Converting from PSE to Lightroom 3

If you're thinking of migrating your PSE catalog to Lightroom 3, see my (last) FAQ:
http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshop-elements-faq.htm#_Converting_to_Lightroom

Not correct at all - please see my previous response to a similar post.
Although you may want to check my work - I don't know a thing about iPhoto - I'm assuming the iPhoto directory structure is also a disk directory structure, like Aperture can be - is that correct? Or is it a figment of iPhoto's imagination, so to speak - if so, disregard everything I said in this post and the other one too.
Rob

Similar Messages

  • Convert from PSE 9 to PSE 10 - Where are my albums?

    Hi there, I am a new user to this group... I just converted to PSE 10 - Windows XP, however, my albums did not convert from PSE 9.  Otherwise, the conversion appears to be successful.  Does anyone have any answers?  Thanks.
    Old TImer Canada

    Albums are displayed on the right hand side pane of the application. It may be in collapsed state. You can expand the album categories, the albums would appear.

  • Convert from PSE10 to Lightroom - metadata concerns

    After one too many frustrations with PSE, I've been looking for an alternative program.  I don't care about editing - metadata (Organizer type features) are my focus.  I looked at a few non-Adobe programs - a big problem with them is I can't import my PSE10 catalog, with 12,000 photos.  On the PSE forum, the most common advice was to go to Lightroom, so I was holding out hope for that.  However, I've played with the LR 5 trial for half a day now, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't make good use of the PSE catalog either!  This is very disappointing for me, but I'm wondering if some of you folks can show me things I'm missing.
    I'm looking into to converting from PSE10 to LR 5 on a Windows 7 machine.  I have about 12,000, half TIFs from scanned images and half JPGs from digital cameras.  As I said, I only care about metadata management.  My focus is genealogy, so getting the original dates of scanned pictures captured is very important, and these often are only roughly known.
    My main issue is that it seems to me that LR is taking the metadata from the photo files, not the catalog.  I used the LR feature "Upgrade Photoshop Elements Catalog".  The reason I say this is for two reasons:
    (1) When PSE10 writes tags to files, it adds to any tags that are already there.  So although PSE10 shows only the updated set of tags in the GUI, the photo files have both old and new tags.  After doing the LR Upgrade PSE Catalog, I'm seeing old and new tags.  It appears to be ignoring what is in the catalog and looking at the file.  (As far as I know, the old tags are not present in the PSE catalog anymore, so it can't be looking at the converted catalog.)
    (2) PSE10 allow you to tag photos with incomplete dates (e.g. no time, no day and/or no month).  But if PSE10 has an incomplete date, it won't write it to the file (very annoying for working with historical photos).  But LR does not show these partial dates, it only shows complete dates.  In this case, I'm not sure if LR is showing the metadata in the photo files, or if it dropped the PSE10 catalog date info during the "Upgrade".
    So my main question is, am I missing something with regards to the import, or am I correct in my impression that this "Upgrade PSE Catalog" isn't doing much of anything?  (ExifTool shows all the metadata in the photo files -- much more complete than LR for that matter -- so what am I gaining by importing the PSE catalog into LR?)
    A couple other miscellaneous questions if I may:
    -- In PSE10, there is a notes field in the metadata, which goes into XMP-album in the photo files.  Does LR not support this?  As far as I can tell, LR supports only a few XMP namespaces, with no support for others.
    -- In LR in the Folder pane, I have no scroll bar, so I can only see the first few entries.  This seems to be a serious bug to me.  Or am I missing something?
    -- It appears in LR that one cannot show your entire catalog in the main pane sorted by folder then by file name.  Is this correct?  (This also seems to be a major drawback to me!)
    -- When I try to change the date of a photo (Edit Capture Time in LR), it forces you to enter a complete date/time, unlike PSE10.  Overall, it is much easier to manage these dates in PSE, it seems.  Does LR handle incomplete dates to any level?
    -- When I did my PSE import/"Upgrade", it assigned the wrong file names to some of my photos (it used file names from other photos in the catalog).  Is this a known issue?
    I imagine I have a very unusual vantage point, but at this point it seems that PSE is far superior to LR!  And I'm not happy with PSE10!!  Anyways, thanks in advance for your input.  Sorry about the long post - wasn't sure if I should divide it up or not.
    Bill

    This is a reply to the post from John R. Ellis...
    You mentioned "Adobe has never bothered to fix...".  Note that the last post by Michel B in this thread
    http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78779&page=2
    indicates that PSE11 can handle this.
    You say "After importing.... I used ExifTool to append..."  Did you do this file by file, or with a script?  A Perl script?  (The reason I ask is that I would have to learn Perl, so I would have to decide how much this means to me...)
    Regarding your suggestion to use fake dates
    "(e.g. "1970" => "1/1/1970 00:00:00")"
    I've been aware of this since I read it in your psedbtool material a year or two ago, but I've resisted making such changes.  When dealing with historical photos, you want the ambiguity.  In fact, you'd like to use things like "About 1970" and such.  I wish the photo metadata community would get on board with that.
    Regarding your point about catalog conversion, for me it sounds like it would be just as good to import the photo files directly.  (Better for me, I think, since converting the catalog seems to lose the folder hierarchy in the LR Folder view for some reason.  However, if I'm going to import the photo files directly, then LR has no advantage for me over any other program that I can see.  The ExifTool GUI utility does a much better job with the metadata in general - the key drawback for me being the fact that you have to type out the keywords each time you want to add one to photo.  Looking at the ACDSee Pro trial, that appears to handle metadata better than any of the Adobe products - the critical drawback being that it uses its proprietary XMP namespaces, meaning interoperability issues.  LR has drawbacks for me, such as not being able to sort by folder than filename in the main view pane and the lack of support for other XMP namespaces (and the Folder pane scrollbar thing).  So at this point I'm in a state of depression.  As far as I can tell, I only have a partial solution to my problems - upgrade from PSE10 to PSE11.  Truly a depressing notion!!

  • Using Tags in PSE 11 after converting from PSE 7?

    I just loaded PSE 11 (upgrading from PSE 7) but when I click on my tags, no pictures appear.  But when I click on albums, the albums/pictures appear.  Anyone else have this problem, and a solution?  Thanks.

    Thanks, that helped.  I was just clicking on the tag like in PSE 7 and didn't realize you needed to click to the right of the tag on the ">".  Appreciate your help, thanks.

  • Convert from Aperture to Lightroom

    I have a "managed" Aperture library with 18,000 Pics. The library is located in my pictures folder on my main HD. I want to convert my collection of pics into lightroom while retaining the keywords that I have assigned. I want to create a "bucket" file structure that will reside on an external HD. The pics are an assortment of file types consisting of NEF raw, Tiff, jpeg & DNG.
    I have tested a few pics to get a feel for exactly the best way to do this. I tried exporting a master with a sidecar file and when I import into lightroom I cannot see the keywords. When I view the file with iView the keywords show up and I cannot figure out why LR doesn't see them.
    Thanks,
    Kevin

    Annoture was the answer.... Here is how I was able to do it
    1. In Aperture export each project as a separate folder w/xmp to final desired drive location rename files to master filename (the file name is important later when running Annoture)
    2. Drag the new folder into iView
    3. Use Annoture to copy metadata from Aperture to iView (it will look for matching filenames)
    4. In iView Sync Annotations- (export to original file)
    5. Import into LR at current location and ratings & keywords are now visable
    The only thing that I don't understand is what to now do with the XMP sidecar files?? Do you need a sidecar file with a DNG or do you only need them with JPEG & RAW files? I notice that if I remove them when I go into LR all of the information is unaffected. Does this mean that I have altered the original file or is LR keeping track of this somewhere else? Should I remove all of them?
    Thanks,
    Kevin

  • Questions about converting from Photoshop to Lightroom

    Hi! I have been a Photoshop user for many years now, but after a lot of thought, reading many reviews and much reccommendation, I have decided I would like to buy Lightroom! However, I have absolutely no idea how I go about doing it. I thought it would be simple but after looking into it, people have made it seem much more complicated than I thought. SO, here are a few qustions which I hope somebody can answer!
    1. Do I already need a version of Lightroom before I can buy Lightroom 4 or 5?
    2. Do I buy it on a disk, or do I download it off the Adobe website? Which is the better option?
    3. I'm currently on windows 7, however I'm going to be buying an iMac next year. Will I have to buy another version of Lightroom next year? Or can I install it on multiple devices?
    4. Why is Lightroom 5 so much cheaper than Lightroom 4 on Amazon? (not the update versions)

    The Upgrade from a previous version is a lower price, but the upgrade price should clearly say UPGRADE.
    If it says FULL version, you won't need to own previous versions of LR
    Looks like Adobe is offering LR 5 for $40 off on the FULL version right now

  • Convert catalog from PSE 6 to 10, is it necessary to include the jpegs?

    Hello
    I am testing PSE 10 (from PSE 6) and have copied the catalog to a test XP box (but not the jpegs).  The catalog refuses to convert with an unspecic error: "Catalog conversion failed" see "Catalog Conversion Errors" for more details.
    PSE 6 can find no problems with the existing catalog and I have worked trhough eg http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/515/cpsid_51525.html .
    If the conversion process requires the jpegs etc. then that will certainly cause a problem, they are not visible to this PC!  On the other hand, if it is simply a matter of converting the catalog without reference to the source files then there should be no problem.
    I am reluctant to allow a conversion process to break a very considerable investment in effort in the PSE6 catalog and want to see it work (and have useful benefit to me) before committing the original.
    Some rough statistics: 45,000 images, 140GB data, catalog is around 1.5GB.  It takes about 3 mins for 'repair' to run (having forced a 'repair anyway') and under 10 mins for 'optimize'.
    I should add that I have run the psedbtool and while it finds that two drives are missing (E: and F:), there are no missing files.  E: and F: are USB backup drives and are not connected, nor would I expect them to be.  All photos are in one (top level that is) folder on one drive.  If the convertor can only run when the backup drives are connected, that seems a little odd.
    If the only option is to restore the backed up PSE 6 archive into PSE 10, that is do-able, but I was trying to avoid doing that.
    Perhaps the more pertinant question is "what does PSE 10 offer that I haven't got in PSE 6?".  So far I have not found any really useful function, maybe a couple of the irritating bugs have been fixed? (Mostly the date orderby bug)  I have lived with the multi-core hang since PSE 6 came out and don't use PSE to catalog my raw files, so that fix has no benefit to me.

    Well after an all day effort, I have a working W7 64 bit with a spare 1TB drive and all the  updates done (about a 2GB download).  That has taken about eight hours.  Then recover the PSE 6 created backup files into PSE 10, (took about three hours) and for good measure forced a repair and optimize on the catalog. No errors at any point.
    PSE 10 crashes when in slide show view.  Sometimes it gets through about two images, sometimes 100 or so, but always it crashes.  So I am ready to give up, PSE 6 is stable at least (though I have yet to try PSE 6 under W7 64bit, my standard PC is W XP 32 bit).
    One possible benefit of W7 is the color fidelity is better (I have color calibration too).  The management of the twin screen is not better though, PSE keeps vanishing from view (this is not related to the crash) and has to be coaxed back onto the secondary screen.  PSE 6 under XP gets this right.
    I checked the arm chair arm image again, it is the wooden arm of a director's portable chair seen from the side, no matter how I try I can't see a face in it.  I realise now that the 'obvious' faces that get missed are when the eyes are not horizontal, even a small turning of the head results in the face being missed.

  • Organizer in PSE 11 hangs on catalog converted from PSE8

    I just installed PSE 11 and converted my catalog from PSE 8.  I have over 50,000 images in the catalog.  Immediately the Organizer starts on the people recognition (I had all Auto-Analyze turned off in PSE8).  I am able to cancel the People Recognition but before I can do anything else (only a couple of seconds) , some other process automatically starts--the hourglass cursor appears. Task Manager states that the Organizer is not responding so it is evidently going into some long process of analyzing data.    I  have the pictures all tagged (most with multiple tags) and am not interested in having Organizer identify them.   I am running on Windows 7.    What can I do -- just let the Orgnizer run?  I have let it run for about 90 minutes with no response-- and no idea what it is doing.
    Message was edited by: Jha28

    okay, I was able to retrieve all the thumbnails - but the albums that I had created are no longer listed as albums -- guess it doesn't matter but it's very confusing to me -- and I'm not a mac or computer illiterate person - I've used PSE 8 for years and that seemed more intuitive to me!!  I guess I need to get a book -- any suggestions on one that does a step by step?  maybe I need one of those PSE 11 for dummies!!

  • How do I move from PSE 12 to Lightroom 5?

    I already setup my LR 5  to open PSE 12, but how do I do it from PSE 12 to LR 5? I only found to import a PSE catalog. I just want to go straight to LR 5. I like to work in Photoshop before going to Lightroom.

    Lightroom is different from Photoshop and Photoshop elements.
    What Lightroom is. The main functions of Lightroom is that of, 1. A file manager for files from digital cameras. 2. Processing RAW files from digital cameras. 3. There are other ancilitory functions, sharing pictures on the web, slide show, printing etc.
    In essence it provides an alternative to the Library file handling and the ACR Plugin functions available in Photoshop Elements.
    Its best to use Lightroom to provide the front end processes of managing and processing your files and then if necessary use the advanced pixel editing and file altering functions available in Photoshop.

  • Convert from free trail version to CC download version of Lightroom

    I tried the trail version of lightroom and liked it.  I signed up for the special Photoshop CC and Lightroom cloud version for 9.99 a month.  When I use the download for Lightroom it says it is up to date because I have the download from the trail on the machine.  If I click the link to convert from trial to purchased version it drives me to enter a license number which I do not have for the Cloud based monthly subscription.  How to I get converted from the trail (which has 23 days remaining ) to the version I am paying for?  Thanks for the help

    According to Adobe if you already have a trial or purchased version of Lightroom installed, you don't have to uninstall it. Choose the option to install the Lightroom through either the Creative Cloud app or through the Creative Cloud Download Center. It upgrades your trial or purchased installation to the fully licensed version that is part of your membership. You can’t even use the serial number from previous version of Lightroom when you install the Creative Cloud version of Lightroom. Creative Cloud products license with your Adobe ID. Even though a Lightroom Creative Cloud installation includes a serial number, it's only used for registration, not installation.
    After you have purchased a Creative Cloud Individual membership, Lightroom is available for installation within the Creative Cloud desktop app. If you have already installed the trial version of Lightroom, you can license it by running the Lightroom installer from the Creative Cloud desktop app.
    http://www.suzannemathiaphotography.com/learning.htm

  • Converting a catalog from PSE 6 to PSE 11

    I am trying to convert a PSE 6 catalog to PSE 11.  Both are in a Windows 7 environment.  The conversion appears to proceed normally until it reaches about 36% complete, then it gets "stuck".  Eventually I receive an error message indicating that the catalog did not convert correctly.  Any suggestions on next steps would be appreciated.

    If it’s on the same computer PSE normally prompts to upgrade automatically when you install PSE9
    If transferring to a new computer, use full back-up and restore to a new location letting the program choose the set-up.
    http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/402/kb402894.html
     

  • System or program crashes when converting from NEF to DNG

    Hello Adobe.
    First off, I love your software.
    Second, this is my concern. You guys are pushing DNG as the go to raw format. That would be great if it worked good, but it doesn't.
    First, when I convert from my Nikon NEF format (Nikon D7100) it chugs along just fine, then suddenly crashes either the program or my system after converting 50-100 or so images.
    I have tried everything from downloading your software again, to turning off everything other then what is needed to do the conversion.
    Of course I have the latest DNG utility/plug in/drivers from your website.
    Second, the DNG images open much slower then my NEF images. Plus when I view them in Windoze file system view and want to see the photos in extra large icons, it renders the images very slowly.
    My system is Windoze 8.1 updated always, Photoshop CC latest and greatest (I'm in the rental program), Bridge and Lightroom.
    I have tried to use bridge and lightroom to do the conversion, even a separate utility and the crashing still happens. All these are up to date.
    My system has an i7 Intel processor, 16 gb of Kingston ram, an ASUS P8Z77 MPRO mother board and a good stable power supply.
    No other software crashes my system like converting from NEF to DNG.
    What I do notice is my CPU fan goes into high RPM's and I am wondering if the CPU is overheating causing this.
    If that is the case, then it would seem to me the conversion software is taxing the system far more then it should since my system is no slouch and while it isn't the latest and greatest, I would consider it to be in the top 20%,
    it should be able to handle the conversion with no problem.
    Are you aware of problems with the DNG software and or file format?
    Is their any information I could forward to you to help solve the problem?

    Photoshop Help | Digital Negative (DNG) - Adobe
    helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/digital-negative.html
    DNG is a publicly available archival format for storing camera raw files. Adobe provides Adobe DNG Converter, a free utility that converts files from more than ...
    That is off the net, therefore, Adobe looks at DNG as part of Adobe Photoshop, which it is if a person chooses to convert.
    My issue has to do with it crashing, both my system and software.
    I assume if people here are using it, then they can advise me if they are having similar problems.
    I have also written Adobe directly several times over the last month and have yet to receive a response.
    I apologize that I posted here, but since I consider DNG an integral part of Photoshop, then I think it is appropriate here.
    I was also not aware of a DNG forum, if one exists.
    Thank you for your assistance.
    Jim

  • Keywords imported from PSE 5.0 (Poor User Experience)

    When moving to Lightroom, I successfully imported my substantial catalog (6,000 images) from Photoshop Elements 5.0. Keyword importing doesn't seem to be quite right, however. I've noticed the following two problems.
    1. All keywords appear both in their proper hierarchy AND as separate, top level keywords. For example, I have:
    Family
    Kids
    Nick
    as well as just:
    Nick
    All they Nick photos are tagged with both keywords (just "Nick" and "Nick>Kids>Family.")
    These keywords seem to be treated by LR as separate keywords. For instance, if I apply "Nick" to a photo, it does not update the photo count for "Nick>Kids>Family." And vice versa.
    This is a confusing situation. So it seems that I should delete all of the standalone, top level keywords, like "Nick." Do others agree? Is this a bug in the importing process from PSE 5.0?
    2. The hierarchy tags do not seem to update the photo count properly. When I create a parent/child keyword relationship in Lightroom, the addition of a child tag will of course update the count for the parent ("Family" as well as "Nick"). But this does not seem to work with respect to the keyword hierarchies imported from PSE 5.0. So perhaps I should essentially re-create the keyword structure in LR, which wouldn't be that hard to do. (Select "Nick" photos, delete the existing keywords, and create a new "Nick" keyword with the proper parent/child relationships.)
    Again, have others seen this behavior? Or am I misunderstanding how this functionality is supposed to work?
    I'm running LR 1.3.1 on Windows Vista.
    Thanks.

    I'm trying the Lightroom trial version and have had very similar issues on my import from Elements 5.02.
    I get a Top level tag and a matching one in a tree, event though it is only in the tree in Element Organizer. Some seem to have the identical set of photos, but others like "Emma" (my cat) have 10 photos attached at the top level and 200+ in the tree.
    I'm also struggling with using multiple keywords at once like
    Jim + Mexico + Lisa
    In the tree view I can only select one at a time and when typing into FIND it sometimes narrows the selection drastically for no apparent reason.
    Any pointers for someone happy with their Elements Organizer into Lightroom import would be most appreciated.
    Jim Cruickshank

  • Artifacts in DNG files converted from NEF

    On two occasions, I've encountered artifacts in my photos that I've converted from NEF (using Nikon D7000) to DNG format in Lightroom 3.6.  Is there a "fix" for this?  

    Yes, you're correct. It sounds perfectly feasible to keep a checksum in the database for other file types. I voted for your idea.
    Here's an interesting article: http://dpbestflow.org/data-validation/dng-validation
    Currently, the only way to check a large number of DNGs is to run the free DNG converter on them, which can take a long time and requires disk space for the second copies. The Adobe SDK has a function for checking the checksums, so it sounds like a relatively easy task to write a small app that would validate an entire directory tree containing DNGs. That could be quite fast and would be a good thing to run periodically.
    Hal

  • PSE 7 catalog error when restoring backup from PSE 5

    I am attempting to move from PSE5 on XP to PSE7 on Vista using the backup-restore method, . Catalog is about 75 MB, data set is 56 GB, all stored on external USB drive. Tried restoring in new folder using both with and without restoring folder arrangement.
    On PSE 5, most images were online, scattered across E: partition and external USB disk. Restoring to PSE7, files are all restored to a new directory OK, but new catalog lists all files in E: as offline. Let me repeat... the images are moved into a new folder on the new system, but are shown in the organizer as still on a non-existent E: drive on the new computer.
    I am left with thousands of untagged images, all of them ther newest and most important in my system.

    Mahlon,
    First, some additional questions:
    1. Did you do File > Catalog > Recover and File > Catalog > Reconnect before doing the backup? Thats very important.
    2. On the old computer, was E: a partition on an internal drive, an external USB drive, or a network drive?
    3. In the restored PSE 7 catalog, are the suspect thumbnails shown with a yellow question icon in their corner or a red circle icon with a line through it (like the international power symbol)?
    4. When you say files are still recorded in the catalog as being on the E: drive, is that as shown in Folder Location view in the left-hand folder heirarchy pane, in the center Folder Location pane, in the Properties pane, or all three? (Check all three, because sometimes PSE will show different drive letters.)
    > This will take a dozen hours on the old system, and I'm skeptical that it will work. PSE7 already converts the PSE5 database in or out of the restore. But it can't correct the pathname on the old system to indicate that the files are local and not offline.
    Recovering the PSE 5 catalog, reconnecting missing files, installing PSE 7, and converting the catalog to PSE 7 on the old computer should take about 30-45 minutes (doing a second backup will take much longer).
    Converting the catalog on the old computer is different than converting it on the new computer. PSE 7 has a different catalog format than PSE 5 PSE 5 uses drive letters to identify hard drives, whereas PSE 7 relies on serial numbers, and the internal database format is completely different. When you restore to the new computer and try to convert the catalog at the same time, the conversion needs to both update the new paths of all the files
    and convert from the old catalog format to the new one, changing drive letters to serial numbers. But when you convert to PSE 7 on the old computer, the locations of files and drives havent changed its just changing the database format. So its entirely possible that conversion will go correctly. Then when you backup the PSE 7 catalog and restore it on the new computer, backup/restore is just changing the paths of files, not converting from drive letters to serial numbers or changing database formats.
    So thats why its quite possible (though not at all guaranteed) that converting to PSE 7 on the old computer and then doing backup/restore could produce different results different process, different results.
    You have two other options, both of which might lose tags or other catalog information:
    1. On your new computer in its current state, reconnect all the files in the catalog to their new locations. Because they are marked as offline (assuming they actually are offline, based on the answers to my questions above), the Reconnect command will tell there is nothing to reconnect. However, you can force PSE to reconnect offline files using a trick described in step 4 of this FAQ:
    http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Quickly_reconnecting_la rge
    This may or may not work, because its likely that the buggy conversion process has left your catalog in an inconsistent, unknown state, and there may be other problems still lurking. Also, persuading PSE to quickly reconnect whole folder hierarchies of files takes some patience (as youll see in the FAQ).
    2. You can merge the PSE 5 catalog into a fresh PSE 7 catalog using this procedure: In PSE 5, save the tag definitions to a file, use File > Write Keyword Tag to write the keyword tags to the photos, copy the tag-definitions file and all the photos to the new computer using Windows Explorer, import the tag definitions into a fresh PSE 7 catalog, import the copied photos, and finally have PSE 7 automatically stack photos that used to be in version sets into stacks. These steps are described in detail in this FAQ:
    http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Merging_Catalogs
    This FAQ is written assuming the source catalog is in PSE 6 or 7, but I think it should also apply to a source catalog in PSE 5.
    There are a number of problems with this. First, its time consuming. Second, youll lose version sets, stacks of photos that are *not* visually very similar or taken close together in time, collections (albums), and projects. The PSE File > Write Keyword Tag command has numerous bugs (in all versions), and youll most likely lose at least some, and perhaps much, of your tags, star ratings, captions, notes, dates/times, and GPS/map locations. If you have raw files in particular, youll very likely lose much or all of the metadata, but depending on the source of your JPGs and other file formats, those files could lose much information too. See the end of this FAQ for more details on the known bugs:
    http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/#_Writing_File_Metadata

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