Move image from one catalogue to another

[Anne-Marie5C27]

Is it possible to move an image from one catalogue to another catalogue EASELY without having to note the directory of the image, then delete it from the first catalogue and finaly import it in the second catalogue?

[MichelBParis]

Is it possible to move an image from one catalogue to another catalogue EASELY without having to note the directory of the image, then delete it from the first catalogue and finaly import it in the second catalogue?

By @Anne-Marie5C27

Hi Anne_Marie,

In my opinion, it's an excellent thing that you can't easily 'move' a picture from a catalogue directly into another one.

The process is pretty simple, nearly as you have described. You only process by logical steps.

1 - You take a note of the location of the file

- you 'import' that file in the other catalog from files and folders. The file location is not changed. The same file is referenced at the same time in both catalogs. At that stage, you are running the dreaded risk of modifying the file in one catalog, which will be ignored in the second one.

2 - If you don't want that risk, you may decide to remove the file from the original catalog, which will not delete the file from the disk. If that's what you want, it would be a good idea to assign a tag to the file to find it more easily for deletion.

Remember: what you do in a catalog is ignored by another catalog. The golden rule is to keep the contents of two catalogs totally diffent. Not a single file referenced at the same time in both catalog. Also remember that you can include the same file in different albums of the same catalog. The smart choice is to keep a single catalog and assign a distinctive tag to tell which is in both universes (or to create different albums).

You may have good reasons to split a catalog into two parts. However, doing so hoping to make the organizer faster is an illusion, that's not a valid reason.

So, if you want to do so, the procedure is to select the files to be moved and to make them visible to the second catalog, you'll have to either move or export them to a new folder and to import them in the second catalog. To keep the tags, write metadata to files before the reimport.

https://johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshop-elements-faq.htm#_Splitting_and_rearranging

[Greg_S.]

@Anne-Marie5C27, Michel has given you some excellent advice.  There are very few good reasons to maintain more than one catalog (other than for backup purposes).  If you would care to tell us what your reason is, we may be able to offer better solutions for you.

[Anne-Marie5C27]

I have catalogues for Work, Nature, Models and Family. Sometimes I would like to transfer some pictures from Models to Family without the whole process, but I understand why it has to be done in steps. Thank you both for your reply.
Sent from Mail<> for Windows

[MichelBParis]

Hi Anne-Marie and Greg,

I do agree with Greg that even if we understand the reasons of preferring a single catalog, there are cases where we want to be able to share a set of common pictures which we can access from different catalogs.This can be done in various ways, provided we are aware of the 'shared' status of those files. Maybe Greg can provide an example. For instance, I have several "Cloud" synced folders (OneDrive, DropBox... even Adobe) where I store images and documents to be able to access them from any other device (computer, smartphone). It's a selection of copies optimized for the Web or prints. I can use the "watched folders" feature to be warned of new files in those shared and synced files and decide if I add them to the current catalog.