feel very good about that.

o I have not tried the new photo-blending features to combine shots, etc yet but sounds neat.

Now what I DON'T like:

o Stability. Yup, it has crashed on me probably half a dozen times when applying some auto-fix actions on an image. When I re-start it though nothing seems lost (except the last fix that crashed it of course).

o Crashes when click on edit contacts. Just clicking the selection from the Edit menu and it crashes. How can such obvious bugs make it into a final release? Didn't the testers ever click on that?

o Wanted to try the Find Faces for Tagging feature to see what that was like. Can't get it to do ANYTHING! The dialog comes up empty (even when I have images selected) and all buttons grayed out. Looks like this feature was not ready at all for this release.

o Still no support for 3rd party email clients (like Thunderbird). This to me is just ridicules! Every other application that uses email will use whatever your default email client is. No excuse for Adobe to not.

o Still does not pre-fetch the next image when viewing. Often I like to step through images with a single image showing. Even if it sits there a a long time when I right arrow to the next image it shows the blurry version for a few seconds until it fetches the full size image. Again, there is NO excuse why Adobe engineers can't perform a VERY BASIC programing technique of pre-fetching the next image while your busy viewing the current one. This would give a big perceived performance boost with little programing effort. After a while my eyes hurt from seeing the blurry images so much!

Anyway, I hope the above things will be fixed soon in an update. But these aside, I'm happy with version 6 and glad I made the upgrade (I usually do every other one but for some reason just wanted to switch early this time).

Jeff

[troush]

Anyway, I hope the above things will be fixed soon in an update. But these aside, I'm happy with version 6 and glad I made the upgrade (I usually do every other one but for some reason just wanted to switch early this time).

Jeff

Jeff,

Welcome. I just wanted to let you know that Adobe has yet to ever release a patch (even for very large bugs) for any version of PSE, except... In PSE 3.0 (I think), it would only show dates in "American" format in the Organizer. They released a patch to allow you to switch between American and European. So, don't hold your breath. I would be very surprised to see a fix. (It would be a nice surprise, though.)

-Trish

[TonyW]

o Crashes when click on edit contacts. Just clicking the selection from the Edit menu and it crashes. How can such obvious bugs make it into a final release? Didn't the testers ever click on that?Jeff

I found exactly the same thing (Windows XP) and really did wonder what the testers and Adobe were up to. That really is a pretty basic bug. I suspect it's a conflict with previous versions as the existing contacts are ones I added in an earlier version of Elements but as soon as you try and change it it locks up.

Suggest submitting what you're finding as a bug report. Adobe need to get the message that they've screwed up.

Tony

[TonyW]

An update on that bug. At least in XP if you find the file contacts.xml and delete/rename it (it's in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\Organizer\Settings) then the PSE6 contact book appears to work without locking up. Of course that means you lose any contacts you had in previous versions so it's not exactly an ideal fix (unless like me you never used it :))

Tony