Importing PE Catalogue into Lightroom

[brucet7672]

I have been using PE on a PC for about 15 years. When I got a Mac I successfully imported my PE catalogue to the Mac after some minor issues. When I realized I cannot sync my PE albums with my iPhone or iPad I decided I would try Lightroom. On my Mac my photos and PE catalogue are on an external solid state drive and everything works well. When I downloaded and installed Lightroom I got a message that asked if I wanted to import my PE catalogue. I clicked yes and 2 seconds later it was done. The only problem is that it did not import anything. Now if I go to the File menu and try to import a PE catalogue I get a message that says I cannot import a PE catalogue more than once. I think Lightroom did not know where to look for my PE catalogue and photos.

Yesterday I tried to get chat help and was told I needed to call Monday through Friday get product support  so I called today. I got someone who was very difficult to understand and needed to get help from others every few minutes. She tried to get me on the system where a technician can look at my screen and after about 20 minutes that did not work. In frustration I asked her to have someone who I could understand better and who had better firsthand knowledge of Lightroom call me back. I am still waiting.

In the mean time, I think I would like to use Lightroom if I can get it to import my PE catalogue. My guess is I need to remove whatever is in Lightroom that thinks I already imported my PE catalogue and then use the File menu to import a PE catalogue. Hopefully, it will give me an opportunity to tell it where my PE catalogue is. Does anyone have something I could try while I am waiting for a call back? Thanks.

Bruce T.

[dj_paige]

You have obviously upgraded wrong PSE catalog. Go into PSE, make sure you have the proper catalog opened, and then try upgrading the PSE catalog into Lightroom again.

If that doesn't work, try opening a new Lightroom catalog (File->New Catalog) and see if you can upgrade the PSE catalog into the new LR catalog.

[brucet7672]

I am quite sure PSE is looking at the correct Catalogue on my remote drive. When I tried opening a new Catalogue in LR and then went to upgrade the PSE Catalogue I got a message that "it imported 1 photo and was unable to import 12234 additional photos because the photos were moved to inaccessible PE backup drives. If you wish to manage the PE backup photos in LR, please use LR to import images from the following PE backup disk." Then it lists my external drive but that has the PSE backup I made on my PC in September. My imported PSE photos and Catalogue are in a Folder titled Photoshop Elements Library. I don't have an option for it to look at that folder.

[brucet7672]

Also, my only option with this box is to say OK. I cannot cancel the action or close LR.

Bruce T.

[dj_paige]

Are you trying to Upgrade a PSE catalog, or a backup of a PSE catalog? Are the photos in the location that PSE expects? Is the drive that contains the photos connected and not sleeping?

[brucet7672]

dj, I really want to thank you for trying to help. I have PE running on my mac. I would like to get  my photos, PE catalogue, tags, albums,  etc imported into LR on my Mac. As I said previously, I have my photos on an external solid state drive.  It happens to be a Sandisk Extreme 500. Here is what is on that disk;

- PE Backup 9-28-2016 (the backup i used to import PE from my old PC to my new Mac)

- Photoshop Elements Library (Created when I imported the 9-28 backup into PE on my Mac. It includes a folder titled My Catalogue - PE#6 1, and a Folder entitled Pictures that has all my photos that were imported into PE on my Mac)

- Pictures (this is a folder that duplicates the Folder on my PC that has all of my pictures and is not necessarily related to PE except on my PC this is where PE actually references my photos)

- Bruce's Lightroom Catalogue (This was created after I opened a new LR catalogue per your suggestion and tried to re-import my PE Catalogue. There are no pictures in it.)

If I open PE on my Mac now it looks to the folder entitled Photoshop Elements Library on the Extreme 500 drive. That drive does not sleep that I know of.

Thanks again. I am still waiting for a call back from Adobe. Don't know why they make it so difficult to get help )certainly not like Apple).

Bruce T.

[dj_paige]

That's a lot of information and it confuses me.

I asked "Are you trying to Upgrade a PSE catalog, or a backup of a PSE catalog?" and it's not clear to me that you have answered the question.

Anyway, there is a partial alternative if you can't get the PSE catalog upgrade to LR work. You could have PSE write the tags to the files, and then import the photos into Lightroom. Your albums will not appear in Lightroom, and at least back when I was PSE user, and this method did not work for some RAW formats did not have the tags written to the files (actually to the sidecar xmp files).

[brucet7672]

The choice in the LE File menu is Import a Photoshop elements Catalog. There is no choice for "Upgrade a PSE catalog". I clicked on the Import a Photoshop Elements Catalog choice.

If Adobe can't help me do what all the LR commercials, that is import my PSE catalog, I don't see how it will be much use to me. I might as well import my photos into Apple's Photos program and live with losing some tags and having to rebuild my Albums.

[dj_paige]

Can you show me a screen capture of this "Import a Photoshop Elements Catalog" menu command? The Adobe documentation clearly states you use the Upgrade Photoshop Elements Catalog command. How to import photos from Photoshop Elements, other Lightroom catalogs, or apps such as iPhoto in Li... , and I have never seen anything else there.

But you still haven't answered my question in a clear enough fashion for me to understand.

Also, what version of PSE are you using?

[brucet7672]

I will try to insert the screen shot I just took.

[dj_paige]

Well, I learned something new! Apparently the documentation was never updated.

[brucet7672]

The web materials I looked at for Lightroom say everything from the PSE catalog would be saved except the "Events" but the tags for pictures in the events would be saved. That is what I would like to do.

Bruce T.

[MichelBParis]

Just a note about what I discovered for the import of PE catalogs in LR.

Unless I am wrong, LR lists all catalogs present in the default folders location on C: drive, and ignores all catalogs on 'custom' destination, which is your case.

The wording has changed as you are showing, it's no longer 'update', it's 'import' from PE catalogs.

Since I can't find a way to make LR browse to custom location, I would simply copy the WHOLE catalog folder (the one containing the catalog.pse15db database) to the default location.

I would create a new LR catalog to start a clean import.

That catalog should be recognized.

You could check the size of that catalog folder before copying by the menu Help >> system information. If the 'import' succeeds, you can delete the folder copy.

[brucet7672]

Thanks for the suggestion. My MacBook Air has  pretty limited memory which is why I went to an external drive for photos. At this point it is looking like Lightroom might be more trouble  than it is worth. I have started importing all my files into Apple's Photos program one folder  at a time so I can re-create tags, etc. It will be a big job but maybe not as big a job as it is to get technical support from Adobe.

Bruce T.

[MichelBParis]

brucet7672 wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion. My MacBook Air has pretty limited memory which is why I went to an external drive for photos.

Yes, that make sense for the library (the photo files), but not for the catalog (the database and associated files/folders).

I am pretty sure the size of your catalog (as shown in the Help >> System Info menu) is small enough to be (temporarily) moved or copied to your main drive.

[brucet7672]

If I can summarize your last 2 posts as I understand them;

From my remote drive (Extreme 500) where my PSE catalog and pictures are located, copy the PSE catalog folder to the Pictures folder on my Mac. On my Extreme 500 drive (remote drive) under the folder that is called Photoshop Elements Library is a folder called My Catalog - PE#6 1 (total size 636 MB which would not be a problem). In that folder are sub-folders BreezeData, CAXMP Files, Snycdb, and Waldo Data. There are also some files directly below the My Catalog - PE#6 1, one of which is a catalog.pse15db.

So you are suggesting i

- move the My Catalog - PE#6 1 folder directly under the Pictures folder on my Mac

- then create a new catalog in LR

- then I am not quit sure what to do. Do I again try to import a PSE catalog from the file menu in LR? Will it know where my pictures  are on the remote drive?

Also, currently in the Pictures folder on my mac is a folder called Lightroom. Under this folder are 2 files; Lightroom Catalog Previews.irdata and Lightroom Catalog.Ircat. These were created when I followed some of the previous advice and got no pictures imported. Should I delete these before I try to create the new LR catalogue?

Again, thanks for your help. I will wait to hear from you.

Bruce T.

[dj_paige]

Do I again try to import a PSE catalog from the file menu in LR? Will it know where my pictures  are on the remote drive?

Yes and yes.

Also, currently in the Pictures folder on my mac is a folder called Lightroom. Under this folder are 2 files; Lightroom Catalog Previews.irdata and Lightroom Catalog.Ircat. These were created when I followed some of the previous advice and got no pictures imported. Should I delete these before I try to create the new LR catalogue?

This is pretty much irrelevant to the problem of importing a PSE catalog.

[MichelBParis]

So you are suggesting i

- move the My Catalog - PE#6 1 folder directly under the Pictures folder on my Mac

Before starting the catalog folder move, it's necessary to understand how your Organizer catalogs are stored.
- A catalog is a whole folder containing the main database (the file 'catalog.pse15db') plus other files and subfoldes you have already found:

In that folder are sub-folders BreezeData, CAXMP Files, Snycdb, and Waldo Data

.Yes.

On my Extreme 500 drive (remote drive) under the folder that is called Photoshop Elements Library is a folder called My Catalog - PE#6 1 (total size 636 MB which would not be a problem).

That's your current catalog, in 'custom' location. Why is it on 'custom' location? Most probably, because you have used the backup and restore method to move library and catalog to that external drive. That's good if you want to share your catalog and library by plugging the external drive to another computer with the same version of Elements.

Should it be on 'default' location, and where is the 'default location'? It's your choice. The contents of the catalog don't change if you move the folder. By default, the location is a hidden folder (at least in Windows). When using the menu File >> Manage catalogs, you can choose to look at either 'default' or 'custom' location. When you installed pse15, the installer found your current catalog by that time, My Catalog - PE#6 1, converted it to the  new format in a new file with the same name. The '1' suffix means it's a converted catalog of a previous version.

What is useful in your case is to have a look at the custom location: your catalog on the remote drive should be found and its location will confirm what you have already found.

Now, you choose 'default location for all users' option in the catalog manager: (it's not under My Pictures, it's in 'ProgramData' in Windows) you'll most probably find at least one catalog, probably empty. If you select it and run the menu Help >> System Information, you'll find the location of that mysterious hidden default location.

Now, back to your LR conversion: LR searches the default location and displays a list of catalogs to choose from. In my case I have not only my main catalog, I also have already converted old catalogs and some tests ones. LR displays exactly all subfolders (catalogs) in default location, and I can't see any way to have LR navigate to a custom location.

Two possible workarounds:

- copying the catalog folder from the remote drive to that default location (from the Finder)

- or using the option to 'move' the catalog from the menu File >> Manage catalogs, selecting 'accessible to all users' as the destination. You don't have to worry to search for the default location, good, but your catalog will be moved, not simply copied.

Note that you can move or copy (as backup) your catalog where you want from the explorer/finder. The catalog manager does not let you move a catalog to 'custom' location.

I am confident that this will allow LR to show you your catalog and to convert it.

After that, I'll let dj_paige answer any other LR questions.

[brucet7672]

OK Michel, what you outlined  seemed very logical to me. I was able to move my PSE Catalog from my remote drive to the "default location". In a Mac it is "users/myname/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Elements Organizer/Catalogs/My Catalog. After moving it using the PSE "manage catalogs" function PSE seemed to work fine.

Then in Lightroom I created a "new catalog" using the file menu and then "imported a Photo Shop Elements Catalog". The same thing happened as before. The new LR catalog was created (this time in "users/myname/BT's Lightroom Catalog"). No pictures were imported.

Any other ideas?

I am now down to 3 days on my trial with LR and I have not looked at a picture yet.

Bruce T.

[brucet7672]

By the way, when I create a new catalog in Lightroom I seem to get a choice on where to put it. The first time I tried it (several posts back) I put it in "pictures" on my Mac. This time I guess I had "users/myname" highlighted so that is where it put it. I did not have a choice to put it in the "users/myname/Library/----" location where the PSE catalogue is located (default location). My guess is the LR catalogue and the PSE catalog need to be in the same folder for things to work???

Bruce T.

[dj_paige]

Not correct. The LR catalog can be anywhere you want it to be. As Michel explained, apparently the PSE catalog has to be in the expected default location.

[brucet7672]

OK. as explained above, I moved my PSE catalog to the "default position" and PSE still seems to be able to get to the pictures. Lightroom still comes up with nothing when I try to import the PSE Catalog.

[brucet7672]

Since I believe I followed the instructions Michel gave me to put the PSE Catalog in the correct "default position" and LR still did not import the PSE catalog and photos, what do I do now? Is there any way you could get someone to call me and help get my PSE Catalog and photos imported?

[brucet7672]

By the way, I am using PSE 12. The Adobe web material on Lightroom say I can import anything from about version 6 and up???

[dj_paige]

Is there any way you could get someone to call me and help get my PSE Catalog and photos imported?

This is a user forum. We don't work for Adobe.