rearranging order of photos

[Mjsco]

Hi. I am unable to drag a photo within a tag. Anyone have any ideas? Do I have a setting I need to change to allow this? Thanks. Maggie

[Mjsco]

I did it just now, by creating a new collection, copying all my tagged photos into the new collection. In this new collection I am able to rearrange by dragging. Which makes me wonder now, what's the difference between a tag and a collection. I've been using Photoshop Elements for a couple years, and have never made a collection, I only make tags. Whatever. I solved my own problem by searching here and reading. Thanks!

[dj_paige]

To me, there are several important differences between tags and collections. You have discovered one such difference, that you can re-arrange the order of photos in a collection.

The other important difference is that you can search for photos that have multiple tags ... in other words, if you want to search for all photos that have both Paris and Churches tags, its pretty easy to do in PSE. You cannot search for photos that are in multiple collections. If you have a photo that is in a Paris collection and a Churches collection, you cannot find it via PSE searches.

I only use collections for those situations where I need specific ordering of my photos, which for me, is to create a slide show or picture book or something similar. Otherwise, I use tags.

[johnrellis]

Maggie,

Tags let you define a particular set of photos, without any paritcular order. When you search by tag, the photos are shown ordered by date, newest or oldest first, or by folder.

Collections (called albums in PSE 6 and 7) let you define a specific ordering for a set of photos. The photos in a collection can be shown by collection order, by date, or by folder.

Tags are best used for organizing your photos according to their content. E.g. use tags to identify photos containing particular places, people, and events.

Collections are best used only when you need to prepare a particular order of a particular set of photos, e.g. when you’re making a slide show or other presentation. Some people try to use collections for their basic organizing as well, e.g. making a different collection for each different person or each different event. But collections weren’t designed for this, and tags are a better solution. In particular, you can only search for one collection at a time, whereas with tags you can search, for example, for all photos containing the “John” tag and the “Banff, Canada” tag. Tags can also be written into a photo’s metadata and understood by many other programs.