Photoshop elements 13 organizer cloud

You mention: "copy periodically and manually the catalog folders in a OneDrive subfolder".

How does this work and does this copy only the additional data (about tags, albums) or does this include all of the pictures also?

Having your files synced to the Cloud does not backup your catalog itself. So, you must have a backup solution for your catalog, a simple manual copy of the catalog folder where you want or why not in Onedrive? If you run a full backup from the organizer, the catalog will be backed up together with your files.

If you want to use OneDrive for the purpose,  that would mean storing the catalog inside the OneDrive folder. I am not sure how well the catalog would work along with the syncing process. That's why I would prefer storing only a copy of the catalog folder as a backup and sharing solution.

Note:

The latest PSE 2021 has now the option to automatically backup the catalog folder without the files themselves. PSE 2021 users can now save the catalog folder in the Adobe Creative Cloud (max 2 GB)

https://helpx.adobe.com/elements-organizer/user-guide.html/elements-organizer/using/backup-restore-catalogs.ug.html

The part 'write metadata to files' sounds very interesting to me. Since I do not use albums, but solely sort my pictures by tags (and (Yes: old fashioned) folders), including the tags in the metadata (if I understand you correctly) might be the solution for my problem.

Most photo editors have the ability to save tags, captions, ratings or notes in the metadata header of the photo file itself. The result is that most editors can read your tags. Photo managers like the Organizer or Lightroom are based on catalogs and databases. For them it's easier to find very fast items based on multiple criteria (tags, dates...) than to read each file to fetch those data. That's why writing 'metadata to files' is optional for them.

It's extremely simple: you select a batch of files in the organizer browsing space or from a search query and you use the menu File >> Write metadata to files (shortcut Ctrl W).

In your context, you have files in the OneDrive folder of your computer. As soon as you edit a file or write metadata to files, OneDrives updates the Cloud version so that the new tagging is available from all your devices. If you use the Explorer to look at the properties of a given file, you'll see the tags and captions. Note that if you write again other captions, they will be added. This will not delete tags already written, so it's a bit less easy to delete tags from your file if you delete them from your catalog.

So, obviously, it's highly recommended.

Will organizer 'remember' the information it 'attaches' to the photo's (like labels) if the photo's are not stored on the computer permanently (they will be stay in the same folder in the cloud, but that folder would be 'visible'/present on my computer on and off)?

The organizer can't link its tagging information to files in the Cloud, only to files physically present in the OneDrive folder. So, how do you remove the files from that OneDrive folder: by deleting them or moving them out of the folder to an external drive?

If you do that from the Explorer, the information will be kept (including thumbnails), but obviously all those files will be missing and you won't be able to open them. You would have to restore them from the Cloud to recover the links and use the photos.

If you do that from the organizer itself, the deleted files will also totally lose their tag info. If you move the file outside of the OneDrive folder to another folder or drive, the catalog will be updated for the new location and the sync with the Cloud will be lost.

So, writing metadata to tags is what you can use to keep your tagging in the files. If you recover them from the Cloud, you'll have to re-import the files in your catalog. The tags and captions will be recovered in a category 'imported tags' but the tag hierarchy (people >> family >>Our family... for instance) will not be recovered.

Before answering in more details, I'll describe my understanding of how the OneDrive folder and Cloud storage works and how I use them in practice, mainly to get two distant desktops completely 'synced' and to allow accessing the contents of the folders from other devices including smartphones, tablets or even my wife's laptop. Some of what I will describe may be erroneous, but that works...

The first thing I believe is that you can NEVER store files and information directly  'in the Cloud'.

You always store the information on your computer.

The 'syncing' = updating the data in the Cloud from what is in your dedicated OneDrive folder is automatic and there is no reason to 'unsync' or 'resync' myself. I have necessarily a duplication of the data on my computer and in the Cloud.

When I use my second computer with my OneDrive synced, automatically, the newest data (here in the Cloud) is replicated in this new computer when I open it. That may need some time and only when I see the notification that the sync is is 100% complete, I can work with those files.

When I get back to my first computer, it's the same: the contents which have been added or edited are replicated.

I can access the contents of my OneDrive account from other devices, particularly my smartphone.

I must say also that I am using the Dropbox service exactly the same.

In both cases, if OneDrive or Dropbox folders are no longer available on account of a crash or error, the corresponding services will be able to re-sync and re-create the dedicated folders. Same if you set up OneDrive on a third computer: the OneDrive folder will be updated automatically.

So, is OneDrive the best backup solution for managing image files with the organizer?

The problem is not with the image files, it is with your catalogs.

All of the pictures are bankuped. But it woul be such a waste if I would loose all of the information of Elements about my pictures. If the data is not included in the picture (as I suspect), is there a way to backup the information after labeling the pictures in a folder so that if for instance my laptop explodes (god forbid) or I want to move or view the pictures on another computer (my laptop probably will be replaced somewhere next year so I have to transfer the pictures) I can add this information to the pictures (without going through the whole labeling process again) and/or can I move/backuo the pictures without loosing/including the information from elements? (Hope you understand the questing)

it would be really reassuring to know before spending many days labeling and organising my mixtures to know I don't loose all of the information if my hard disk crashes or if I have to change my laptop.

All the tagging and organization into albums, stacks or version sets is stored in the catalog, and only in the catalog by default. You can 'write metadata to files' so that all your tags, captions and ratinds are also stored in your files. That's a good practice. But albums and version sets among others can't be written to files.

So, you might think that using OneDrive to store the catalog would be the ultimate solution?  No. That will work if it's your catalog itself which needs restoring, not if your photo files have also been missing.

The reason is that if you have to restore both catalog and media files, the links in the catalog will point to a missing drive and won't recognize the new one. You'll need to reconnect all, which is not realistic with a big library. So, rather than storing the catalogs directly in Onedrive, I would only copy periodically and manually the catalog folders in a OneDrive subfolder.

So, the only solution to 'move' both the photo files and the catalog to a new computer while keeping the links valid for the new computer is to create a full backup from the organizer. If you have plenty of OneDrive space (... and time) you could store the backup folder into the OneDrive folder.

To summarize:

- I never bother to sync or unsync. That's automatic.

- With a big library and small Onedrive space, I do store my library and catalog on an external drive which I can plug in alternatively on both distant computers.

- I only manage a small subset of my images in OneDrive.

- I write metadata to files

- I do periodical copies of my catalog to OneDrive

- I have a catalog in each computer for the small library in the OneDrive folder. They are not in sync. When I have to use those catalogs, I import from the OneDrive folder, which only imports new files, with their tags and captions. I don't recover the albums or version sets. That's not perfect, but that's good for the recent or very important selection of files I want to share on both distant computers (let's say 10 000 items instead of 100 000). Also, in that selection, I don't need to store raw files, I can even 'export' resized pictures from the organizer directly to the subfolder in OneDrive.

Moving to the Photoshop Elements forum from Photoshop