The PS Elements Organizer

[rbailey280]

Is the organizer limited to Windows only? I am trying to make a decision to purchase PSE 8. I would like to know how it operates on a iMac and have installed the try-out version. But, I cannot find the organizer.

Is the Organizer the program inside of PSE 8 that recognizes faces, allows you to tag photos, etc...?

[mamabegood]

I use Windows, but I'm 99% sure you can use PSE on a Mac. Adobe has a free 30 day trial that you could try on your Mac to see if it's something that would work for you.

[Barbara Brundage]

The organizer is only in the windows version. The mac version comes with Adobe Bridge, the deluxe file browser that comes with CS4, instead.

[Wendy]

Hi rbailey280

... and welcome to the Village

Do let us know how you go on with the trial version .

Wendy

[rbailey280]

I am still trying to figure PSE 8 out and your responses have helped me. Thank you all and I appreciate it. Is the Organizer the only program within PSE 8 that recognizes faces. I don't think Bridge does.

[Barbara Brundage]

You said you had a mac, right? When you install PSE, it installs bridge. If you decide to use bridge instead of iphoto, you browse to a photo in bridge, double click and it opens in PSE (or whatever other program you choose in the preferences). You can use bridge or not as you please.

PSE per se doesn't "recognize" any program. You open images in PSE to edit, either by using File>Open, sending from Bridge, or setting up PSE as the external editor for another program like aperture, lightroom, iphoto.

In windows you can use other programs as your editor from the organizer by choosing Edit in External Editor, so I'm not understanding what you're asking.

[rbailey280]

I am sorry. I should clarify. iPhoto 9 lets you tag photos with people's faces. I have seen that PSE 8 with Organizer tags with people's faces as well. This means it will recognize a person's face and tag the rest of your photos with the same tag. Since I have an iMac, I do not have Organizer. I have found nothing in Bridge that will tag photos with faces and recognize faces. I am very pleased with PSE 8's editing features. However, I have an extremely large collection of photos that I am both editing and tagging. I kinda wanted to purchase only one package that will let me do both. It seems that the PC version of PSE 8 with Organizer will let you do both, but the iMac version of PSE 8 with Bridge is limited to editing only???

The bottom line is this: Since I have Bridge installed, I am trying to find out if Bridge has the same features as Organizer? Or, if Bridge a better program than Organizer? I have no way of comparing the two.

[Barbara Brundage]

No, bridge doesn't do that. It's actually designed for graphics pros, who normally don't require that. However, many people use iphoto to manage their photos instead of bridge and set PSE as their external editor from iphoto, which would let you use iphoto's face tagging.

[rbailey280]

Thanks Barbara. That is exactly what I was looking for. It helped me a lot.

iPhoto 8 does not let you do face tagging. iPhoto 9 does.

I would really like to purchase both programs, but I now have to make a choice between PSE 8 or iPhoto 9.

[Barbara Brundage]

Well, to be honest, I don't think face tagging technology is really totally there yet. Both iphoto users and organizer users are reporting that while it works well at first, beyond a certain point, the more photos you tag, the fewer it recognizes, rather than becoming better at it. In some cases, after a while it just stops completely.

I suspect this is a problem with the whole current underlying technology rather than a flaw in its implementation in iphoto or PSE. So my suggestion would be that if you don't need any other part of ilife '09, get PSE now and wait for ilife 10, which shouldn't be too far away.