Photoshop Elements 3 Organizer and OSX(Mac)

[southpaw]

I just read recently in the forum how the Mac worker left, or at least is not present. Due to this, I decided to post this topic for answers to people's organizer missing questions.

Let me start by saying that I have used PS 7, PS CS, PSE 2, and other Adobe and Macromedia products. Yes, I have not used PSE 3 yet, but I will give a reason and answers to questions by the curious.

The Organizer, or that is, the file manager designed for photos, is essentially everything that iPhoto 4.03 already is. It would be illogical for Adobe to repeat what Panther already has, in Photoshop Elements. The iPhoto 4.03 is designed to be very fast at photo maintenance and searching, as well as a quicky editor for those almost perfect pictures. iPhoto 4.03 has in it's preferences menu, the option to send any picture double clicked to ANY photo program, including PSE 2, PSE 3, GIMP, PS CS, or even Fireworks. You must go to the Preferences menu and select the photo editing program of your choice... so that afterwards, you can edit any picture(s) of your choosing in Photoshop Elements. iPhoto 4.03 also mixes well with other things in Panther, as well as the new iPod Photo, and many digital cameras on the market. Due to the repetitive nature of iPhoto and Organizer on OSX Panther, it just doesn't make sense to include it.

If you are an iLife buff... truely the only amatuer, all art and music to the movie to the burned dvd program suite, elements is your friend. iLife's major lack is a decent photo editing program. And due to Adobe Photoshop as the obvious standard on Bitmap Image Editing, Apple didn't feel there was even a point to include a nice array of image editing features in iLife. So elements and iLife merge well together. Something to remember next time you want elements to do everything for your recent digital roll of photography, let iPhoto 4.03 do some work... it will make things a lot smoother, quicker, and more efficient... if you have the memory to back it up, that is.

And why don't I have Elements 3 yet?... ponders... because I want a 9x12 Wacom tablet. What does that have to do with it? Well... Adobe bundles Elements with the Wacom tablets. The Intuos line have Elements 2 and the Graphire line have Elements 1. Well, eventually, Intuos will probably carry Elements 3... as per tradition. Since Intuos 9x12 is very expensive... I'd prefer to get the most out of my money.

Hope that was helpful to many of you on Macs.

Southpaw

[This message has been edited by southpaw (edited 11-08-2004).]

[carolecb]

southpaw that is the best explanation for not having the organizer feature. Could not get an explanation from Adobe.
I just upgrades to iPhoto 4.0.3 but have not as yet set it up as my imported of my 'shoots'.
again thanks for the great explanation.
carolecb

[southpaw]

Thank you very much for your compliments Carol.

Customer Help and Customer Sales will never know what the program's Programmers know. Please don't blame them for that lack of knowledge, each person has their own job, and some things they just aren't responsible for knowing.

I was not on the design team, I was just explaining from what I saw. Nobody wants to do a ton of extra repetitive work. Programming the organizer for mac would have been just like that. The PS CS programmers designed PS CS with the organizer built in before iPhoto 4.03 was more than a passing thought. I would venture to guess that as iPhoto continues to grow in organizing features in time, that Adobe will seriously re-think programming the organizer again even in the full PS versions in the future.

The iLife suite is a serious piece of 'upgrade' software. It puts Apple at an interesting crossroads. If apple sticks with the proprietary extra options in later versions of iPhoto and just increases the organizer functionality and very basic photo editing, the Adobe products and iPhoto will purr much louder when used together in the time ahead. The current iLife updates of iPhoto specifically, also allow Apple the ability to jump into an 'Elements' photo editor at any point in time, and Adobe knows this. Apple knows that between Macromedia and Adobe, that introducing a much stronger photo editor is a risky position, because even if both continue to make full versions on Mac, Apple is likely to not make a cent. At the current moment, iLife is breaching the gap of operating system to programs smoothly connecting. It is an issue that some people think is a dangerous line for apple, in that it is evident to everyone that Apple could branch off quickly with seriously improved versions of say iPhoto, to essentially complete an Apple suite of software in digital media. What is part of this current suite? ohhh... Final Cut Pro HD, Motion, DVD Studio Pro 3, Logic Pro 7, etc... Image editing and Web Design is simply the only areas that Apple hasn't jumped into... and some people believe it's only a matter of time. The concern is, that because Apple's market share is small, that certain major companies like Adobe will stop producing software on Apple if Apple continues to persue having an option propietary application to every major comercial application. The only thing is, whereas microsoft didn't win any awards of the 'most customer base' on their video/audio propietary option to current application software, Apple cleaned the floor with Final Cut Pro forcing Adobe to lose money on Adobe Premier on Apple, and then to consequently stop producing it for Apple. Final Cut Pro has been so successful in fact, that it has become a standard in the profession it's designed for. And with the money that a company makes off a 'standard' program, they start thinking that maybe I can make other 'standard' programs. They have been unsuccessful for most of their attempts at producing a 'standard' compared to Final Cut Pro. So, it comes down to some serious questions, with the only guarantee that Macromedia won't pull out, because Flash is propietary. On an array of hope for Adobe and Mac, any program that becomes a 'standard' generally produces an 'elements' or 'basic features' version, and since Elements is now Elements 3, Photoshop is obviously pretty solid in it's place.

In an effort to counter the future of Adobe/Image Editing/Mac sales/receiving/impact questions, I note that 3D animation software design group Alias has introduced Maya 6 Unlimited on Mac(Panther) and Sketchbook Pro recently with such timing that it almost seems like an unintentional 'you can't top our software' mask. In retrospect, I don't think someone could produce better 3D animation software than Alias's Maya. The only exceptions would be blender and wings3d, because they are free, not because of their individual abilities. I would be convinced that the only reason businesses don't buy Maya is simply because other current market animation software is less expensive and they don't need as much power as a program like Maya Unlimited provides. Also, ToonBoom produces first for mac, and with it having become such a standard for 2D animation, it does not appear that Animation and Mac are going anywhere except up.

Have a good day and I do hope this was helpful. Thank you again for your compliment.

Brian

P.S. ~ If you have Appleworks 6, definitely go through the hassle of making sure it is version 6.2.9. The upgrade is free, but you should run it from within the Appleworks 6 folder in Applications to get it to work. Once you get the 6.2.9 version going, you'll see that it is a very useful word processing suite with extended compatibility with MS Office files up to MS Office 2000/XP files(not MS Office 2004 only files). Remember though, 'Keynote' is Apple's version of PowerPoint. So, unless you have Keynote or PowerPoint, you probably won't be able to watch or create PowerPoint presentations. Didn't know if you knew that, figured it was useful information.

Southpaw

[This message has been edited by southpaw (edited 11-08-2004).]

[johnprice]

Unless I am doing something wrong, after I bring a photo from Iphoto into Elements and then save it, it ends up saved but does not automatically show up in the Iphoto browser.

It appears that I have to then find it and import the revised photo into Iphoto. Am I correct or am I missing something? Thanks

[Carbone]

I'm using Photoshop Elements 3 with iPhoto 5 under Mac OS 10.4.3 (lots of numbers !!) and when I edit a picture from iPhoto in PSE3, when I save it, it goes back in iPhoto. It does take a few seconds before iPhoto updates its thumbnails but eventually the picture is updated.

Ray

[johnprice]

Originally Posted by Carbone

I'm using Photoshop Elements 3 with iPhoto 5 under Mac OS 10.4.3 (lots of numbers !!) and when I edit a picture from iPhoto in PSE3, when I save it, it goes back in iPhoto. It does take a few seconds before iPhoto updates its thumbnails but eventually the picture is updated.

Ray

Thank you for responding. I am using exactly the setup you describe but so far the edited photo does not appear in Iphoto.

I have just recently converted from PC computer with PSE which had an organizer, so this is a big disappointment so far. I'm disappointed that PSE seems to be nearly unusable unless I can fix this problem. I guess I will try reinstalling, because I cannot find any preferences which seem to affect this behavior.

Anyway, I really appreciate your response, it gives me a baseline to start from.

[Carbone]

I made the test a few moments ago with a JPEG. Perhaps did you try with a PSD file (Photoshop format) ?

I use iPhoto extensively, but not as a way to send pictures to PSE (or PS CS2 which I use more). I only import pictures in iPhoto once they're edited.

Ray

[Wendy]

Hi there ...

I don't save directly back into iPhoto ... I much prefer to edit my images, save them to a desktop folder and them import the folder into iPhoto once I have finished ... takes a minute of two longer but I much prefer doing it that way.

If you are new to iPhoto then iPhoto Buddy may be worth you looking at ... it allows you to manage multiple libraries:

http://www.nofences.net/iphotoBuddy/

Just a thought when you said your image show up automatically in the iPhoto browser do you mean that nothing shows up or that a blank image shows up?

Wendy

[johnprice]

Thanks. I understand how it works now. I was trying to "Save As" in TIFF or PSD format.

If I created a duplicate and then saved in JPEG, the way Iphoto wants, it does work.

I clearly have to stay out of Iphoto except for importing final products, I guess.

Thanks for all the quick advice.

Does anyone know of a photo organizer software that works in OSX? I used ThumbsPlus on the PC system I am coming away from.

[Wendy]

Hi John ...

I use iPhoto for jpgs and then any files I wish to keep as layered files I save in a folder system on my hard disk ..

You can save layered tiff & psd to iPhoto but you need to have maximise compatability switched on in Elements if you want to be able to view them ...

You can change that in Elements prefs ... I don't use it as I have my own system

Wendy