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Using Organizer to cacalog photos on external hard drive.

Forum|Forum|5 months ago
August 15, 2025
4 replies
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I want to use Photoshop Elements (PE) 2025 to organize and access photos related to my wife’s genealogical project. I have a few questions.

I will install PE on my MacBook Pro.

Can I load my photos on an external hard drive and use PE Organizer to import the photos to the Organizer Catalog on the Mac?

If so, will the photos be duplicated on the Mac internal hard drive?
Or will Organizer Catalog use links to the photos on the external drive?

Or can the Organizer Catalog be placed on the external drive? If so, how?

I don’t want the photos to be duplicated (defeating the purpose of using the external hard drive).

Thanks

Correct answer Greg_S.

When files are imported into a catalog, only a link is created to the stored file.
No duplicates are made.
Yes, you can use an external drive from which you will import the files into the catalog.
But you must make sure that whenever you use the catalog, the files are available on the connected drive.
You must also make sure that the external drive has the same drive letter as when the files were imported.
The catalog information is contained in a folder. You can copy that folder to the external drive if you want, but it's not clear why you are asking about that unless you are trying to avoid filling up your Mac. But since your main question seems to be link vs copy of media files, that really shouldn't be an issue. However, if you want to work on your wife's computer as well, placing the catalog folder on the external drive would be the way to do it.

I think I have answered your questions, but let me know if I have missed something.

Jeff Arola

Community Expert

You'd probably run into issues trying to use the same Catalog on both Mac and Windows from an external drive.

For one the file systems are different so the location of the files would have different file paths.

Another consideration is the external would have to be formatted to file system that both Windows and Mac can read/write to, such as ExFAT.

In guess you could have separate catalogs set up on the same external drive.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

You only need to go to the Manage Catalogs dialog to select your desired catalog. Once chosen, it will remain the active catalog until changed.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

I know nothing about Macs. On Windows, if you copy the catalog folder to an external drive, you can simply double-click on the catalog.pse25db file found in the copied folder, and it will launch that catalog in the Elements Organizer. Otherwise, you would go to the File>Manage Catalogs dialog and select the catalog from a custom location on the external drive. I assume something similar can be done on a Mac.

You would not need to remove the catalog from the Mac internal drive, but be aware that you will now be using two different catalogs. It will be somewhat difficult to keep them in sync. Work performed on one catalog will not carry over to the other. So, if you decide to use the external drive catalog it is best to always use that one. If your wife's computer is Windows, I'm not sure whether the same catalog can be used by both Operating Systems. I am going to ping @Jeff Arola , another community expert, who will know the answer to that question.

T

Ted&AdeleAuthor

Participant

I definitely would not try to use two catalogs and keep them in sync.

I think I understand when you say “…go to the File>Manage Catalogs dialog and select the catalog from a custom location on the external drive”.
That “tells" the Organizer the location of the catalog to use. Is that right? And I’d need to do that each time I started up the Organizer, which would be fine.

Thanks again for your quick response.
Ted

Greg_S.

Correct answer

Community Expert

When files are imported into a catalog, only a link is created to the stored file.
No duplicates are made.
Yes, you can use an external drive from which you will import the files into the catalog.
But you must make sure that whenever you use the catalog, the files are available on the connected drive.
You must also make sure that the external drive has the same drive letter as when the files were imported.
The catalog information is contained in a folder. You can copy that folder to the external drive if you want, but it's not clear why you are asking about that unless you are trying to avoid filling up your Mac. But since your main question seems to be link vs copy of media files, that really shouldn't be an issue. However, if you want to work on your wife's computer as well, placing the catalog folder on the external drive would be the way to do it.

I think I have answered your questions, but let me know if I have missed something.

T

Ted&AdeleAuthor

Participant

Thanks for the very helpful reply!

I don’t think I’ll do it, but at sometime I might want to copy the catalog folder to the external drive.
If I do, is there a process required to connect the Organizer to that copied catalog? And would I have to then remove the catalog from the MAC?

Thanks again.
Ted

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