PSE5 Organizer

[lstucker]

Hi, everyone! I have a question. Does anyone use the organizer in PSE5 to organize their digital elements? I keep the original files on an external hard drive, but I'm wondering how easy they are to bring up in the organizer, and if you can just use thumbnails or proxy files in the organizer so they're not as big. Does that make sense? I guess if anyone can just tell me their experience using the organizer with digital elements that would be great.

Thanks!

[troush]

You can point the organizer to look at your stuff on your external drive. Remember, the Organizer is just pointing to the files, not storing them. (It does store tags and such, but it just keeps a path to the images/digi stuff.) The main thing is to make sure that your external drive is always assigned the same drive letter when it gets plugged into your computer. (Sometimes, if you plug in another USB thing, the drive letter for your external HD will change, and then the Organizer doesn't know where your files went.)

To assign a drive letter, access your Control Panel, then Administrative Tools, then Computer Management. Under the "Storage" area you will see something called "Disk Management". Click on that. Then, on the right side you can right click the drive and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths. (I did it for my backup harddrive so it always connects with the same letter.)

-Trish

[lstucker]

Thank you so much! Now...how do I 'point' the organizer to my drive? :) Forgive me, I'm new at this...

[troush]

Under File->Get Photos->From Files and Folders (or Ctrl-Shift-G). When the dialog appears, navigate to your External HD, and select the top-most directory, and then click on Get Photos. (Make sure the two buttons "Automatically Fix Red-eye, and Automatically Suggest Stacks" are UNchecked.)

Remember, always move, delete, copy, etc., from within the organizer. If you do any of that stuff in Windows Explorer, then the organizer won't know where the files are or what happened.

Also, after you import new stuff, or do a lot of editing, do a File->Catalog->Recover in the organizer. This will clean-up and compact the database file.

The help files should have some good tutorials about using the organizer. I also recommend the library for finding good books. And this site http://www.photofanatic.com/ has some good information about using the organizer.

-Trish