How to add only edited photos to album in PSE Organizer?

Hi -

 

I'm trialing PSE Elements / Organizer 2021 and noticed when I edit some images and try to add only the edited images to a new album, both the edited version plus the original unedited version end up in th album. How do I avoid this? I only want the edited photos but when I drag those to the album, the unedited versions automatically come with them. 

 

Thanks,

 

Tim

By @TimBike

The explanation on this behavior requires that you understand the concepts of stacks and version sets as well as the technical implementation of  'albums' in PSE.

- stacks are a way to group several photos so that only one, the 'top of stack' is displayed in the browsing space. This is to make visual browsing optimal, supposing all the grouped items have the same properties and tags; typically slightly different visual variants , burst shots. That can be also possible duplicates to be examined later. The stacks are less numerous than their individual members, which makes browsing, but also searching and managing more efficient.

- Version sets are a special case of stacks: they store the relation between an original files and its edited children. The 'top of version set' may be the original or one of the edited versions, generally the latest one.

- albums (I don't like that misleading word) are what is called 'collections' in Lightroom and in the first versions of Elements. They are just 'playlists' stored within the catalog. You can sort that list on various criteria and even use your own personal custom sort order.

So, back to your question: the lists points to stacks and version sets if they exist, otherwise to individual items.

What you are displaying in albums is the 'top of stack' or 'top of version set' or the individual items not included in stacks/version sets.

Just do a test:

In an album with version sets chosen with the edited version as top of version sets, you only see the edited version.

close the album and display the same version sets. Edit each one and set the original version as top of version set.***

Go back to the album: you now see only the originals without having changed anything in the definition of the 'album'.

Note that if you 'export as new files' from an album, only the top of stack/version sets will be exported.

Your problem is typical of your import choice with raw plus jpegs automatically stacked: you have no option to decide which item should be the top of stack. That's an old feature request which is not yet implemented in PSE.

****

To change the 'top of stack', right click on the thumbnail to display the contextual menu.

Edit

Hi,

To do this, you can either convert the version set to 2 individual items, or completely remove the original media if you only want to have edited media in your catalog. To do this, first you need to switch to Detailed view, by clicking on View->Details

After this, right click on the version set and you will find 2 options in the menu. You can use one of them depending upon your requirement:

1. Convert version set to individual items: This will remove the association between original file and edited media file, and they will be shown as 2 independent files in your catalog. You can now move only the edited one to your album.

2. Flatten version set: This deletes the original item from your catalog and only keeps the edited item.

Let me know if this solves your issue.

Thanks!