Organizer Smart Tag Management - Rant!

[keepplugging]

Elements 2019

I am running the trial.

So far, the program is easy to use, EXCEPT FOR MANAGING SMART TAGS!!!!

Yes, I know people have been complaining about that -- FOR YEARS!!!

My quick web search did not turn up another photo management program that tries automatic analysis, so that feature might be what distinguishes Elements Organizer.  It needs to be easy to manage.

For me, the goofiness of the smart tags themselves is tolerable, but the awkwardness of managing them is not.

Am I right that the only way to see the list of smart tags on an image is to plant the mouse on "Remove Smart Tag" in the image's pop-up menu?

How can that be?  Did I miss something?  Who designed that?

What happened, Adobe?  Did you get stuck with a tangle of uncommented C++ code understood only by some ultra-geek who left the company five years ago?

C'mon.  Can't you afford to detail a programmer to rationalize the smart-tag front end?

[MichelBParis]

From your post I can see that you are not the typical profile Adobe wants for Elements users. In the "official FAQs":

"What is Photoshop Elements and who it is for?"

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2019 is photo editing software used by anyone who wants to edit and create with their photos. It offers easy ways to get started, effortless organization, step-by-step guidance for editing, and fun ways to make and share stunning photo creations. Plus, it’s fast and easy with photo and video automation powered by Adobe Sensei AI technology."

You have an unusually poweful config and obviously you are not a beginner and serious about assets management.

If you don't mind another view from an old Elements user, take the time to consider the trend towards 'smart' or 'automatic' features. If you follow other forums about Elements, Lightroom Classic and CC, you'll see that things are changing rapidly.

My quick web search did not turn up another photo management program that tries automatic analysis, so that feature might be what distinguishes Elements Organizer.

Very true. Adobe takes advantage of this trend to set a clear separation between a "beginners" and "automatic", "guided" application like the (perpetual license model) Elements or the experimental LR CC versus the "pro" subscription of Creative Cloud. Good marketing (business) reasons.

So what about old users like you (and me)? It appears that relatively recent PSE versions are enough for them and they don't need to upgrade to the lastest PSE version. They have already everything. They don't need Creative Cloud, its extremely high learning step and its price. After all upgrading PSE every 3 years is four times less expensive.

Am I frustrated now? Just a little bit psychologically but not at all technically. I don't miss anything, I don't spend more than needed and I am not bothered about the future of PSE. Good if new users make it a profitable product.

It needs to be easy to manage.

There, take the time to put together:

- face recognition

- geotagging

- events

- smart (text) searches in the Organizer

and the new "smart" features.

We are all different.

The conventional tagging system is ok for me.

I don't need face recognition (a gadget for me). Only intelligent manual people management is crucial for me.

I just play sometimes with geotagging

There is stricly no advantage with managing events separately, it's so flexible to do so with normal tagging.

- smart (text) search is outstanding!!!

So, anything "smart" is of a different nature as manual tagging.

For me, it's mainly a way to help me to tag conventionally faster. I don't like face recognition, but if I had to manage a new library of 70 000 items like mine, it would make sense.

I do like the present smart tagging very much. My catalog is already well managed, but the feature is both very fast and useful. It can find files for not yet managed tags very fast. Yes, it does find a lot of not accurate occurences, which often be worth a good laugh. But that's not only fun, that is a way to decide if you use conventional tagging for a selection of the found files.

So, I think that "it should be easy to manage" may be too much of an expectation.

[keepplugging]

Michel, thank you for your thoughtful reply.

Perhaps I am not the customer Adobe pursues.  I have only about a thousand 12-frame rolls of film, which I am scanning.  At my age (75), this is a lifetime project, and I am sensitive to time consumption.  If a machine can do something, I won't.

Let me emphasize that my gripe with Organizer is that managing smart tags is awkward.  The analyzer itself is just fine, however goofy.  Anyone who whines about it can write their own program.  If Adobe abandons the automatic analyzer, I will burst into flames.

To Adobe Marketing: tell your sales people to ask prospective customers what they think of smart tag management.

[Greg_S.]

>  Am I right that the only way to see the list of smart tags on an image is to plant the mouse on "Remove Smart Tag" in the image's pop-up menu?

Yes, you are correct that the only way to see smart tags for a particular image is through the context menu.  (You can see all the images that have been smart-tagged through the search panel.)

Other than deleting false positives, how else do you want to manage "smart" tags?

[keepplugging]

Greg_S, I am not concerned with false positives.  Maybe they will become a nuisance as they accumulate, but if the analyzer offers true positives, even accompanied by false ones, I am happy.

At the risk of repeating myself, the front-end tag management is unwieldy.

I ought to be able to select an image and see all tags on that image with one mouse-click, perhaps by displaying a dialog box.

Ditto a multi-image selection.

Showing all tagged images via Search is OK, though not intuitive.

Smart tags and manual tags ought to be managed through the same dialog - select a tag, select a range of tags, delete, save, apply saved tags, whatever.

Incidentally, under Usability, it would be nice to let the user know what the program is doing.  E.g., the user can be puzzled while the analyzer is working in background.  If selecting an image displayed "Being analyzed", it would be reassuring.  (Then I wouldn't wonder what had gone wrong during the half-hour I waited for smart tags to appear on the single image I imported yesterday.)

Has Adobe lost the Organizer's User Requirements doc?