Adobe Community: PS Elements 11 Organizer - Importing a Pic New File?

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Jan 6, 2010

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1. 99jon,

Dec 3, 2012 6:03 AM in reply to Mountain Man1

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No it simply makes a link to your original on the hard drive. The thumbnails are simple previews.

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2. Mountain Man1,

Dec 3, 2012 7:48 AM in reply to 99jon

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Thanks! It's actually my wife's machine and I was getting worried about, not only, her hard drive capacity but also the backup scheme I designed for her!

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3. MichelBParis,

Dec 3, 2012 8:43 AM in reply to Mountain Man1

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About backups :

http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshop-elements-faq.htm#_Backin g_up_your

It's important to backup your media files and your catalogs(s).

You find the location of your catalogs in the help menu, system info.

All your organization, tags, ratings, captions, albums, creations... are saved in the catalogs. So being able to restore your media is not enough.

Another good safety measure is to 'write metadata to tags' so that your keywords are saved in the media files themselves.

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4. 99jon,

Dec 3, 2012 9:01 AM in reply to Mountain Man1

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The path to the catalog (database) on Windows is normally:

C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Elements Organizer\Catalogs\My Catalog\

The catalofg file is named

catalog.pse11db

If you cant find program data then you may need to reveal hidden system files.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-vista/Show-hidden-files

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5. Mountain Man1,

Dec 3, 2012 9:09 AM in reply to 99jon

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First of all, to all responders, I am on a MacBook Pro running OS 10.8.2, Mountain Lion.

To Michel, I backup my entire hard drive. That was part of my concern - I did not want to have duplicate pic files. My wife takes mostly in Raw and the files are huge.

To 99jon, I assume that the answer that it simply links to the original is true for the Mac OS also?

Thanks again to all!

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6. 99jon,

Dec 3, 2012 9:11 AM in reply to Mountain Man1

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Yes. The file path for the Mac can be found under the help menu.

Don’t overlook the system built into Organizer which works well with an external hard drive. It backs up the catalog and all the individual media files. It creates a reference file (TLY) from which everything can be restored onto a new machine in the event of a crash. By all means use your own backup system and make a copy of the database as suggested by Michel but that involves reconnecting all the file paths manually.

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7. Barbara B.,

Dec 3, 2012 9:14 AM in reply to Mountain Man1

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The one time it's not true is when you import from iphoto. Then the organizer does make copies to avoid writing to the iphoto library, which can easily be corrupted by poking at it from outside iphoto itself.

The file path for the catalog on a mac is your username>library>application support>adobe>catalogs. This library is hidden in lion. To see it, click the Go menu in the finder and hold down the option key. It will appear below the little house for your user account.

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8. MichelBParis,

Dec 3, 2012 9:17 AM in reply to 99jon

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Good point, 99jon.

If I may add...

The catalog is not only the database catalog.pse11db, it's the whole folder containing it, with all accessory files and subfolders.

If you have several catalogs (usually not recommended), you should include the \Catalogs\folder in your personal backups

Even if you have a good personal backup scheme, keep in mind that the included backup/restore in the Organizer is the best way to 'migrate' both catalog and media to another drive, computer, OS or PSE version... may be useful some day!

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PS Elements 11 Organizer - Importing a Pic New File?

Dec 3, 2012 5:59 AM

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