Ho do I convert my Elements 5 Catalog to Elements 13 which I just purchased.  I followed one of the tutorials and converted my Elements 5 Catalog to a "pse.13db" file.  How do I get Elements 13 to recognize that converted file?  When I open Elements 13 Ca

How did you convert? What tutorial? You can’t just rename!

Start from the PSE13 Organizer.

File >> Manage Catalogs

Click the Convert button and look for your old catalog.

If you can’t see it listed click on the button “Find More Catalogs” and navigate to your .pse file for the Elements 5 catalog.

Otherwise see if your PSE13 catalog is listed in the Manage Catalogs dialog and if it is, highlight it and click open.

Hi,

Have you converted your PSE5 Catalog to PSE13 usable database using KB http://helpx.adobe.com/elements-organizer/kb/convert-organizer-catalog-elements-13-64.html ?

Please launch Elements Organizer 13 and go to File > Manage Catalogs > Custom Location > Browse to the folder which contains pse13db file.

Do let us know if this does not work for you.

Thanks

Andaleeb

Really sorry, I missed your post in between.

Once you have chosen the parent folder containing PSE13DB file, you just need to click OK. The catalog would get listed in Custom location text area in catalog Manager dialog.

Please try this.

As an example, if my PSE13DB is present in folder "Desktop\ABC\MyCatalog\catalog.pse13db", I would locate folder "ABC" and click OK. If this does not work, you may also try locating MyCatalog folder and then clicking OK to see if custom location fills in with the catalog database by the name "MyCatalog".

Thanks

Andaleeb

If you can use your operating system to find the .pse13db catalog that was created, then just double-click on it

What happens if you browse only up "Adobe" folder? Also, do you have admin rights? Can you please place catalog.pse13db file in a folder on the desktop instead of in programdata? Does it get picked up then?

Thanks

Andaleeb

Hi. Assuming an Adobe person reads Replies as well as you (Bumps), I've got exactly the same problem and Adobe chat sent me to this link. Ironic. I presume there's a problem with PSE 13 looking for/recognizing *.PSA catalogs. Good luck to both of us!

spooley a écrit:

I presume there's a problem with PSE 13 looking for/recognizing *.PSA catalogs. Good luck to both of us!

That won't help you, but my PSE13 on Win7 64 bits was able to find version 5 .psa catalogs and to convert them. I don't run the organizer as admin.

Merci, Michel. You were right that your approach wasnt likely to help but it did give me the idea to go to the PSE 5.0 catalog in Explorer and try to open it in PSE 13.0. Alas, although it "tried", there was no result.

Seems odd for Adobe to rely on its users to try to answer such an "easy" question as Bumps and mine. Their Chat was very supportive and responsive when I was buying PSE 13; once purchased, not so.

I suppose I can use PSE 13 for new catalogs and PSE 5 for old. But no *'s for PSE 13 in my reviews.

The case of Elements 5 and older catalogs is special.

The database engine was Microsoft  Access, now it's sqlite, like in Lightroom.

The database itself was called catalog.psa, now it's called catalog.pseXXdb, XX being the elements version.

Have looked at the faqs:

Common catalog upgrade issues | Organizer | Elements 6 or later

Common catalog upgrade issues | Organizer | Elements 6 or later

  From what you are saying, I understand that you are able to use PSE5 on the same PC, Windows 7 64 bits?

Bumps a écrit:

 

Yes - I can run both versions on my PC.  But I really would like to have all of my pictures in the same catalog.

You can't merge catalogs (even PSE13 ones) in any PSE version (only LR can do that). So, converting catalogs is not the solution to your problem.

Since you have PSE5 working on your computer and your images also, the solution is to 'write metadata to files in PSE5) and to re-import the images in the PSE13 catalog. That won't duplicate your image files and you'll lose albums/collections, stacks and version sets, but you'll recover tags, captions and ratings.

To be able to re-import the files indexed in PSE5, you may have to move them to a new master folder.

I am not sure what your problem with the conversion may be. It's quite possible that the resulting catalog.pse13db is ok and that the issue lies in the ability to open it in the PSE13 organizer.

As stated by dj_page, double clicking on that file should open the organizer with the new catalog. You could test that by creating a dummy catalog in PSE13 and importing a small batch of photos. Locate the path of the catalog with the menu Help/system info. Copy the catalog.pse13db in another folder and the 'double click' way to open the organizer with that moved catalog database.

For other users that may be interested in using PSE5 (issued in 2006) on newer OS, here is a useful link:

Adobe - Photoshop Elements : For Windows : Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0.2 update

Yes, Michel. PSE 5.0 and 13.0 on the same Windows 7 64 bit machine. I'll see what happens when I import all my photo folders into PSE 13 after writing all meta data to the files with 5.0. (I've already written all the tags so I'm not sure what else there might be.) So I know this is a work-around but pretty lame I've got to say.

I'll also check those additional URLs you provided Bumps.

Thanks for your idea. - Cheers - Sam

Or maybe it is easier to just limp along with PSE 5.0 and return unlucky 13. I'll think on it.

Spooley a écrit:

 

Yes, Michel. PSE 5.0 and 13.0 on the same Windows 7 64 bit machine. I'll see what happens when I import all my photo folders into PSE 13 after writing all meta data to the files with 5.0. (I've already written all the tags so I'm not sure what else there might be.) So I know this is a work-around but pretty lame I've got to say.

If you have already written all the tags, the one thing you could do is to save your categories and tag hierarchy to a text file and restore it before importing the files. I no longer have PSE5 active, but I seem to remember there is a menu for that in the title of the categories panel. That way, the re-imported files will have not only the right tags, but the categories of tags will be restored.

Hi Bumps and Spooley,

Would it be for us to have a look at the catalog.pse13db file from your machine?

If the file size is not too big, please feel free to send it to me via email @ afatima@adobe.com. If it is too big, I shall share with you a Dropbox folder wherein you may upload the same.

Thanks

Andaleeb

Merci, Michel. I decided to give up on converting my PSE 5.0 catalog and just re-imported the photo files. Since I had already written the tags to the photos, that brought in my tags, but not my Favorites rankings. I exported my tag structure from PSE 5.0 to an XML file but can't find how to import the structure into PSE 13.0. One step at a time at least.

Oddly, for what it's worth, once I created a faux catalog in PSE 13, PSE 5 decided to work better. Go figure.

Cheers. - Sam

Hi Spooley,

We can surely get your older catalog to work with PSE13 as well. Please let me know if you can share the db file.

Also for importing Tags xml in PSE13, click + icon in Right panel "Keyword Tags" and choose "Import tags from xml".

Thanks

Andaleeb

Thank you, Andaleeb. I appreciate the response. I see how to import the tags but the xml lost the structure, and since the tags were already written to the original images, not much was gained. But that's ok. My tag structure wasn't that complex and it is easiest at this point to simply recreate it.

As for the PSE 5.0 catalog, since my Windows Explorer folders were well organized, importing the appropriate folders into the appropriate PSE 13.0 catalogs seems to have worked well.

Again, thank you for your response. Wish it had been easier but at least I've got Photoshop working again.

Aloha. - Sam