Rescanning old pictures

[Estella]

I'm sure this answer is simple but I can't find it! Have been scanning old, old pictures and negatives into Photo Shop Elements 6 so I can eventually use them to create photo books. These pictures and negatives have been stored in boxes and boxes and just thrown together, negatives often loose with no description and no contact sheet. I blithely started scanning the photos first, as that was the easiest only to discover later when wanting to scan a strip of negatives that Photo Shop finds I have already scanned the photo into the catalogue and wont rescan the negative into Organiser. I really would like to have the photos in the catalogue and also be able to scan the negatives into Organiser so I can make contact sheets. Photo Shop does tell me where to find the pictures but trying to find maybe 32 scattered pics can be very time consuming. If I could just click on their info and bring up said photo it would be easier but cannot do that. I'm just told where to find them.
I hope this makes sense to someone - it's not the easiest problem to try and explain.
Any suggestions at all would be most appreciated.
Thanks
Estella

[Tina_B]

When you rescan the photos and save them try usiing save as and give the photos a different name and save to a different folder. Name it somethng you will remember and save all those you want to be together to that. They will be in order if you just number them or if you do abc.
Tina B

[Karin Sue]

I am surprised that Organizer would recognize a new scan as a duplicate since the creation date and the name would be different. Also a scan of a negative should be different enough than a scan of a photo in its digital details to not be a duplicate. I am not sure what is happening. Which version of PSE are you using? Are you scanning from Organizer?

I think your best bet would be to spend some time organizing. Set up categories and tags etc. on all of the photos that are already in Organizer. Then you can easily check to see if you already have a photo before trying to do another scan.

The best book/site I know for understanding Organizer is www.photofanatic.com. It is written for version 3 so the details will be different for later versions but the basic concepts hold up.

[Estella]

Thanks Tina, I wish your idea would work but it doesn't. I can't get as far into the program as saving anything. I can preview my negs; I can then scan them but when it transfers the scan to Organiser it will not show on the monitor those pics that it says are already in the catalogue. If I could only view the whole scan long enough to print up a contact sheet I would be happy. Then at least I could print the ones I want by some other means.

[Estella]

Karin Sue. Thanks for your reply. I'm using PSE 6 and yes am scanning from Organiser. I have the same queries as you about the negs being different from the photos so am really puzzled, and frustrated, by my situation. Since my first posting I've been doing a little more investigating into my folders and have discovered a whole lot of idx files, something like two thousand, and wondering if the info re the files are tucked up in there somewhere. Have no idea where these files came from. Googled IDX files and found a number of other people who found these bogus files after having used Nero for burning discs. And yes, I have used Nero in the past. Doesn't help me though 'cos I wouldn't know which are safe to erase and which might possibly be connected to my photos. Interesting that when I search for one of the files that Organiser tells me is already in the catalogue it cannot be found. Will follow your suggestion of being more organised with categories and later tonight will also look up the site you suggested. i've been through my pics so many times looking for these so called catalogued ones that I know exactly what is there. But that now gets me wondering if these photos could have been in my earlier edition of PSE3 and somehow didn't get updated to PSE6. Oh boy, computers are great when they work as they should. they're certainly a pain when you can't fathom out what is wrong.
Thansk again for your suggestions
Estella