Elements 3.0 Catalogs

Just installed PSE 3.0 (They sent me the Educational Version rather than the regular version, but assure me that all is fine). and as I understand it, after installing, the program scans your files and places your photo folders into their catalog system. Didn't happen. Also when I went to help and looked up "To Create a New Catalog" it says choose File > Catalog - There isn't a Catalog listing under File. Help!!

I also received the Educational version when ordering from Adobe and so have others on the form. It is not causing us problems.

1) When you received the startup screen did you click on the Organize choice?

Across the top bar of the PSE window, does it say (Organizer) or (Editor)?
If it says (Editor), then click on the Photo Browser icon on the tool bar. At that point, a second window will open if you have not yet used the Organizer/Photo Browser. It is in this window that you manage the photos.

2)

after installing, the program scans your files and places your photo folders
into their catalog system. Didn't happen.




Actually, it does not happen automatically, you initiate it with a Get Photos command (camera icon on the tool bar). I suspect that you have existing photo files on your hard drive. If you do, we can step you through importing one folder of photo files to the PSE catalog. Then you can do additional imports as you wish.

So please tell me one folder on your hard drive that contains photo files.

BarbO

Wow, what a bad first experience I just had with Elements 3! First off a little background. I've been using Album since 2 shipped (never was a 1.0 user) and have ~7000 pictures cataloged. I keep the catalog on a server and have 3 separate copies on 3 machines all 'open' the catalog on the server (thus effectively all working off a master copy of the catalog.) When I first installed Elements 3 on my 'main' machine it said it could not find "My Catalog" and asked to open a copy (which makes sense, I have no local "My Catalog.") So I point it to my file share catalog (which I renamed "Mark's Elements 3 Catalog" since I had multiple catalogs including backup naming schema, etc.) Anyway when I try to open it it just refreshes the screen and gives the error message that "My Catalogs" could not be found. I was dumbfounded and afraid it had to do with my network setup so I copied the catalog to the default local directory with the same failed results. Finally I re-named the catalog "My Catalog" and it was perfectly happy to accept that, re-name it to "My Catalog-1" and move on.

What a rediculious restriction. Surely other people have re-named their catalogs? If so definitely be aware of this, it looks like you'll need to rename your catalog to "My Catalog" the first time for it to import and change your catalog Over. Surely they ran across this in testing? It was the first thing I tried to do.

Mark

This is probably better as a separate thread because the thread originator appears to be a new user with no previously existing catalog. However, I will comment here for now.

I did have a My Catalog as well as 2 additional catalogs. All catalogs are on my C drive. So that is really two differences in configuration from yours.

My experience with 3.0 was that My Catalog was converted first. Then each of the additional catalogs were converted to PS Elements 3 when I first opened them (File > Catalog > Open).

I do agree with you that this problem should not have happened. I don't believe that there is any restriction that one must have a catalog named My Catalog. I wonder - did you ever try to create or let PSE 3 create a new catalog named My Catalog in order to bypass this problem, the open your "real" catalog in its normal location?

BarbO

A quick question: after PSE converts a PSA catalog, where does it leave the new catalog? Does it still remain in the PhotoShopAlbum directory?

thanks

DPX

No there is a new directory structure for PSE 3. Using Windows Explorer, I found the catalog in

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Catalogs

The default name is still My Catalog.psa

BarbO

Thanks BarbO. Looking forward to getting my copy of PSE3 tonight...

I am also a PSA 2.0 user with a default "My Catalog" and one additional catalog. I installed Elements 3. When I go to File > Catalog > Open both of the catalogs are listed. However, it did not bring in my tag structure or photos that I had in Album. If I select my other catalog, I get the pop-up about needing to do a conversion. How can I get Elements to recognize "My Catalog" from Album?

-Barb

Many thanks. When I removed the stupid factor I got it to work reasonably well. It seems that Adobe rather overcomplicates a feature that many other programs, albeit some freeware, accomplishes with little fanfare.

Barb K

As I recollect, I said yes or ok to a pop-up about conversion and then the catalog was converted for me. Once the conversion was done, I can see the photos and the tags as they were for each of the catalogs.

BarbO

Problem is, I only get that message for the other secondary catalog and not for the main "My Catalog" which appears to be empty. Any ideas how I can get "My Catalog" converted from Album to Elements?

Barb K

Mine converted earlier in the process before I ever attemtped to open the other catalogs.

I presume that you have made copies (like with Windows Explorer) of your exisiting .psa catalogs from PSA 2 for safe keeping. I would not want to make a suggestion that would cause a problem with your existing catalog.

What if you do the Catalog > Open select the alternate catalog and let its conversion be done (if you have not already done this). Then when you have been looking at the alternate catalog photos in the photo well, Do the Catalog > Open but now select My Catalog.

What happens? Du you get a chance to do the conversion then?

BarbO

Hi Barb. I do have backups of my catalogs so I will give your suggestion a try later tonight. Did you conversion happen during the install process and did you get a message that it was occurring? I did open PSA just to make sure everything was still there and it is. The path to the catalog is different. I thought about doing a copy of the existing catalog to the new location where it is stored by PSE 3 but I'm not that brave!

Will post again later tonight.

Thanks,
Barb

Request to Colin Walls

What do you think about this problem?

BarbK

I don't remember the exact timing of when the My Catalog catalog was converted. I do think that I was informed at the time.

I thought about doing a copy of the existing catalog to the new location
where it is stored by PSE 3




Actually, I had thought about suggesting that you copy your PSA catalog to the folder for PSE 3 - but decided to suggest the other approach first. However, why don't you look in the new folder location to see what files are present. It will be especially interesting to see if there already is a My Catalog-1.psa.

Edit - also check the size of My Catalog.psa in the new PSE 3 folder structure compared to the My Catalog.psa in the PSA folders.

BarbO

Barb O

There are two files in the new catalog folder; My Catalog and Elements (my second catalog). Neither has the "-1" appended.

Barb K

What is the size of the My Catalog in the new folder compared to the size of My Catalog in the PSA folders? Also, did you have your PSA catalog in the default location for PSA 2?

BarbO

Yes, the PSA catalog was in the default location. I will have to check the sizes when I'm at home this evening.

Thanks,
Barb

BarbO

I did not have a "My Catalog" when I installed PSE 3. So, it seemed to make one [empty] for me. Each other catalog got converted [with the old one renamed] as I opened them. All much the same as the PSA 1 to 2 transition.

Latest update...

The file size of My Catalog in the PSA location was 16,996 but in the PSE location was 536. I converted my secondary catalog successfully then as Barb O suggested tried again to open My Catalog. Still did nothing. I then copied the My Catalog file from the PSA catalog folder to the PSE catalog folder. I tried to open again from the file menu and still nothing happened. I shut down PSE and reopened it and finally got prompted to convert the catalog. It took awhile for the message to tell me how long it would take. Eventually it said 70510 minutes then quickly changed to 1 then 40 then 5. I thought that was strange. Anyway, it finished and all appears to be in order.

Thanks. Maybe this will help someone else.

Barb

Eventually it said 70510 minutes then quickly changed to 1 then 40 then
5




There is definitiely a bug in this area - I had a similar observation of screwy time estimates.

BarbK

I always like success - even when it comes with weird time estimates. I don't think my times were that bad, but they were definitely questionable.

Colin

Have you looked at the other thread where it did not complete the catalog conversion? Please offer suggestions.

Henry L Boelte "Out of Memeor error during catalog convert" 10/27/04 10:42pm </cgi-bin/webx?13@@.3bb6901f>

BarbO

Have you looked at the other thread where it did not complete the catalog
conversion?




Yes, I saw it but have little to offer. Sounds like a virtual memory thing, but I'm far from an expert in that area. Your questions sounded reasonable. Let's see what the OP comes back with.

Seeing all this I wonder if I should rename my main catalog to "My Pictures.psa" before installing PSE 3 ... we'll see.

Alexander.

I wonder if I should rename my main catalog to "My Pictures.psa" before
installing




I'd just keep a copy. I have the luxury of doing my initial playing on a machine which is all just "scratch".

I'd just keep a copy




That's no problem, I've got backups in abundance :-)

I just received my copy of PSE 3 and tried to use the Photo Browser. Only a few pictures showed up. The balance of the pic's were frames with an hourglass in the center. Is there a limit to the size of the picture file that PSE 3 can handle. If so is there a way to increase the file size. Most of my pic's are over 1.5 GB's.

Most of my pic's are over 1.5 GB's




I'd guess that PSE 3 may implement similar limits to PSA, which are on pixel dimensions. See here: Forums Operations "I am receiving an error "File is too large" when importing some photos. Is there a file size limit?" 10/24/03 11:16am </cgi-bin/webx?50@@.2ccdea99> However, with PSA you get an error message.

Some questions:
What format are your image files?
How come they are such an incredible size?

I tried loading a large image (too large for PSA2 but nowhere near the size of Treth's files) into PSE and also got the hourglass.

too large for PSA2




In pixels?

Treth and DPX

I recommend that one of you start a new thread for your problem with the hourglass for the large photos. Then post your additional information in that thread.

I think it will benefit everyone if the threads are single topic. You both seem to have a similar problem so one thread for both should work. Thanks.

BarbO

All of my files are PSD and usually are scanned 5x7's at 1200 ppi. Then blown up to originial size of 36 x 48 for printing. My intent was to catolog them in PSE 3 However when I work on them it is in PS CS.

Treth

Scanning at 600 is more than sufficient. Then you'd have 13mpx instead of 50mpx.

o3v3tz wrote:
> Actually, it does not happen automatically, you initiate it with a Get Photos command (camera icon on the tool bar).
I suspect that you have existing photo files on your hard drive.
If you do, we can step you through importing one folder of photo files
to the PSE catalog.
Then you can do additional imports as you wish.
> So please tell me one folder on your hard drive that contains photo files.
>
> BarbO

Hi Barbo,

I just installed my Photoshop Elements 3.0 and need help importing one
folder as outlined above. I have over 10 folders on my hard drive with
images that I would like to import into the program.

I would appreciate any help you can provide in this matter.

--
****************
Sheila

Sheila_Williams@adobeforums.com wrote:
> Hi Barbo,
>
> I just installed my Photoshop Elements 3.0 and need help importing one
> folder as outlined above. I have over 10 folders on my hard drive with
> images that I would like to import into the program.
>
> I would appreciate any help you can provide in this matter.
>

Never mind. :o) I found the video on the Program CD and with its help
figured it out.

This is going to be a lot of fun and a lot easier then I thought.
--

****************
Sheila

Sheila,

Glad that you found the information.

BarbO