mnyoung wrote For reasons that would take too long to explain, I am currently running Photoshop Elements off of an external drive which also contains my photos. Needless to say, as a result, Photoshop has always run slowly and been prone to abort. While I must leave the photos on the external drive, I assume that moving the program from the external to my laptop would negate some of the problems. Is this assumption accurate and, if so, how do I move the program and the Photoshop files without losing data? (Surely I can't just cut and paste it...) |
General answer for an efficient workflow with the editor and organizer:
- Install the program on your boot drive. From the original external drive, use the menu Help >> sign out (or deactivate depending on version). That will free the license for the new install; sign in with your licence code. If you plug in your external drive (with the same drive letter), your catalog and library will already be available. You simply check that the catalog is really on the external drive: menu Help >> system info.
You should be able to see a real speed improvement.
- Storing the files on an external drive with USB3 does not slow your workflow noticeably. Other factors are more important.
- Location of the catalog file: best in the default location (hidden) on the boot drive with the program. Generally good enough to store it on the external drive; that's a very common way to share catalog and library between two different computers.
- Hardware: what is critical is the size of RAM (preferably more than the minimum 4GB requirement) and the location of the 'scratch disks'. If you intend to use an SSD as your boot drive, depending on its capacity, you'll store your catalog locally or in the external drive. If it is big enough, choosing it as the primary scratch disk may give you maximum speed.
So, depending on your setup, there are ways to find the optimum choice.
This may be useful:
Move Elements Organizer catalog
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