Photoshop Elements 2024 Organizer, important clarifications.

[Marcella45]

I recently installed the 2024 with update from 2021 on a new PC (I9, thirteenth generation, 32GB RAM, crane GB, win 11 Pro).  Following the community, I noticed a large number of questions mostly about Organizer rather than Editor. This means that users, both new users and those who have been using Elements for years like me, are experiencing some difficulties. Here are my questions.

1. I've ruled out automatic updates because I'm worried about having errors that I can't fix. I therefore attach at the bottom of the post the screen shot of my system. I note that Windows 10 appears and not Win 11. Because? When will I be able to return to automatic updates? I've already encountered problems downloading the program at the camera raw level. Community helped me. Does this precaution of excluding automatic updates only affect users in France, Germany, and Japan? How do I get notified if there are new secure updates? "Adobe support in Italy is tiring."
2. The problem of backing up catalogs. I'm referring to Greg's May 2, 2024 response to Alexander 3712... entitled: "Elements 2024 organiser with large number of files". Greg says that you can save your data faster by backing it up via the file manager as well. This seems to me to contradict what has been said elsewhere. Only backup and restore within the organizer are safe. I tried to put the image folders and their catalog on the OneDrive cloud. Result: a disaster! Now my images are in a folder c:\Adobe Archives\ and its subfolders (one for each catalog). My catalogs are located in the C:\Adobe Archives\PSE24\ Cataloghi 24 folder. The question is as follows. If I copy the C:\Adobe Archives\1900 Images folder and its catalog folder located C:\AdobebArchives\PSE 24 Catalogs\1900 Images to an external drive, do I get the same result in case of security compared to the backup and restore from Organizer? Why should saving via file manager be faster than saving via organizer?
3. Adobe support suggests that users who use Organizer to manage their image folders switch to Lightroom. Aside from the subscription cost, it is claimed that this product is more stable and modern. Would I like to have an evaluation of this?

[MichelBParis]

I'll leave Greg answer your questions in detail (which I am sure I will 100% aprove). I will just discuss the backup preference.

We are generally discussing two different configs: Very large catalog with face recognition and automatic features with powerful hardware for Greg, and medium size library without face recognition nor automatic features for myself.

The difference for the duration of backup is huge. I am happy to create a backup in about 4 hours and to restore in a little less. I suppose that  it would mean more than a night job for Greg.

I have always been an advocate of the organizer backup for mainly one reason. It was conceived to be able to restore both the media files and the catalog to a new computer, drive, partition or master folder while updating the file location data in the catalog. If you use your good external backup system to save both your media and your catalog folder, the restore will work without updating the location data (disk identification) in your database in the new destination.

In such a case, Lightroom offers an efficient 'reconnecting' feature, so it does not need to save the files and you need to use your external backup software. Elements has a reconnecting function which works only for a selection of subfolders, and is unable to reconnect a whole catalog.

So, my advice was to always use the organizer backup when planning a computer/disk migration, and to use it at larger intervals regularly.

Now, I have been forced to restore after a sudden failure of the external drive holding both my media library and my catalog. Big surprise ! The organizer restore failed after restoring correctly all the media files. After a 'restore complete' message, it followed by a 'preparing catalog' process wich lasted indefinitely. After closing, the restored catalog did work with NOT updated locations, still pointing to the old broken SSD external drive. I did try twice with the same result.

So, until I find what went wrong (update to Win 11 and new computer), I can no longer recommend the organizer backup choice.

Fortunately, I always "sync" my working disk to other external drives and I know how to update the catalog to the new disk location via an external sqlite feature.

I would recommend testing your own backup software to use it to restore to a new external drive to see if it is apt to move both the media and the catalog while keeping the location updated in the database of the catalog.

[MichelBParis]

To explain why I have doubts about the current state of the backup feature of the organizer:

- As explained before, my two attempts to restore a recent backup to a new drive have not been fully successful.

First part:

Restoring the media folders hierarchy did end normally with a "sucicessful" message. That required 3 and a half hours;  backup folder size 588GB and 130 000 items.

Following I got a dialog saying someting like "preparing catalog".

The the program sort of froze indefinitely.

The net result was exactly the same as a restore of both the media files and the catalog folder from any other backup software. The organizer opened normally with the new catalog showing only greyed out thumbnails and location details of each file still pointing to the old broken disk.

After two attempts, I tried to 'reconnect'. The process would have required more than a dozen hours to be conducted manually.

I have always two other external drives synced for the main folder containing my whole library.

Then I edited the catalog.pse2024 sqlite database of the wrong to point to the new drive. That meant only a few minutes.

Only minimal disadvantage:  The synced library contains about 10% media not included in the catalog. So, what I get is more than what is only in the catalog, not a big deal.

To summarize, I don't know what went wrong. To get a better understanding, I would need more attempts with different parameters. Is the problem linked to PSE2024, to the growing size of my library? At what stage does the real updating of the location take place...

[Greg_S.]

• Displaying Windows 10 as the OS in the System Info dialog is normal for all Windows 11 users.  Adobe has failed to correct this small detail and it should not have any effect on the program. 
• If you have Automatic Updates turned off in Preferences, you should receive a pop-up message whenever a new update is available.  The Help>Updates command should also become active.
• I have no information about when the problem involving French, German and Japanese versions of the program will be fixed.  I would hope that it is fixed soon.  There are other problems created by the Elements 2024.2 update that appear to affect users in all languages. 
• You are right in pointing out the inconsistency in my advice.   But fortunately, I have never had to test a disk failure involving my media files.  There is certainly no problem with simply copying the catalog folder itself and using a copy in any location to access the media files in their original location.  I build my own computers.  So, when I build a new computer, I can move the hard drives and keep the same drive and folder hierarchy.  @MichelBParis, if I built a new computer and used a backup drive containing the same OS drive and folder hierarchy as the original, are you saying that the catalog would identify the files as missing if I didn't make the appropriate sqlite change to the drive ID?  If your answer is yes, I would either figure out how to do that (by asking you for advice 😁) or I would  take the time to reconnect the files manually, or I might even take the time to rebuild the catalog from scratch.  I simply cannot use the Organizer's full backup feature with my large catalog.  Adobe has apparently acknowledged a problem with backing up large catalogs because supposedly the Elements 2024.2 was intended to fix whatever issue there was.  But even after the update, I have found it impossible to create a full backup of database and media.  I'm not even sure that using the Organizer's catalog database folder works.  Since my catalog folder takes up 25GB of storage and contains over 400k files, it's just not worth it for me to try.
• @Marcella45 said:  The question is as follows. If I copy the C:\Adobe Archives\1900 Images folder and its catalog folder located C:\AdobebArchives\PSE 24 Catalogs\1900 Images to an external drive, do I get the same result in case of security compared to the backup and restore from Organizer?   @MichelBParis, I'm not sure that you answered this question which is really the same question as mine above.  I will try to do some tests to see if I can provide an answer.
• @Marcella45 said:  Why should saving via file manager be faster than saving via organizer?  As noted above, my current catalog folder contains over 400,000 files.  Most of those files are very small text files.  Such files take an exponentially longer time to read and write for the copying to another drive.  That is why I recommend using a compressed zip file to copy between drives.  A single large file takes a much shorter time to copy than the hundreds of thousands of small files, even taking into account the time it takes to zip and unzip the files.  Additionally, the Organizer's backup utility performs a number of other operations during the backup process that adds to the time.
• @Marcella45 said:  I tried to put the image folders and their catalog on the OneDrive cloud. Result: a disaster! OneDrive uses a local drive to synchronize with files in the OneDrive cloud.  It is possible to use that local drive to store your catalog files.  But you cannot manage those files in the Cloud or use the Cloud version as your catalog storage or use the Organizer to synch with those files.  Elements 2024 has its own Cloud synch feature - but that brings us back to the update problem.
• I haven't tried to use the Lightroom catalog feature for a few years.  When I tried it, I found that I much preferred the Elements catalog.  I think one of the issues used to be that it could not handle videos.  Perhaps that has changed.  If you want to try out Lightroom, I believe you can get a brief free trial.   It has a feature to convert an Elements Organizer catalog to a Lightroom catalog. In the US, you can get the Photoshop/Lightroom Photographer's plan for about $10 per month.  I assume a similar offer is available in Italy.

[Glenn 8675309]

It doesn handle videos without any issues.   

I pay $10.84 a month for the cheap photography plan- which only comes with 20GB of data.  Check this lik out which compares all the plans (This is all based for the U.S.): https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/compare-plans.html

NOTE:  Dealing with Organizer can easilly take up all your free time- I choose not to mess with it.   I play with organizer, my life does not center around it.   No one cares about my Organizer stuff except for me......

In my future obituary:   "Glenn Was a good person, had 3 kids,and really organized his photo collections"....Nope!

If it were up to me:   I would completly break off organzier from Photoshop Elements and make it a separate product-  I think the majority of users (greater than 50%)  wouldn't even bother with it. 

Below is a screenshot from Lightroom (Which I get because I subscribe to Photoshop).

[Marcella45]

I thank Greg, Glenn and Michel for their in-depth answers. My thoughts regarding how to fully back up your catalog and multimedia are as follows.

Adobe says Organizer is suitable for managing large catalogs and recommends having a unique one.

I didn't follow this direction. I archive the images in folders by year and create a new catalog every 10 years or so. This choice is due to the fact that my workflow is related to recent material and that I hardly go to edit material from 10 years ago. I only need it as a story, to retrieve memories, export files, etc. I use manual face recognition and not automatic face recognition. The automatic one would be excessive. I only rank the most significant shots. Automatic geolocation would be very useful but in my opinion it doesn't work well. I was hoping that the 2024 update this feature would be improved. I find the one of Google photos is better, for example.

I don't know much about handling system options. I believe that a user like me (whit limited system management knowledge) should limit himself to the good use of the product, without inventing extra things. The OneDrive experience was enough for me.

I asked myself: "large dimensions", but how can they be measured? My historical catalog is 65 GB and contains 11572 files. Almost similar to the one mentioned by Greg. I did a backup test from my new fast PC on an external drive. It took about 15 minutes. The back folder created on the external drive is 63.8 GB with 11589 files. Very acceptable time.

Ultimately, also based on what I get from this discussion, since my current catalog of about 25 GB, when it reaches 60 GB (in two years) I will open a new catalog. For the current archive I will back up the catalog with each issue, and the complete one every month or so.

I rated Lightroom Classic per subscription in Italy at 12 euros per month. Very good. If Adobe improves and preserves Photoshop and Premiere Elements, I will remain in the environment I know, of which I update the versions every 2 to 3 years.

[Marcella45 · Accepted solution]

Si grazie dell'interessamento. Per il momento non ho altre domande. Osservazioni sì. Infatti ho notato che doversi utenti segnalano errori e malfunzionamenti su PSE 2024.Da parte di Adobe nessuna informazione. Non si può lavorare con lo stress che da un momento all'altro intervenga qualche problema.Io aspetto ancora un  mese prima di fare un più intensivo del prodotto.