14 Replies Latest reply: Jul 29, 2010 1:37 PM by ultrageoffk RSS

    PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8

    johnrellis CommunityMVP

      Since PSE 6 was released, I’ve tracked all the reproducible bugs I’ve encountered and reported to Adobe.  I’ve tested these problems in PSE 8 and listed the results below – problems that appear to have been fixed in PSE 8 are marked [F], and problems that remain unfixed are marked [U].

       

      Overview

       

      There’s good and bad news. Adobe has fixed a number of serious bugs in the Organizer, but it has left most unfixed, even though they’ve been present since at least version 6.  Even worse, the two major features introduced in the PSE 8 Organizer, face tagging and the keyword-tags text box, have show-stopper problems. And even worse yet, Full Screen view is now painfully slow with large catalogs.

       

      The most important fixes address serious problems with PSE’s handling of drives that were introduced in version 6. PSE now notices when a drive’s letter has changed, a problem that has bedeviled many users upgrading or rearranging their drives. Also, PSE now ignores the case of UNC pathnames (network drives), no longer creating duplicate volumes for the same network drive.  Unfortunately, one serious bug remains: PSE still gets horribly confused when there are two drives with the same volume serial number, and it still doesn’t even issue a warning.

       

      But many long-standing problem areas remain: The Map View is an unusable toy.  The handling of metadata is riddled with bugs.  Folder Location view shows the wrong contents of folders. Searching has numerous bugs making it clumsy and confusing.

       

      Overall, of all the bugs I’ve reported, PSE 8 fixes 8 of 46 major ones and 8 of 28 minor ones:

       

      MajorMinor
      FixedUnfixedFixedUnfixed
      File Management and Tagging46-2
      Integration with Photoshop.com25--
      Map View-6--
      Color Management-1--
      Metadata-1023
      Searching-8-5
      User Interface1159
      Slide Shows11--
      Editor--11
      Total838820

       

      I’ve reported all of these problems to Adobe. Almost all of them are in the Organizer.  Based on all the reports on the forums, it appears that the Editor has far fewer problems than the Organizer.   Perhaps that’s because the Editor shares the same code with the professional Photoshop, while the Organizer appears to be an orphaned consumer product whose development Adobe has moved offshore.

       

      For reference, my computer is a midrange Vista laptop with a dual-core 1.9 GHz processor, 4 GB of memory, and a 7200 RPM disk (the same speed as desktop disks).

       

      New Problems in PSE 8

       

      [U] PSE 8 crashes or gets intolerably slow after using the new Keyword Tags text box a small number of times.

       

      On my 4 GB Vista 32 system, PSE crashes after tagging 41 photos.

       

      [U] If you use the new Keyword Tags text box to apply an existing tag name with a comma in it, PSE will silently create two new tags instead.

       

      Apply the existing tag “San Francisco, CA” will create two new tags, “San Francisco” and “CA”.

       

      [U] After applying a tag, the Keyword Tags text box loses keyboard focus and you need to mouse-click in the box again to enter another tag.

       

      Forcing the use of the mouse defeats the purpose of the Keyword Tags text box, which is to make tagging much faster.

       

      [U] The Find > Find People For Tagging command locks up the Organizer for about 30 seconds after you click Done (even if you haven’t made any changes), when using larger catalogs.

       

      On a catalog with 10,000 thumbnails showing, the cursor spins for 30 seconds after clicking done.  But you can work around this by doing a tag search or setting a date range to have only a small number of thumbnails showing before you invoke the command.

       

      [U] In the Find > Find People For Tagging command, when you select Add Missing Person, you usually can’t resize the selection box by grabbing the lower-right or lower-center handles, which are the handles that most right-handed people are likely to use.

       

      If you move the mouse very quickly so that it is over the photo before the selection box appears, you can usually resize the box with those handles.  But you have to be very quick.

       

      [U] The Find > Find People For Tagging command doesn’t do auto-complete on pre-existing People tags, making it very hard to use with existing catalogs.

       

      I have over two hundred People tags in my catalog.  Because the command doesn’t auto-complete on pre-exisiting People tags and will silently create new tags, and because I don’t remember exact spellings (that’s the point of auto-complete!), I found myself creating duplicate tags (e.g. “John Ellis” instead of “John R. Ellis”, “Bob Smith” instead of “Robert Smith”).  It’s painful to clean up such a mess.

       

      [U] Full Screen view (F11) is much slower than in PSE 7 on larger catalogs.

       

      With a 14,000-file catalog and all thumbnails visible, PSE 7 takes 6 seconds to invoke F11, while PSE 8 takes 13 seconds.   With just 20 thumbnails visible (e.g. when working on the most recent import batch), PSE 7 takes 1 second, while PSE 8 takes 7 seconds. This makes selecting the good and weeding out the bad significantly slower.

       

      [U] PSE doesn’t remember the settings if you toggle the Full-Screen Quick Edit Panel and Quick Organize Panel to disappear completely.

       

      On 4:3 displays, it’s desirable to hide the panels completely in full-screen view, so you see the entire image without the panels overlapping them (that’s the point of full-screen view, no?).  But PSE forgets the toggle settings, even in the same session.

       

      [U] The keyword tagging in the Quick Organize Panel doesn’t auto-complete tags you type, making it useless with more than a dozen or so tags.

       

      It’s worse than useless, since it will silently create a new tag if you mistype the name of an existing one.  And the “tag cloud” is a silly toy that doesn’t help with hundreds of tags.

       

      File Management and Tagging

       

      Major Problems

       

      [F] After reconnecting a file on a network drive, PSE will let you import the file a second time, failing to recognize it as a duplicate.  The catalog is left in an inconsistent state, with two entries in the volume table for the network drive, one upper case and one lower case.

       

      [F] The Reconnect command fails to reconnect when: you move your photos to a new drive, assign the drive the letter of the old drive to the new one, and leave both drives connected to your computer.

       

      [F] If a hard drive containing photos in the catalog gets its drive letter reassigned by Windows, then the left-hand folder pane of Display > Folder Location view shows the old drive letter, not the new one, as containing the photos.

       

      This sounds innocuous, but it led a user on the forums to select the wrong drive when dragging and dropping a folder, permanently deleting some files.  This bug and the previous one with Reconnect had the same underlying cause – the Organizer didn’t update drive letters in its catalog.  Fixed in PSE 8.

       

      [F] The Restore Catalog command puts the wrong path into the restored catalog for folders whose name starts with the catalog name, and it will mark files in those folders as missing. For example if the catalog is named “houses”, and a folder containing photos in the catalog is named “houses photos”, files in the restored catalog will have the path “houses\ photos\” instead of “houses photos\”.

       

       

      [U] Folder Location view shows incorrect folder contents when more than one keyword tag is selected in the Keyword Tags pane.

       

      Based on reports on the forums, there appear to be other situations where Folder Location view shows incorrect folder contents, but they haven’t been easy to reproduce.

       

      [U] The Organizer fails very ungracefully when two drives have the same volume serial number, e.g. because of the use of a disk-cloning utility.

       

      I remain mystified that Adobe didn’t add the three lines of code that would have issued a warning when it discovered two drives with the same number.  While most people will never encounter this, when it strikes someone, its symptoms are very mysterious (and a lot of people using cloning utilities).

       

      [U] The conversion of a catalog from PSE 6 to PSE 8 doesn’t properly handle photos that are stored within the PSE 6 catalog folder (as occurs when PSE 6 was used to restore a catalog from a backup).  As a result, it isn’t possible to save photos in version sets, and PSE 8 will create duplicate thumbnails in the Organizer for an edited file.

       

      [U] File > Backup/Restore Catalog doesn’t backup and restore audio in slide shows.

       

      [U] Using Folder Location view to move a folder containing hidden files imported in the catalog will silently fail to move the hidden files and will leave the unhidden files disconnected in the catalog.

       

      [U] When converting a previous-version catalog whose photos are stored inside the catalog folder, as occurs when you’ve previously used File > Restore Catalog with New Location, PSE 8 needlessly copies all those photos. If you have a very large catalog, this will waste huge amounts of disk space; and if there isn’t enough disk space to do the copy, the conversion will fail instantly with a generic non-explanatory error message.

       

      Minor Problems

       

      [U] In File > Export, the Common Basename can no longer be empty, and a hyphen is added automatically, so you can no longer get files named 1.jpg, 2.jpg, etc.

       

      You can get files named 1.jpg, 2.jpg, etc. but you can’t get files named p1.jpg, p2.jpg, etc. – a hyphen is still added in that case.

       

      [U] Setting the Apply Metadata > Author or Copyright fields or the option Preserve Current Filename In XMP of the advanced options of the Photo Downloader causes duplicate files to be downloaded and imported.

       

      Integration with Photoshop.com

       

      Major problems

       

      [F] Adding a photo to a second synced album will cause Photoshop.com to lose any changes you’ve made with PSE’s Edit > Adjust Date And Time.

       

      [F] If you you rename a file that’s synced with Photoshop.com, Photoshop.com doesn’t pick up the new name (important if you’re using Photoshop.com as a backup service).

       

      [U] Photoshop.com shows an incorrect date/time taken for photos with unknown month, day, or time.

       

      The date/time shows as the the first month/day/minute/second in that time period in UTC that then gets converted to local time; e.g. “7/2/2005” gets shown as “7/1/2005 5:00 PM” for a user in PDT.

       

      [U] Photoshop.com doesn’t obey the EXIF Orientation metadata field and can show photos rotated incorrectly, e.g. if they were rotated with the PSE option Edit > Preferences > Files > Rotate JPEGs/TIFFs Using Orientation Metadata.

       

      [U] Changes to the order of photos in a PSE album aren’t synced to Photoshop.com, and vice versa.

       

      [U] Only the top photo in a version set is synced with Photoshop.com (so you can’t rely on Photoshop.com to backup version sets).

       

      [U] When a stack is synced with Photoshop.com, all the photos in the stack are synced, but the fact that they were in a stack is lost (so you can’t rely on Photoshop.com to backup stacks).

       

      Map View

       

      Major Problems

       

      [U] It takes 4 seconds to assign a keyword tag to a photo if there are 2,000 or more photos with map locations.

       

      It takes 2 seconds with 1,000 photos, 6 seconds with 4000 photos, and 11 seconds with 8,000 photos, and 21 seconds with 12,000 photos.

       

      [U] Map view is unusably slow with more than 8 - 10,000 mapped photos.

       

      When I imported 12,000 photos (the size of my catalog) that had GPS locations, the Organizer crashed a number of times when I tried to zoom and pan the Map view.   When I selected Limit Search to Map Area, PSE took over a minute to respond.

       

      [U] Giving a map location to a tag assigned to hundreds of photos makes both the Keywords pane and the Map view unusably slow.

       

      Giving a map location to a tag assigned to 1700 photos makes assigning any keyword tag to a photo very slow, 12 seconds.    Searching on keyword tags and Show All each take 13 seconds.

       

      [U] Removing the map push-pin of a tag assigned to hundreds of photos mistakenly tries to update the metadata of each photo, which can take tens of minutes and fill up your recycle bin.

       

      The weird thing is that assigning a map location to the tag doesn’t try to write the metadata of files with that tag.

       

      [U] Moving map locations always fails, silently (too bad if you want to record backcountry locations not namable via a place name).

       

      [U] If a photo with GPS coordinates is imported, it doesn’t show as a red push-pin on the map.

       

      Scrolling the map or restarting the Organizer causes the pin to appear.

       

      Color Management

       

      Major Problems

       

      [U] The Organizer considers photos produced by cameras set to the color space Adobe RGB as untagged with a color profile, showing their colors incorrectly.

       

      Metadata

       

      Major Problems

       

      [U] The File > Write Keyword Tag command doesn’t create or update .XMP sidecars for Nikon D300 or D80 .NEF raw files (but it does for Canon CR2 raw files).

       

      The PSE 8 Write Keyword Tag command now gives a warning when you try to invoke it on a D300 .NEF raw file. Why PSE can write sidecars for Canon but not Nikon raw files is a mystery – it’s no harder to handle one than the other.

       

      [U] File > Write Keyword Tags and Properties fails to write the map location (GPS coordinates) of TIFFs (tested with TIFFs produced by the PSE Editor and the Nikon Coolscan V, Nikon Coolscan 5000, and Epson 4490 scanners).

       

      [U] File > Write Keyword Tags doesn’t write the map location (GPS coordinates) into the .xmp sidecar files of Nikon D80 or Canon G9 raw photos.

       

      [U] The Organizer ignores correctly formatted EXIF GPS locations in some files that many other programs can read without trouble; this may be because the EXIF is encoded in little-endian byte order.

       

      [U] New dates set by Edit > Adjust Date and Time sometimes get silently lost.

       

      See http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Date/times_of_files for details and workarounds.

       

      [U] Edit > Adjust Date and Time > Shift To New Starting Date And Time and > Shift By Set Number Of Hours writes the time in UTC rather than local time, as required by the standard, causing other tools to show the wrong date/time.

       

      [U] In Thumbnail View, the Organizer incorrectly orders files that have unknown time. For example, it will show a file dated 12/25/1976 8:00 PM PST after a file dated 12/26/1976 (unknown time) on a computer in time zone PST.

       

      [U] If you set a file's date/time fields to all unknown with Edit > Adjust Date And Time, the value of EXIF:DateTimeOriginal isn't cleared by File > Write Keyword Tag.

       

      [U] Edit > Adjust Date and Time doesn’t properly handle US Daylight Savings Time when setting date/times many decades ago, e.g. October 5, 1961 12:00 PM.

       

      [U] When setting the Organizer’s date/time for imported photos containing EXIF:DateTimeOriginal but not XMP:DateTimeOriginal, PSE 7 doesn’t properly handle US Daylight Savings Time in years prior to 2007, e.g. October 31, 2006 12:00 PM.

       

      Minor Problems

       

      [F] The Properties – Metadata window shows the wrong value for Date Time Original when the month, day, or time is unknown.

       

      [F] When you save an edited photo as a new file but not in a version set, the edited version picks up the date/time and caption of the original but not the keyword tags, star rating, or notes.

       

      Now, the edited version picks up date/time, caption, notes, and keyword tags, but not the star rating, which could be charitably interpreted as a plausible design decision.

       

      [U] Deselecting the option Use “Last Modified” Date If EXIF Date Is Not Found does not work – the last-modified date is always used for an imported file that doesn’t contain an EXIF date.

       

      [U] Edit > Adjust Date and Time applied to a file with time “unknown” decrements the date by one day.

       

      [U] With the Import EXIF Caption option turned off, captions pre-existing in a file’s EXIF:ImageDescription metadata field reappear in the Organizer after invoking the Full Editor.

       

      Searching

       

      Major Problems

       

      [U] The timeline doesn’t correctly display date ranges spanning many years.

       

      [U] Using the Keyword Tags pane, you can no longer exclude a parent category from a search, e.g. exclude all photos tagged with any tag in the People category.

       

      The User Guide gives two examples of how to use category exclusion that just don’t work in PSE 6, 7, or 8.  Interestingly, you can almost work around this by doing a text search of “not <category tag>”, e.g. “not People”.   But this will also exclude photos that happen to have the word “people” in their filenames, captions, or notes, probably not what you want.  You can also use the text query “not tag:<category tag>”, .e.g. “not tag:places”, but this will exclude all tags containing “places” as part of their name – there is no way to get an exact match of a tag name.

       

      [U] Find > By History > Imported On sorts the photo dates alphabetically, rather than by date/time.

       

      When the results first display, they are now sorted by Imported From then (correctly) by Date/Time. However, if you click on the Date/Time column header to sort by that column, the dates are sorted alphabetically (incorrectly).

       

      [U] Find > By History > Imported On takes a couple of minutes on a large catalog, making the command almost useless.

       

      [U] Find > By History > Imported On shows a scary message “Deleting Keyword Tags” that is apparently harmless.

       

      [U] Searching with the Find Bar for “1 star and lower” doesn’t show photos with 0 stars.

       

      Find > By Details > Rating Is Lower Than 1 Star does work.

       

      [U] Searching for “0 stars only” doesn’t work for photos in a catalog converted from PSE 5.

       

      [U] Searching with date ranges doesn’t properly handle time “unknown”.

       

      Minor Problems

       

      [U] The Show All button sometimes doesn’t appear if you quickly type a query into the Search text box and hit Enter.

       

      [U] Setting a date range and then excluding two tags from the search clears the date range.

       

      [U] Show All doesn’t clear a date range set by Find > Set Date Range (can be very confusing).

       

      [U] Save Search Criteria As Smart Album isn’t available if a date range has been set but no other search criteria have been.

       

      [U] When searching, you can exclude a keyword tag and then include an album, but you can’t do it in the other order.

       

      User Interface

       

      Major Problems

       

      [?] On 1024x768 displays, and sometimes at higher resolutions, the Editor Print window is positioned to perfectly obscure the scroll bar of the drop-down list of printer profiles, leading people to think their printer’s profiles aren’t available.

       

      I can’t reproduce this in PSE 8.  The Editor’s Print dialog is all rearranged.  But this bug struck some people and not others, so it may be still lurking.

       

      [U] The menu bars don’t display if you have changed the screen DPI to be larger than 96 (as many people do on today’s ubiquitous high-res displays).

       

      Adobe should be embarrassed about this, given that more and more computers are shipping preconfigured with higher DPIs.  See http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#The_Organizers_Menu_Bar_ doesnt_show for a workaround.

       

      Minor Problems

       

      [F] Copying a paragraph from Microsoft Word and pasting it into the Notes field of a keyword tag causes some of the spaces between words to be deleted.

       

      [F] In the full Editor, if at least one open photo is minimized to the Project Bin, Ctrl-Tab no longer cycles through the open windows.

       

      [F] The Editor window can’t be resized the standard Windows way by grabbing any edge, just the lower-right corner.

       

      Well, almost – you can grab the left, right, and bottom edges but not the top.

       

      [F] Alt doesn’t underline the shortcut letters of top-level menu items in the Full Editor (but it does in the Organizer).

       

      Both the Editor and Organizer don’t show the underline until you let up on the Alt key, whereas other Windows program show the underline when you first press the Alt key.

       

      [F] The width of the Editor's Palette Bin can't be adjusted by dragging the left edge, as you can with all the other similar panes (Project Bin, Organizer Bin, Map View).

       

      [U] In the Properties window of Full Screen mode, if you click in the Notes field and do Ctrl-A to select all the text, then click in the Caption field and do Ctrl-A to select its text, the notes remain highlighted.

       

      [U] In the Organizer, Help > System Info reports the wrong amount for “Built-in Memory” on computers with more than 2GB of installed memory.  (The command reports the correct amount in the Editor.)

       

      [U] The setting of View > Show Borders Around Thumbnails isn’t remembered after you restart PSE.

       

      [U] Ctrl-A to select all text doesn’t work in the text fields of the Properties window.

       

      Interestingly, you can use ctrl-A in the text fields of the full-screen mode Properties window.

       

      [U] Dialogs in the Editor sometimes bounce back when you try to move them.

       

      [U] Dates are shown by Display > Import Batch as 2\20\2008 rather than 2/20/2008.

       

      [U] In Create > Slide Show > Slide Show Preferences dialog, you can't use backspace or delete to clear the text in the Static and Transition Duration fields -- you need to select the text and then type over the selection (non-standard Windows behavior).

       

      [U] Escape doesn’t close the full-screen-mode Properties dialog.

       

      [U] You can’t use the Windows Explorer Tile command to tile the PSE Organizer and Editor windows.

       

      The Editor can now be tiled by Windows Explorer and other window managers, but the Organizer still can’t.

       

      Slide Shows

       

      Major Problems

       

      [F] The duration of a video clip included in a Slide Show is set to the default duration, not the length of the video clip, and right-click Edit Duration doesn’t change the clip’s duration.

       

      PSE now sets the duration to the length of the clip.  You can’t edit the duration, though – you can invoke Edit Duration, but PSE ignores the new value.

       

      [U] An audio caption attached to a photo isn’t imported into a slide show even though the option Include Audio Captions as Narration is selected.

       

      For an individual slide, you can give the Use Existing Audio Caption command to import that photo’s existing audio caption.

       

      Editor

       

      Minor Problems

       

      [F] The Editor crashes if you invoke Quick Fix and use just one Touch Up tool (e.g. Whiten Teeth) and then save the file (but your changes are correctly saved).

       

      [U] The File > Save For Web command doesn’t remember the last settings (e.g. file format and quality) after your restart the Editor.

       

      For a workaround, see http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Allow_Save_For.

        • 1. Re: PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8
          eschurr Community Member

          John,

          its incredible that you have tracked this much information.  Adobe should pay serious attention to you!

           

          all of these issues with PSE really makes me wonder about staying with it.   It's painful to say that -- i love Photoshop and actually prefer PSE to CS, but i have to take pause with what's going on.   if you can trust PSE to do fundamental things like backup, restore, date handling, etc what's the point?

           

          have you ever seriously considered an alternative?

          • 2. Re: PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8
            johnrellis CommunityMVP
            function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}

            have you ever seriously considered an alternative?

            Yes: Lightroom, ACDSee Pro, iMatch, Microsoft Expression Media, IDimager.  These all seem reasonably robust and well-supported (and more expensive).  But I have a lot of stacks, version sets, video clips, and PDF files, and none of those programs support all of those features (or have something equivalent).   I'd be happy moving to Lightroom, but the Lightroom team has a religious objection to cataloging video clips and PDFs.

            • 3. Re: PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8
              KaMaYaNa

              WOW, congratulations for this marvelous posts. I bookmark it !! I am a recent user, and I just found one bug I had, it's already listed, congratulations !!

               

              Kamayana
              PS: Is there any possibility to subscribe to your website and get notification when new stuff is available ??

              • 4. Re: PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8
                saurabh288 Community Member

                Hi John,

                 

                Regarding the data/ time issues and metedata issues, how are other/older tools displaying and what are the other tools to verify the data/time and metedata of an image, can you please throw some light on it?

                 

                Thanks.

                • 5. Re: PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8
                  Don8User Community Member

                  John, thanks for taking the time to itemize all of these issues. I upgraded from PSE 5 to 8 about 6 months ago and have also run into a number of problems that didn't exist in PSE5. IMO the new features in Organizer are hardly worth it when the software fails to operate as it should. I have not seen any updates either since purchasing 8. You would think that error fixing would be an ongoing process with regular updates provided to the user.

                  • 6. Re: PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8
                    johnrellis CommunityMVP
                    I have not seen any updates either since purchasing 8. You would think that error fixing would be an ongoing process with regular updates provided to the user.

                    Unlike its competitors, Adobe almost never provides bug-fix updates to PSE -- you have to wait until the next version comes out in the fall and pay full price.  But even then, most of the bugs since PSE 5 haven't gotten fixed.  PSE 7 and 8 have had some fixes for syncing with Photoshop.com, and the Adobe Camera Raw team pushes out new versions of ACR, but that's it.

                     

                    I've been told that, at least in the past, Adobe executives vetoed the idea of regular updates, because their finance team said they would have to defer recognition of revenue.   That indicates lack of concern from the CEO on down about treating customers well and a lack of appreciation for what most other software companies do.

                    • 7. Re: PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8
                      johnrellis CommunityMVP
                      Regarding the data/ time issues and metedata issues, how are other/older tools displaying and what are the other tools to verify the data/time and metedata of an image, can you please throw some light on it?

                      The most authoritative tool for displaying metadata is Exiftool:

                       

                      http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

                       

                      There is a GUI version, ExiftoolGUI, but I haven't used it.

                      • 8. Re: PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8
                        nicholasjsergeant

                        John,

                         

                        since you are compiling all these bugs and fixes here I'll add this one to the thread (I have not found it via search of the forums); I have logged it on the bugs/suggestions form as well.

                         

                        In PSE 8 Organizer after adding a caption to a photo I'm seeing a copy of the file show up in the Recycle Bin.

                         

                        The file is not actually deleted but this operation makes the contents of the Recycle Bin slightly ambiguous.

                         

                        Nick

                        • 9. Re: PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8
                          johnrellis CommunityMVP

                          In PSE 8 Organizer after adding a caption to a photo I'm seeing a copy of the file show up in the Recycle Bin.

                          See this FAQ for more details about this behavior:

                           

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

                          • 10. Re: PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8
                            patuwe

                            John,

                             

                            I am new to PSE 8 (test version). I used PS CS and found that quite often no respond in any action, (like other PS users). Very frustrated indeed. When PSE has so much problem, it may as well just use a free Picasa. 

                             

                            Is PSE editor still worth using. Have other users good experience on editor?

                             

                            Pat

                            • 11. Re: PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8
                              Barn_Harding

                              John,

                              Firstly, my apologies for the length of this post – it has been fermenting a while.  For those in a hurry I have split it into two sections – the first contains some general comments on the situation with PSE (v 7 in my case) and Adobe (as I see it) and the second contains a list of issues that I have encountered and some suggestions for improvement.  As with you, my comments are largely directed at the Organiser module within PSE.

                              Part 1:

                              Before going any further I’d like to say what an excellent job you’ve done in cataloguing, understanding and in many cases providing solutions to a number of bugs.  Adobe should be paying you a hefty sum for doing this work.  It’s a welcome change from a large percentage of what you read in blogs and forums to see things dealt with systematically, objectively and in an informed way.

                              I’m less impressed with Adobe’s approach.  In my opinion, if you choose not to provide program updates to your customers (i.e. you get what you bought in the box and that’s it) then you have a moral obligation to make sure that what you sell is as robust and free of bugs as possible.

                              I would be very surprised if they were not well aware of the comments you have made (if they aren’t then that would indicate an appalling failure of their ability to process feedback).  The fact that they have not, in subsequent releases, dealt with all of the issues that have been highlighted is not good.  I would go further and suggest that it is actually a breach of fair trading practice and disingenuous to sell the product as “fit for purpose” knowing these bugs are still in place.

                              It’s unreasonable to expect software to be absolutely faultless, and this is why the issuing of updates is a much “fairer” system.  The problem, I think, with Adobe’s approach is that to entice new customers to each release they need to provide new features.  A natural consequence of this is that there is a temptation to prioritise development of new features rather than providing solutions to existing issues.  There is no incentive for Adobe to change this state of affairs for as long as customers are purchasing their products.  In this respect one of the problems is that many of the reviewers to whom prospective customers go will rely on first impressions and will not uncover many of the issues.  Adobe may be comfortable with this situation (and on relying on the reflected aura of Photoshop) but their product is not cheap and there is plenty of scope for competitors to provide a more robust, dependable product at cheaper price.  With free applications like Picasa they will need to be very careful they don’t drop the ball.

                              Don’t get me wrong I think the concept of PSE organiser is excellent (I actually prefer it to my experience of Lightroom), it is the quality of execution that I have issues with.

                              My first experience of PSE was version 3 and this was positive enough for me to purchase PSE 7.  However, my biggest disappointment with PSE 7, because to me it is fundamental, has been the quality of rendering images in full screen mode.  Yours is the first comment I have seen that comments on the appearance of “jaggies” when displaying images in PSE.  My understanding is that this relates to the anti-aliasing which is carried out when converting from image to display resolution and the level to which this smoothes out gradients in hue, saturation and luminance.  I never observed this problem is PSE 3.  Although the degree of anti-aliasing is a subjective preference, I was deeply disappointed and still find it hard to believe that free or bundled software (picture manager, windows picture viewer, etc) can manage this when PSE 7 can’t.

                              Anyway, I’m not sure how to illicit a change from Adobe.  One way is to write the sort of rant I have above although I doubt this will make much difference.  In any case keep up the good work and hopefully something will come of it.

                              Part 2:

                              Some issues I’ve encountered:

                              • Migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 – change in directory structure means that the “documents and settings” part of the user directory path in XP (i.e. c:\documents and settings\<<username>>\etc.) is now a shortcut which redirects you to the new location for user files which is c:\users\<<username>> \etc.  If you are migrating from an old XP machine to a new Windows 7 one, you’ve kept your username the same and you have tried to retain the same directory structure then PSE 7 will still find files in your catalogue with the old style path.  However, it will not recognise duplicates if you accidentally re-import the same files now they are on your Windows 7 machine.  My workaround for this is to use an external file manager (e.g. windows explorer) to change the name of the directory that contains all of your photos.  This causes PSE 7 to fail to resolve the path locations.  You can then can select the relevant files and reconnect using the reconnect facility (File-Reconnect-Missing Files);
                              • Watched folders are lost for any drive other than C when PSE 7 is closed and then reopened;
                              • Duplicate files are not recognised and can be imported if they are not on the C drive (i.e. on an external drive);
                              • Selecting a category selects all of the keyword tags/subcategories beneath it but excluding it does not exclude all of the keyword tags/subcategories beneath it; however, both selecting and excluding a sub-category selects and excludes the tags/sub categories beneath it;
                              • Searches bring back the entire version set or stack even if only one of the files within meets the search criteria;
                              • The instant search facility will sometimes decide that a number typed in is a date and will not find some files you would expect it to e.g. those where the number typed in is part of the filename rather than a date;
                              • Anti-aliasing is insufficient – jaggies appear on jpegs displayed at certain zoom level.  Interestingly this does not seem to occur if a jpeg has been created from a raw file through PSE 7 rather than an external application (at least for the camera I have).

                              Some suggestions:

                              • Find duplicates facility;
                              • Sort by filename and other file data;
                              • Hide directories in the folder directory pane of the folder view if they contain no imported files – in PSE3 this was the only option and was actually quite useful to confirm that there were no imported files in a certain location (e.g. if e:\...etc was not in the list then you knew that you had no imported files located on the e:\ drive).  It would be good to have this a display option.
                              • Allow filters to be applied only to selected files;
                              • Allow files to be rotated in the organiser without actually resaving them as a rotated file.
                              • 12. Re: PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8
                                patuwe Community Member

                                I feel very frustrating of all the problems with PS CS. With element 8 is not better. However it is a much cheaper small brother. So I must ask myself can I live without this lousy organizer. When yes, then I will buy it. When not, you know what to do. I am still thinking.

                                • 13. Re: PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8
                                  nicholasjsergeant Community Member

                                  Thanks, John, your FAQ link was spot on regarding changes to captions in PSE Organizer causing image files to populate Recycle Bin.

                                   

                                  Nick

                                  • 14. Re: PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8
                                    ultrageoffk Community Member

                                    I use an image editor to fix photos as I build websites in Dreamweaver, and I like the photo tools in PSE 8 very much - but I have also had to spend a few hours establishing that the Organiser is utter junk. Edit in PSE, but just Open... your files directly into the editor (I set DW to have PSE as default editor and it boots pretty quick if you go straight to it). The standard Windows interface is all you need to look at your source photos or images, and it seems PSE will prevent you overwriting an original. That's good enough for me, so I doubt I'll be spending any time with Organiser. The batch editing under the file menu is a new feature, and a more or less essential tool for when clients ask to see the results of a photo shoot and you need to cut a few dozen fullres pics down to mailable size. I'd say, if the Organiser is bugging you, try living without it - which might be easier than you think?


                                    Geoff Kendall