Populating My Pictures for Photoshop Elements

Question

Having just purchased a new computer and a copy of Photoshop Elements 4.0, I'm interested in putting photos on the computer and into Elements in as efficient and clutter-free manner as possible.
Here is the issue. I have about 1,000 photos sorted now in Windows folders of my own design and not well organized. I have many photo files in multiple folders and the folders I have are not that informative; also I have not kept track well of files in their original form and the edited version of them, sometimes placing the latter in its own folder. In short, it's a mess. One of the reason I purchased Elements (though not the main one) is to rationalize my filing and I've seen the posts here on how to tackle that. My question though is whether it makes sense to try and clean things up in populating the Windows "My Pictures" folder before getting to work with Elements.
Specifically, is there any advantage in loading the files themselves, duplicates and all, into "My Pictures" without the folders they are now in, so all the files will simply reside undifferentiated in "My Pictures" (and available to search in Windows alone, if need be, by creation date)? Or is this a wasted exercise because Elements will read right through the folders when I begin to work on the hierarchy in Elements? Put another way, is there any harm in leaving the files in their confusing (but not entirely useless) folders?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Lobalobo,
You ask:"wondered whether, though, it mattered at all what folders the files actually resided in?"
The picture files can be in various locations. I have some files in My Pictures, others are in My Documents>Digital Pictures, and there I have several sub categories. This is a legacy of an old filing system which I employed prior to purchase of Elements. I have brought these in to the organizer in one catalog and tagged them appropriately. Now the cross-index, if you will, permits me, for example, to click on the Kenneth tag in order to find pictures in which I appear.
You have a new computer, the most recent version of Elements, 1000 photos in various locations with some duplicates. I suggest that you clean house prior to bringing all of them in to the organizer in order to preclude "confusing" the organizer. There have been several posts recently alluding to a corrupt data base requiring use of Microsoft Access for a remedy.
Ken