Known Participant

Question

Pictures directory a mess after using PSE Organizer!!

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
November 1, 2017
3 replies
7760 views

I organized photos in Photoshop Elements Organizer 2018 in Tree View.

Then I checked my Pictures directory (Windows 10) and it is an absolute mess!!!!!!!! I had about 30 folders (not counting subfolders) before using Organizer. Now there are 314 folders!!! I've used a few other organizers before and when I changed something in the organizer, the same changes took place in the Pictures directory (eg. moving, renaming)...and visa versa,

Questions: Why did this happen, and what can I do? Is it a glitch? What am I missing? If I reorganize everything in the Pictures directory, which will take hours, what can I expect to happen in Organizer?

What a mess!!!!

This topic has been closed for replies.

D

Don26812

Inspiring

This is probably way too late and not useful at this point given the length and actions undertaken during the months of activity on this thread. But I strongly suspect that somewhere along the way the Cardinal Rules of using the Organizer have been broken.

Cardinal Rules: Once an image has been imported into the Catalog using the Organizer, you must not MOVE, RENAME, or DELETE the file, unless you use the applicable Organizer command.

That is, you must not use Windows Explorer or the Mac File finder, Picasa, or any other similar program, or you will disconnect the photos in the Organizer. Like a library's card catalog, the Organizer's Catalog does not contain the photos, only pointers to which folder contains them.

From what I saw in the original post, it appears that initially the Cardinal Rule was not broken, because Tree Size Folders view was used. But here is what might have caused the problem. It is possible that while dragging/dropping images, figure/mouse coordination issues have caused duplicates to be created somehow. Similar things have happened to me when I try to drag/drop in Windows Explorer.

I always use the Organizer's File > Move command when I reorganize physical locations. Slower, but for me far safer.

Also with all of the other actions tried throughout this long thread, I would not be surprised at all if the Cardinal rule was not broken somewhere along the way.

FWIW

https://don26812.wordpress.com/

fotograffficAuthor

Known Participant

While I may never know what caused the problem of hundreds sub-folders showing up in my Pictures after an Adobe tech person reinstalled Photoshop Elements 2018, I think I solved the problem.

I manually removed the hundreds of extraneous folders from the Pictures directory and backed them up to an external hard drive. I then deleted the extraneous folders off my hard drive. Thus far, Organizer seems to be behaving, and everything else seems to be working fine to this point.

Thanks everyone for trying to determine and help me solve the problem.

fotograffficAuthor

Known Participant

Yesterday, Organizer duplicated a subfolder that appeared in my Pictures folder. At least it made only one and not close to 300!

Another strange folder appeared: PictIQ. I assume, maybe erroneously, that it was created by Organizer?

MichelBParis

Legend

I don't mean to belabor the point, but I've started using only organizer for several weeks to access and order my Pictures folder; and make stacks.

I reset Windows today and am starting from scratch reinstalling programs, files and photos.

Before I did the Windows reset and backed up my photos I checked some of the folders in Pictures. It appears that Organizer has changed the original names of subfolders to numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. This doesn't occur in every folder but enough to make me concerned. So I no longer know the contents of certain subfolders without opening each one.

Is this a common occurrence and, if so, how do I prevent it. I'm about to install PSE and wondering if I should continue to use Organizer. While I won't rule our user error, I really don't think it is unless I'm not supposed to move photos around in Organizer. To me, it's been acting strange from the get go but, then again, whatever caused problems to my OS could cause PSE Problems, or could it be the other way around?

As an aside, I backed up the catalog but I'm not going to use it to prevent related errors. I'll start from scratch. I think I'm going to install Organizer first before I let it import any photos so I can shut off things like face recognition. I'm not planning to put any photos in the my Pictures folder yet to mimimize possible problems.

Any insights would be appreciated. Thanks again.

fotografffic wrote
Before I did the Windows reset and backed up my photos I checked some of the folders in Pictures. It appears that Organizer has changed the original names of subfolders to numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. This doesn't occur in every folder but enough to make me concerned. So I no longer know the contents of certain subfolders without opening each one.
Is this a common occurrence and, if so, how do I prevent it. I'm about to install PSE and wondering if I should continue to use Organizer.

My opinion is that there is no way that the organizer could have renamed your folders. As discussed previously, the only feature which can create folder names (not change them) is the advanced downloader feature allowing creating a hierarchy of date based subfolders when importing from camera or card reader.

As an aside, I backed up the catalog

Good, but how did you backup? From an external tool, from the Explorer... or from the Backup feature of the organizer? Did you backup both your photo files library and your catalog folder?

If you have used the organizer feature, both are saved and ready to be restored where you want... but with the same present folder tree structure, which does not solve your problem.

I'll start from scratch. I think I'm going to install Organizer first before I let it import any photos so I can shut off things like face recognition

Yes.

I'll start from scratch. I think I'm going to install Organizer first before I let it import any photos so I can shut off things like face recognition

I never put my photo files in the 'Pictures' folder. I create a new master folder like 'My_ photos' with all due permissions. Preferably on a different partition or drive.

How are you going to import 'from scratch'?

You don't import from cards, so you have to import from files and folders. Getting files means simply 'indexing' the present location and contents of your files. Will you copy the backup files somewhere before importing?

What kind of folder structure do you want? By Events, by Date, by subjects?

The most used structure used with catalogs in the Organizer like in Lightroom is a simple date-based structure, since you can organize your tags and tags categories according to several different ways, and change the organization easily.

99jon

Legend

What are the other Organizer apps? Are you using something like Picasa or similar? Could these apps have created folders to protect the integrity of a library?

Organizer simply manages the photos you tell it to. You can import one folder at a time, choose a batch of folders or import all folders & subfolders. You can also turn off the watch folder (Pictures by default) if you prefer not to have images imported automatically.

fotograffficAuthor

Known Participant

What are the other Organizer apps? Are you using something like Picasa or similar? Could these apps have created folders to protect the integrity of a library?

Thank you for your reply. But I really don't understand it. What do other programs have to do with the way Organizer is behaving?

I've only had my notebook for about four months and have done no photo organizing with other programs. Saying that, I do have Picasa on my computer but have only used it two times to make photo collages. I also use Canon ZoomBrowser and photos are imported into it from a SD card.

Organizer simply manages the photos you tell it to. You can import one folder at a time, choose a batch of folders or import all folders & subfolders. You can also turn off the watch folder (Pictures by default) if you prefer not to have images imported automatically.

I still want to understand why Organizer changed all the photos in my Pictures directory and messed everything up. In fact, when I looked closely, the directory is now "organized" the same as all the folders appear in List View in Organizer.

No folders are being watched. All Meta Analysis is unchecked.

Now I'm afraid to change or move anything in the My Pictures folder like I've been doing for years. Organizer will probably tell me that the photos are unlinked.

If you or someone can help my better understand what is going on, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you.

MichelBParis

Legend

I still want to understand why Organizer changed all the photos in my Pictures directory and messed everything up.

Simply, I don't believe it.The organizer does not create or move folders unless you decide so.

There is still a mystery about what you are seeing as 'a mess' and what you are seeing in the left panel folder.

How does it compare with the folder tree in the explorer?

What do the 'created' additional folders look like?

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded