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Hi Richard. Let's see if we can help you get your photos sorted out. You are not the first Picasa user to have problems.
So, first, you need to understand what the Organizer is, and the differences between folders and albums.
- Your photos are stored in folders on your computer's hard drive. The Folder Panel in the Organizer is a reference to those folders and if you display the folders in Tree View rather than the default List View, you will see the same folder hierarchy as your operating system. (To display the Folder panel in Tree View, click on the hamburger icon at the right of the My Folders label and click on View as Tree.)
- The Organizer is a catalog of your photos no matter where they are stored. Think of your computer as a museum, and the folders as the rooms where the paintings are hung on the wall. The Organizer catalogs in which room you will find the paintings. You can have many different catalogs for a museum, but each original painting can only be in one room at a time. Sometimes paintings are moved around but you won't be able to find where they have been moved to unless you look at the latest catalog. If a thief steals a painting and takes it to their house, the museum won't know where it is. For this reason, it is essential that if you move, rename or delete a photo from your Organizer's catalog, you should only do so within the Organizer, and not using your OS, e.g. Windows File Explorer.
- The Organizer can display your photos in many different ways and in many different sort orders. Albums are one way to sort your photos so you can easily find the ones you are looking for. So, just as a museum may have one catalog for Impressionist paintings and another for Renaissance artwork, the Organizer can have an Album for Vacations and another for Weddings. The photos may be stored in many different folders on your computer but you can collect them all in a single Album. You can also have the same photo in multiple Albums.
- As noted, the Organizer can sort your photos in several different ways, using the Sort By: dropdown list:
- The Album Order will only appear in the list if you have an Album selected. This is because Albums are the only way to manually sort your photos in a particular order. (You do this by click and dragging a thumbnail around in the grid.) The photos are not moved. It is just the way they are displayed in the catalog.
So, now, let me see if I can help answer your specific questions. I suggest you first look at this HelpX article which explains the process for creating Albums.
I also along the way imported loads of cell phone pictures, so the dates in the folders were all over the place not in any order.
You haven't explained how you imported the cell phone pictures. Were they imported directly from the cell phone to the Organizer using the Import from Camera or Card Reader option or some other method? It is not totally unusual for the Organizer to copy a cell phone photo to your computer in a folder with the "wrong" date. However, it is usually possible to figure out the actual date the original photo was taken and move it to a different folder if that is what you want to do. But, as I said earlier, it doesn't matter in which folder the photo is stored on your computer, the Organizer can keep track of it by other methods. (I have about 250 thousand media files in my Organizer catalog and can usually find what I am looking for in a couple of seconds.)
When I tried to move the pictures to the album some of them did not go over. I was dragging them from the folder to the album. When I tried to look for them, they went to different folders.
I'm not exactly sure what you were doing but hopefully the article I have linked will provide you with the information necessary to place your photos in an Album. You can only drag image thumbnails to or from an Album. Dragging a folder to an Album does not place the folder in the Album. (ADDED: You can also right-click on a folder in the Folders panel and select to create an Album of all of the photos in the folder.)
I also found that if I double clicked on a folder all the pictures come up. Is that normal,
You only need to single-click on a folder in the Folder Panel. This will filter the grid to every photo in the folder (unless you have used another filter, such as all photos of Person X, in which case you will only see all photos of Person X within the selected folder).
should I just go from the main pictures and not the folders to place them in my album?
You can:
- Use the Folder view to find the photos
- Select the photos in the grid
- Click on the Album tab
- Drag the photos to the Album (or vice versa).
Also, if I delete a picture from the folder will it also delete the picture from the album?
Yes! As explained earlier, Albums are just catalogs. If you delete the file from a storage folder, the Album will display a missing image icon.
Let us know if you have any other questions.
Richard, don't be shy about asking questions. All Community Experts are happy to answer them.
@Richard25204872ffh5 said: When I go to drag the pictures to my albums from my folders there are so many duplicates that they hard to tell them apart.
I have several suggestions for you:
- The easiest is to use the Zoom slider that will allow you to place two photos side by side.
- You can also increase the size of the viewable photos by closing the side panels, using the toggles in the lower corners.
- If you double-click on a thumbnail, you will be taken to Single Image View which shows the photo at its maximum Organizer size. Double-clicking on it again will restore the photo to its previous zoom size.
- If you select two photos and press F12, you can go into compare photo mode which allows you to zoom in to much larger sizes while comparing photos side by side. One of the photos will have a blue outline, and if you click the arrows beneath, the next photo in the grid will be displayed. So, if you have a series of similar photos, e.g. from a camera's burst mode, you can compare two at a time, choose the best, and then move on to the next photo by clicking the unwanted photo so that the blue outline appears, and click on the next arrow. You can then make another choice of which one you want to keep for the album. (The mouse wheel can be used to zoom each photo in and out.)
@Richard25204872ffh5 asked: is there a way to mark the pictures that I dragged to my album so when I go back to that folder I can tell which one is already in the album?
Yes. But it is best to do this from the Details view of the Organizer. (Use Ctrl+D to toggle this view on and off.) In details view, an Album icon will appear under any image that is included in an album. If you hover over the icon, the name of the Album will be identified. If you double-click on an image, the name of the Album should be displayed. (This may depend on size of monitor.)
@Richard25204872ffh5 said: Is the new version of PS elements a little easier to maneuver albums?
I doubt it, but what version do you have?
One of these days i am going to get to eding a picture. My question is how do you get a picture form my album to the body of a email. i can share but it only goes in as a file. If i insert it it goes to all the files in my picture files on my computer. I would like the picture in the body of the email so that whent you open the email you see the picture??
Richard
By @Richard25204872ffh5
I have different mail providers. I suppose that in general the process is the same as with Gmail. I manage to show both the message open in Gmail and the album page together in my display; then I just drag and drop the icon of the selected file(s) into the body of the message. With another provider, I get the option to add the image(s) either embedded in the body or joined as a separate file.
Sorry it took so long to rpley. It is nt he mail providers thats the problem. It is outlook insert comand. If i want to insert a pichure in the body of the email the promp will take me to folders that i suppose on my computer somewhere.but not to my albums, and then i can't find that picture. What i would like to do is hightlight the picture in my photshop album and insert in in the body of my email in outlook. What it does is creates a file and puts it in the header not a picture in the body,.again sorry it took so loog to reply. Don't give up on me.
By @Richard25204872ffh5
Hi Richard,
I don't use outlook myself, so I hope another user can give a tested answer. I would try to have both outlook and the organizer open at the same time and try to click and drag on an album item to the body of your message text, or doing a copy (Ctrl V) on the photo then a paste (Ctrl V) in the message body. That works with different mailing systems.
Second question. How can i get pictures from my iphone to my program without hard wiring my phone to my computer. Maybe i need a new virsion of Photshop elements. At my age technologhy has gotton away from me,sorry
Richard
I don't use iphones but I am sure other iphone users can give you a precise answer. There are a number of ways to to "sync" your phone photos to a 'Cloud' service and to retrieve them in your computer. For instance OneDrive in Windows, Dropbox, Google and I presume iCloud...
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