Moving to Elements from LR/PS

[dcjsimons01]

I am seriously looking at migrating from LR/PS. Great software but overkill for what I am doing and consequently resent paying the subscription costs. But I have library of thousands of files catalogued in LR which ai don't want to have to re catalog in a new system. Is there a way to import the LR catalog into Elements, including all keywords etc. If I write the metadata/keywords into files within LR so each file has an associated xmp file can that be imported into Elements to build a catalogue?

[MichelBParis · Accepted solution]

You are right, the solution is indeed to write metadata within LR with the option to create an xmp file for raw files or to write the metadata into the file header itself for jpegs and other image formats. When you import those files into a PSE catalog, you recover those data: keywords, captions, ratings...

However, that does not save your 'collections' which may be important in your organization. The equivalent for collections in PSE are 'albums'. If those collections are important for you, assign a special keyword to each important collection to be able to create 'albums' from the files selected with that keyword.

Another important feature in PSE is the ability to search by text in the captions. So, the more detailed captions you have, the easier it is to do complex searches.

You can also build albums from subfolders easily.

Another strength in the organizer is the auto tagging feature which will analyze your pictures and tag them automatically.

A note about your editing data and history in LR: the ACR module in Elements is a limited version of the full Photoshop ACR, but if you have the xmp sidecar files or the metadata written into the file header, it recognizes your edits and will output the same rendered image. Before you import into the catalog, You don't need to create rendered versions of your edited files in LR as you would have to do with third-party softwares. You can even re-edit those files with the available tools in the PSE ACR; tools missing in PSE will be recognized, but you can't change them.

[dcjsimons01]

Thanks for this. Very useful.