PSE7 Organiser issues

[Nick Ford]

Hi,

A couple of things are bugging me about the Organiser - if anyone has any suggestions I would be very grateful:

1) Er, sometimes it just stops working! E.g. just now I had to close it down and restart it because when I clicked on a new folder nothing happened.

2) How can I change the folder it opens when I start the program?

Nick

[johnrellis]

Just now I had to close it down and restart it because when I clicked on a new folder nothing happened.
Nick,

Are you in Display > Folder Location view when this happens? By "new folder", do you mean a folder on your disk that's displayed in Folder Location view? At the time you click on the folder, does it contain images that you've already imported into PSE?

[Nick Ford]

John,

Yes I was in Display > Folder Location view and the folder I clicked on was existing with existing images in it - I should have said that I clicked on a different folder not a new one - apologies!

[johnrellis]

Folder Location view in PSE 6 and 7 is notoriously buggy; see this FAQ:

http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Folder_Location_view

[Nick Ford]

John,

That's a great pity because folders are such a good way of organising thousands of images - would you recommend using some other software instead?

[johnrellis]

If you want to organize your photos primarily by folder, PSE is not your best choice. I’m not an expert on alternatives, but Adobe Bridge (bundled with full Photoshop and the Mac PSE), Picasa, Windows Live Photo Gallery (the version you download), Faststone, and others all provide better browsing by folders.

However, for organizing large catalogs, many of us find that folders get in the way, and that the other features of PSE provide superior organization. For example, I dump each day’s photos into a new folder, e.g. pictures\2009\2009.01.11. Then I use the Organizer’s ability to search by date taken, keyword tags, and star rating as my main means of searching. I almost never look at the folder structure. But this approach does mean you’ll need to do at least minimal tagging of your photos.

[Candy3]

I think I do the same thing I use PSE to bring my photos into the computer but I use a created folder in my pictures file on my desktop to upload them through and then I tag them once the organizer opens up. I used to rename them but some of the themes are getting redundant so I'm just going by dates now.

[Karin Sue]

Nick,

If version 7 is similar to earlier versions, in folder view you should have an "instant tag" button to the right of the folder name. This lets you create and apply a tag that is the same as the folder name to all the images in the folder. You can edit the tag name in the creation process if you don't want it to be exactly the same.

This feature was probably included because so many people come to Organizer with images that have already been organized via folders. It makes the transition easier. When I first started using Organizer I used folder view a lot. Now I hardly ever use it.

I suggest you determine a good folder set up that works for you. Something based on the source/date of the image that is not going to change so you easily know where to put a picture and can then leave it there. The default folders of downloader seem to work fine for a lot of people. Find your images using your people, places, events, etc. tags and date info.

I have a photos folder and a photos projects folder. The photo projects folder holds folders for cards, calendars, etc. The photos folder has a family photos folder and work photos folder. Each of these has year folders containing month folders. The month folders contain the images and/or subfolders based on event and/or photographer (if I received photos from friends). It is nice having the month info part of the folder since sometimes cameras' dates are incorrect and photo location can give me at least a rough idea of date taken.

[Androcles]

I have a large number of exisiting folders that PSE7 is watching. I have tagged images in multiple folders (pictures of specific people for example). When I use a tag search, PSE7 shows just one folder, it does not show all the tagged pictures in the various folders in one search result - am I getting this wrong somehow? Surely PSE7 can search across multiple folders and return all similarly tagged pictures in one result?

[Androcles]

Switch to Thumbnail view on Display menu!:p

[dj_paige]

That's a great pity because folders are such a good way of organising thousands of images - would you recommend using some other software instead?

Folders are not as good a way of organizing as tags, captions, notes and GPS locations, all of which are provided in the PSE Organizer. In fact, compared to the PSE tools, folders are a weak way of organizing. If you own PSE and continue to organize via folders, it is like buying an expensive sports car and then limiting yourself to use only gears 1 and 2.