PSE 2023 Auto Curate 20k Photo Limit

[Jungle_Jim]

Is the Auto Curate feature in PSE 2023 limited to 20,000 photos in the ENTIRE catalog or just the current selection? I received a Dialog Box which states "Auto Curate can be applied to a maximum of 20,000 photos." There are only 24 photos in the selection. There are no video files in the current selection. I changed each Preference Selection option, but nothing worked. I've searched the Adobe Knowledge Base without success. I converted MY CATALOG from a previous version (PSE 2020) to PSE 2023, which now also displays the same Dialog Box.

[Greg_S.]

Hmmmm . . . . .   I see what you mean.  I am able to auto curate a large folder or an album (in Elements 2025).  But when I selected about a thousand photos in the grid, I was getting the same message as you.  However, I see that a lot of activity is still going on in the program processes.  When I selected a small folder of photos, I got a message that auto curate requires at least 10 photos.

I will invetigate this further.

[Greg_S. · Accepted solution]

I have confirmed that this has been the behavior of auto curate going back to its introduction.  In order to reduce the number of photos below 20,000, you cannot simply select the photos first.  However, you can limit the number of images, either by using a star rating or a keyword tag, or by selecting a folder or album.  I just selected a People tag of my daughter.  I have nearly 19,000 tagged images of her.  The auto curation completed in seconds.

So the workaround for you is to make your selection of images in the grid and create an Album for them.  You can then auto curate the Album once it has been selected.

One other issue that I remember having problems with is that once the auto curation has been set, you cannot further refine the 500 auto curated photos by adding a star rating filter.  I also agree that the documentation of this feature could be better and I am going to suggest to Adobe that it be improved.

[Jungle_Jim]

Well thank you so very much for coming to my aid. It's been a difficult problem for me to address by myself. With your generous help, I'm not so all alone.

Your workaround is the solution I needed. I tried your suggestion and it works fine. Creating a new ALBUM specifically for the photos I want to Auto Curate seems to work best for my method and workflow. It will allow me to find images that I should spend my time on. I appreciate the effort you made to help me and this community. Hope I get the chance to pass your goodwill forward. Warm Regards.