Known Participant

Question

Pictures directory a mess after using PSE Organizer!!

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
November 1, 2017
3 replies
7764 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?

fotograffficAuthor

Known Participant

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.

Something did. I have no idea why but I've spent several hours a day for the past week+ getting my photos back in order. Deleting 200+ subfolders that were duplicated; removing duplicate photos, changing file names it. Maybe Organizer was corrupted. Remember, I had to ask Adobe to remotely uninstall and reinstall it. In sorting through my images, I turned on the See Hidden Files setting and deleted all files associated with Canon ZoomBrowser and Picasa. I don't intend to reinstall either program.

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?

I backed up using Organizer. I've pretty much decided that I'm not going to use the backup in case it's been corrupted. IF, and it's a big IF at this time, I use the Organizer, I'm going to start from scratch. I've been researching these problems the best I can, and some have said they just use Elements and not the Organizer.

How are you going to import 'from scratch'?

All the photos and folders I'm rehabilitating are in a directory on my desktop; not in the Pictures folder. I've shut just about everything auto off in Organizer (eg Face recognition, key words, tags).

Will you copy the backup files somewhere before importing?

After I clean up my image photos and files (and back them up to an external drive), I was going to put them back into My Pictures and "Import (via Organizer) From Files and Folders."

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

Date and subject. My main directories are labeled by year: 2010, 2011, 2012, etc.

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.

I've never used tags and don't know if I'm going to begin doing so. The only thing I've done is rated photos (stars).

Because of my age and limitations in movement, I don't take many photos any more. All I want to do is edit my photos after deleting the "bad" ones, and be able to locate images. Media view and the View modes are sufficient for that task.

Now that I have my photo files and folders corrected, and backed up to an external drive, here's what I plan to do.

Import all of them into Organizer using Import from Files and Folders.
I have every auto setting turned off such as face recognition, auto curate, smart tags. Everything else is set to Manual where permitted in the Preferences Menu.
When I take a new batch of photos, I will click and drag the folder from my SD card to the desktop. I will scroll through the images and delete the ones I don't want.
Next, I will rename then put the new folder and it's contents in the my Pictures directory, and import to Organizer as mentioned in item 1.
I will view the photos in Organizer, and edit in PSE from there.

Does everything sound right?

A few questions: is it okay to move, rename and make new folders, and to move photos around in the Organizer? If so, will the changes be reflected in the my Pictures directory including file and folder locations and new names? Should I expect any remnants to be created (eg. empty folders; changed file names).

After resetting my computer and a fresh install of PSE, I trust everything will work smoothly.

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