confused about saving/organizing

[click]

I've been playing around with my pse7 for about a month now. So far I've been doing a lot of tuts and other things with one picture at a time. Now, I'm trying to put together a small project with some vacation pix.

I saved the photos I want in the project into an album in the organizer. I find that when I alter a photo and save it, if I save as a version, I then have both in my album and I'm unable to get just the edited version in my album. If I save it as its own pix (not a version), then the edited version is not in my album, but the original is. It is taking me forever to go back and find the edited and swap it out in the album with the original. Does this make sense?

What am I missing? Should I be saving all my photos to DVD first so I only have a copy on my computer to work with and then saving my edited pictures as the only copy? It seems working the way I've been is going to leave me with a mess of multiple copies of the same pix and not much hard drive space in a short amount of time.

Please help!:confused:

[Codebreaker]

If you're saving the image as a Version Set then it goes into the Catalog 'behind' the original thumbnail. If you look at the original thumbnail it's outline will appear a slightly lighter gray and there is a right facing arrow on the side. If you click this the set expands and you can see the other versions.

Alternately you can right click on the image and choose Version Set > Expand Items in Version Set.

Colin

[dj_paige]

I would definitely save things as a version set. I don't see how, if you're new at PSE7, you could have "not much hard disk space in a short time", unless you are starting with a very small amount of hard disk space to begin with. Even so, this hard disk space issue is not due to the PSE or due to the organizer; any photo editing by any software will leave you with this issue.

Some people automatically create backups to DVD of their originals, straight out of camera. I don't prefer this, I prefer to save both originals and edits and the PSE catalog file (if something happens to my hard disk, I don't have to recreate the edits and catalog file).

It is never a good idea to save a file under the same name as the original, because then your original is gone and you can never go back and start from scratch.

[click]

Thanks to you both for your reply. I don't have hard drive space issues right now. Just looking to the future and if I keep going as I am, I can see it becoming an issue. Backing up originals and edits together makes a lot of sense....

If I save in version sets, then all versions are in my album. When its time to print, will it print all versions, or just the top one? I don't want to waste time/money printing throw away prints.

I appreciate your response. Thanks.

[dj_paige]

If I save in version sets, then all versions are in my album. When its time to print, will it print all versions, or just the top one? I don't want to waste time/money printing throw away prints.

Version sets are in your catalog. Photos from the version set may also be in albums. When you print, it will print whichever photo(s) you select, not the entire set (unless you expand the set and select them all)

[click]

Thanks Paige.

[Codebreaker]

Just to make this absolutely clear. Elements Organiser does not store any of your images. It only uses small thumbnails of the original (and edited versions) and has a database which links the thumbnail to the actual location of your image file.

Albums are only virtual albums - again they do not contain the actual image, only the links to the images of the thumbnails in the Album.

Its also the same for Elements slideshows.

The upshot of this is that whatever backup method you use to make a copy of your image files must also backup the Catalog Files used by Elements.

Hope this helps

Colin

[click]

It does, Colin. Thank you.