Converting PSE 6.0 Catalog to PSE 7.0

I just installed PSE 7.0. Initially, when I opened a project it prompted me to convert my PSE 6.0 catalog, but I wanted to change the location of the new project, so I cancelled, changed the location and created a new project. However, this time it did not prompt me to convert my 6.0 catalog.
As suggested by the manual, I tried clicking on the 6.0 Catalog and using "Open With" where I browsed to the Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Premiere Elements 7.0 and selected the premiere .exe file, but that it didn't bring up elements.
I'm using Windows XP.

David,
Just for clarification, I think by project you mean catalog. (A project in PSE is a slide show or other creation. A catalog is the database that stores links to all your photos and all of the asosicated tags, captions, dates, etc.)
To convert the PSE 6 catalog:
1. Start PSE 7 Organizer.
2. File > Catalog
3. Select Custom Location and Browse to where you would like your PSE 7 catalog to be placed. (Note that you shouldnt place your catalog folder in a parent folder of where you store your photos, e.g. dont place the catalog in Pictures or My Pictures. PSE has some bugs that can make that very confusing. Because of those bugs, unless you really know what youre doing, its best to use Catalogs Accessible by All Users or Current User as the location of your catalog.)
4. Select Show Previously Converted Catalogs
5. Click Find More Catalogs if your PSE 6 catalog isnt displayed.

Similar Messages

Can't convert PS Album 2 catalog to PSE 8 catalog

I'm trying to convert a Photoshop Album 2 catalog of about 1,200 items to a Photshop Elements 8 catalog, but in the PSE 8 conversion process the operation stops with the message "The conversion operation failed. Try repairing the catalog with the software that created it and retry the conversion. I used PS Album 2 to clean up the catalog doing a file, catalog, recover operation, then did a reconnect all operation, followed by a file, catalog, recover operation. I got a "recovery successful message" and there are "no non-connected files". Still the PSE 8 conversion hangs mid-way in the process. Can anyone give me a helpful clue on how to proceed? Thanks.

See this FAQ:
http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshop-elements-faq.htm#_Problems_converting_catalo gs

Problem converting pse 6 catalog to pse 7

I am a longtime pse user, I started with Album. I have photos from a trip that I had in pse 6 on my laptop that I want to get into pse 7 on my desktop. I have not found a lossless way to merge catalogs in pse so I have three catalogs. I successfully converted my desktop catalog from pse 5 to pse 7 with no problems. I backed up two catalogs under pse 6 on my laptop and restored them to my desktop system. I tried to covert each one but the conversion failed. I found that I had two eSATA drives with the same volume ID so I backed up my desktop catalog (the photos resided on one of the drives) and reformatted one drive. Pse was still confused so I reformatted the other drive as well. Pse 7 now runs fine for my former pse 5 desktop catalog which I’ll call catalog A. I restored the first of my pse laptop catalogs, I’ll call it catalog B, and after multiple attempts got it to convert by restoring it with pse 7, the automatic conversion after the restore was successful. I did the same with the remaining pse 6 backup file, call it catalog C, restoring it with pse 7 but the conversion failed. I did catalog repair but it found no errors, did ‘repair anyway’. Convert failed again. I optimized it, convert failed again. I checked the convert log and it says the catalog copy failed. The log showed that pse tried to copy the catalog to the location of my photos for catalog A to a file named the same as my catalog C name. The last line in the log is - caught exception "catalog copy failed". This implies to me that it never got far enough to encounter a ‘poison file’.
I have run out of ideas and any help would be appreciated. My last choice option is to use ‘get photos’ to get the catalog C photos into catalog B to get everything running under pse 7 rather than under multiple products.
I am going to make another forum entry but it may matter here that the catalogs of catalog B and C are in the same directories that I restored their photos to and are only found when I ask to find ‘custom location’ directories. The psedbtool program never sees them.

I created a new folder ‘Black Sea and Spitsbergen CATALOG’ and moved the catalog and thumbnail files to it. Pse 6 opened it and displayed the thumbnails faster than usual. When I do the catalog option Black Sea and Spitsbergen CATALOG shows as the current catalog. I did the reconnect all missing files and got the no missing files message. Did the repair catalog and got the no errors message did repair anyway. No errors found, I did the reconnect again, no missing files. I closed pse 6. Opened pse 7 file>catalog>convert>find more catalogs and pointed to the folder ‘Black Sea and Spitsbergen CATALOG’.
Pse found the catalog, I highlighted it and clicked on convert. I got the conversion completed successfully message! Clicked OK>done>open and the converted catalog opens. Catalog manager now shows both catalogs under the Custom Location radio button, fantastic! I did a reconnect and got the no missing files message.
Ok; so I think I learned the following:
1)      The current catalog name is determined by the name of the folder it resides in.
2)      The catalog and thumbnail files need to be in the same folder.
3)      It works better if the catalog and thumbnail files are in a separate folder from the pictures. I suspect performance is improved because it finds the thumbnail file faster; I have 21,000 photos in the catalog.
I suspect this could also solve my catalog move problem because pse may be moving the contents of the folder where the catalog resides. I am going to try it, will post the result under that discussion.
If you would be kind enough to confirm the above three points I would appreciate it. I will keep this open for your reply.
Thank you again, it seems simple now that I understand a bit more, thanks for your time and for sharing your knowledge.

More trouble trying to convert catalog from PSE 8 to PSE 9.

I am on a PC platform using the XP operating system. I am currently using PSE 8 and have just installed PSE 9. I have over 85,000 photos in my catalog, so would really like to have the catalog conversion work. What I've done so far is in PSE 8 reconnected, repaired, and optimized. When I try to convert the catalog in PSE 9, I get an error message that I need to try to repair the catalog in the original program. I've tried to backup the catalog to a hard drive and that fails as well. Any suggestions would be appreciated..............

Are you still facing this issue ? Try turning off the Auto Analyzer in preferences and also turn OFF the sync engine.

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

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

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 Catalog Manager and browse to the correct location, it doesn't show the file. Help! Thanks

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

PSE 13 one catalog out of three crashes MAC

I have been struggling with PSE 13 for weeks. I reluctantly upgraded from 10 to 13, it always seems to be a problem. It is again this time.
I have 3 catalogs: One with pictures, one with completed scrapbook pages, and one with Digital elements for scrapbooking.
I converted all 3 successfully, and then the problem started. I was loading new files to the Digital elements catalog, and it crashed. I have tried the following:
     * I erased and reloaded it again from the original backup
     * I erased everything and redid the backup, and then reloaded
     * I tried Opt + Cmd + Shift to delete the settings file
It still crashes immediately upon trying to open the Digital Elements catalog.
Please help!! I have been building this catalog since PSE version 3! It has 46,000 elements, all labeled. I can't lose these labels!
Thanks

Oh, and I also did a repair on the catalog even though the program said the catalog didn't need to be repaired. Still didn't help.

Import PSE 3 catalog into PSE 13?

I have an old PSE 3 catalog (.psa file) that I need to open in PSE 13. I downloaded, installed, and ran Adobe's dedicated converter, per Adobe's instructions and obtained a "successful conversion" message upon completion. However, when I open the resulting catalog in PSE 13 thumbnails for the "first" images display, but when I attempt to scroll down, or "Ctrl End" to the end of the catalog (there are more than 12,000 images in the catalog), PSE 13 hangs and "stops responding". Of course, what I care about is the tags attached to the images, and used to sort them in PSE 3. How do I recover/preserve/access this tag info? or, how do I "fix" the, obviously failed, conversion so that I create a catalog from my original .psa file that PSE 13 can correctly open?

On the new computer, in PSE9, select File->Restore Catalog, and point it to the backup you made from PSE3. You will be given several options about restoring the photos, including one that is to original directory location.
More details are here: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/402/kb402894.html (which was written for PSE6, but applies to later versions of PSE as well)

Import catalog from PSE 8 to LR2

Just purchased LR2 and it won't recognize my PSE 8 catalog. It found an outdated
PSE 6 catalog that it offered to import. Is there a way to get my PSE 8 catalog imported?
LR 3 beta appears to read PSE 8 catalogs, can I read a LR 3 catalog with LR 2 if I download
the LR 3 beta and import the catalog using that?
Is there a way to export the PSE 8 catalog into a PSE 6 format?
I suppose I can go with the old PSE 6 catalog, that will be better than nothing, but still a lot
of work I'd rather avoid.
Thanks,
Dan

At this time, LR2 does not import PSE7 or PSE8 catalogs.
Lightroom 3 can read PSE8 catalogs, but you can't convert that Lightroom 3 catalog to anything else.
So there is no way to convert your PSE8 catalog to Lightroom 2.
A partial workaround is to use John R Ellis's psedbtool to write metadata to your photo files, and then import the files into Lightroom 2. Some information will be lost under this method: stacks, albums, and any other information that cannot be stored in the photo files.

Catalog Conversion PSE 6 to PSE 10 Fails but did it?

I have gone through all of the links regarding problems (repairing the catalog in pse 6, optiizing, reindexing, etc.) and no problems are apparent in pse 6 but I get the "comversion failed..." error when trying to convert to a pse 10 catalog. Nevertheless, a "temporary" catalog is created and as far as I can tell it seems to be OK. I have repaired it in pse 10 successfully, it seems to show all of my images properly in the "folders" display mode, my tags seem to work, but it bothers me that pse 10 said the conversion failed.
What's the deal? I don't want to put a lot of effort and confidence into pse 10 and find out some serious flaw is there after all.

OK, I very methodically did every step in
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/916/cpsid_91690.html
for the third or more time and get the same "conversion failed." As far as the log file here is what it says:
conversion log: xxxRawCatalog to xxxRawCatalog temp 1
updating volume for creation 64622
updating volume for creation 126413
updating volume for creation 231561
updating volume for creation 231731
where xxx is just the detailed path to the folders involved. I don't see any clues as to something going amiss.
Any further help - anyone?

Updating pse 9 catalog to pse 10: images missing

14 years of images in my pse 9 catalog
converted catalog to pse 10: last 4 years are missing.
Suggestions??

Moving this discussion to the Photoshop Elements forum.

PSE 7 Problems Fixed in PSE 8

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:
Major
Minor
Fixed
Unfixed
Fixed
Unfixed
File Management and Tagging
4
6
2
Integration with Photoshop.com
2
5
Map View
6
Color Management
1
Metadata
10
2
3
Searching
8
5
User Interface
1
1
5
9
Slide Shows
1
1
Editor
1
1
Total
8
38
8
20
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.

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.

Tried PSE 8, unhappy, problems w/ PSE 5 in Win 7 Virtual

This post is frankly my last hope with Adobe. I loved PSE 5 in Win XP. New computer, Win 7 Pro, backed up catalog in old computer, downloaded trial of PSE 8, unable to recover catalog, just a mass of broken links. Took backup to another computer with PSE 5, recovered catalog and all links intact. Downloaded PSE 8 on that computer, converted files to PSE 8, backed up in 8, brought back to "new" computer, got catalog and tags, but all links broken. All attempts to fix broken links failed. I am completely dissatisfied with 8, and will not buy. It froze up several times and is frustratingly slow. Just seems not to be a good product.
Since I liked 5, set up virtual pc in Win 7, installed 5 and still cannot get it to recover from the backup. Backup is good because it worked on the "other" computer.
Give up on Elements? Do I gain anything going to CS5? Sony is looking very good right now. Any ideas?

Good suggestion. You are absolutely right that the Editor functions are great. I am just getting started with GIMP, and if that doesn't work out I will try just using the editor. I have also learned that the PSE Organizer made me lazy, and now with Picasa I will have to pay a great deal more attention to how I organize folders of images. In the end, that is a good thing because software comes and software goes, but I want to keep the images; so not relying on the software so much will make it easier to adapt in the future. The best lessons are learned the hard way. Thanks to all for the comments.
While I'm sure no one at Adobe give a hoot what I think, I need to say it anyway. As a former fan, I am totally soured on Adobe products and will now seek out and use open source substitutes for Dreamweaver and Acrobat to the extent possible. Did the bean counters take control?

Migrating from PSE 5 old computer to PSE 8 new computer

Can anyone give advice on the best way to transfer PSE 5 catalog and photo files from old system to new system. Old system: PSE 5 organizer/catalog on internal hard drive and photo files on two external drives (ran out of space on the first external drive). Now have new computer with with two large internal hard drives - plan to use one primarily for programs (e.g. Windows 7 and PSE 8) and the other reserved for the photo files. Thank you.

http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Move_your_photos_1
Also, best not to mix up the two moves. Install PSE5 on the new computer, make sure everything is running properly, and only then convert the catalog to PSE8. In order to make sure everything is running properly on the new computer in PSE5, your photos have to be in the exact same folders on the exact same hard disk(s) as they were on the old computer (i.e. they have to be on the external drives, and the drives have to have the same letters as on the old computer)
When it is time to move the photos to the internal hard drive (a third move!), do not do this in Windows. Let me say that again: do not do this in Windows. Should I say it a third time? You must move the photos using PSE Organizer commands, as described in http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Move_your_photos

Can a B/U from PSE 9 be opened by PSE 10 on a new drive

I need to do a backup from PSE 9 & once this has been done I want to open with PSE10 on a new partiotion, with a new drive letter, on my new PC.
Can his be done in one step or do I need to install PSE 10 first, import the PSE 9 back up & then convert this to version 10?

The Old Fart wrote:
I need to do a backup from PSE 9 & once this has been done I want to open with PSE10 on a new partiotion, with a new drive letter, on my new PC.
Can his be done in one step or do I need to install PSE 10 first, import the PSE 9 back up & then convert this to version 10?
You can do it in one Backup/restore step. From PSE9, full backup on an external disk or on DVDs. This backup can be read and used by PSE9 or PSE10 indiferently. You do the restore in PSE10 and automatically the restore goes through the first restore stage (writing the restored photo/video files) to the custom disk and folder you have chosen for the restore destination. Then, the catalog conversion takes place, and the catalog is restored in the same location. When you are in the catalog manager, this catalog appears in the custom location option, not in the 'catalogs accessible by all users'. If you want, you can use the catalog manager to move the catalog itself (database) to 'catalogs accessible by all users). It will be moved in the default catalog location on your main disk.
Edit :
Re-reading you post, I think I must make clear that a PSE backup (any version) is not usable in itself : it must be restored by the organizer of the same version or a newer one.

Converting PSE 6.0 Catalog to PSE 7.0

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for