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mypublic1
Participant
October 28, 2017
Answered

Sharing Organizer Data

  • October 28, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 1196 views

I'm starting to scan our many albums of print photos so that each of my children can have a copy of all of their childhood photos. I started using Photoshop Elements to organize and label them ( to make it easy for them to search for photos by event, theme, people in the photo, etc.), but I think I've come to a realization. The program does not add information to the photos. So it seems that the only way all of that organizing would be of benefit to my children would be if they were viewing the pics on my computer. Is that correct? If so, that does not meet my needs. Is there any way that I can share my tags, etc. with them? For example, can I send them copies of the photos on an external drive with a file that would contain all of the data I had tagged on to them? Could they then install PSE on their machines and import the photos and data into their copies of organizer and thus enjoy the fruits of my labor? If so, I would appreciate any details on exactly what I need to do to complete this process. Thanks in advance.

David

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer MichelBParis

mypublic1  wrote

Michel:

Thanks for your reply. Your "common solution" sounds like what I would want to do - an external hard drive for each child. I'm new to Organizer so am not yet proficient. How would I go about transferring the catalog to the hard drive? And will that automatically include all of the tags, keywords, etc. or does that information reside in a separate file that I will also need to copy onto the driive?

The process to do three actions at the main time:

1 - moving the catalog (the folder containing the database)

2 - moving the image folder tree(s)

3 - updating the catalog for the destination drive + folder

... is to use the two steps backup and restore using an external drive to store the backup folder:

Move Elements Organizer catalog

In your case, ideally you use an external drive to create the backup folder (not a simple copy, it's only for the use of the restore process), you do the restore from that backup disk to the destination external drive. All your image files are restored in the same folder structure as the original and your catalog folder is also restored and updated to link to the new destination of the files.

(It's not recommended to use the same external drive - slow - requires enough disk space).

The same process can be used to migrate the contents of the common external drive to any other computer.

Let' say you have several  users to update.

You do a backup to external drive 1

You restore the backup to external drive 2.

(you can use either your computer data or the external drive, they hold the same info).

You transfer external drive to user 1

User 1 can use the external drive 1 immediately.

He can do the migration from external drive 1 to his own computer.

Then he transfers external drive 1 to user 2

... and so on.

And the process insures that anything in your catalog, tags, version sets, notes etc. are exactly similar everywhere.

Sending a small external drive by mail is easy. You may only need to have a single one passed to your users one after the other.

1 reply

MichelBParis
MichelBParis
Legend
October 28, 2017

mypublic1  wrote

I'm starting to scan our many albums of print photos so that each of my children can have a copy of all of their childhood photos. I started using Photoshop Elements to organize and label them ( to make it easy for them to search for photos by event, theme, people in the photo, etc.), but I think I've come to a realization. The program does not add information to the photos. So it seems that the only way all of that organizing would be of benefit to my children would be if they were viewing the pics on my computer. Is that correct? If so, that does not meet my needs. Is there any way that I can share my tags, etc. with them? For example, can I send them copies of the photos on an external drive with a file that would contain all of the data I had tagged on to them? Could they then install PSE on their machines and import the photos and data into their copies of organizer and thus enjoy the fruits of my labor? If so, I would appreciate any details on exactly what I need to do to complete this process. Thanks in advance.

David

David,

The tags, captions and ratings you assign to your photos are written in the catalog, but you also have the choice to use the menu File >> Write metadata to files to make those available to other browsing softwares, including Windows Explorer or Mac Finder.

However, if you want other people to take advantage of all of the power of the Organizer with the same ease of browsing and searches, those people should have the same organizer version and the same catalog.

A common solution to share a catalog with the photo folders library is to store both on an external drive. You only have to plug-in the external drive, and everything is ready. To share a single external drive like this with more than two computers is not really practical. Each user could create a backup and restore from the external drive to his own computer. That takes time (night job?) but if the users are happy to update not too frequently, that can work.

M
mypublic1Author
Participant
October 28, 2017

Michel:

Thanks for your reply. Your "common solution" sounds like what I would want to do - an external hard drive for each child. I'm new to Organizer so am not yet proficient. How would I go about transferring the catalog to the hard drive? And will that automatically include all of the tags, keywords, etc. or does that information reside in a separate file that I will also need to copy onto the driive?

MichelBParis
MichelBParisCorrect answer
Legend
October 28, 2017

mypublic1  wrote

Michel:

Thanks for your reply. Your "common solution" sounds like what I would want to do - an external hard drive for each child. I'm new to Organizer so am not yet proficient. How would I go about transferring the catalog to the hard drive? And will that automatically include all of the tags, keywords, etc. or does that information reside in a separate file that I will also need to copy onto the driive?

The process to do three actions at the main time:

1 - moving the catalog (the folder containing the database)

2 - moving the image folder tree(s)

3 - updating the catalog for the destination drive + folder

... is to use the two steps backup and restore using an external drive to store the backup folder:

Move Elements Organizer catalog

In your case, ideally you use an external drive to create the backup folder (not a simple copy, it's only for the use of the restore process), you do the restore from that backup disk to the destination external drive. All your image files are restored in the same folder structure as the original and your catalog folder is also restored and updated to link to the new destination of the files.

(It's not recommended to use the same external drive - slow - requires enough disk space).

The same process can be used to migrate the contents of the common external drive to any other computer.

Let' say you have several  users to update.

You do a backup to external drive 1

You restore the backup to external drive 2.

(you can use either your computer data or the external drive, they hold the same info).

You transfer external drive to user 1

User 1 can use the external drive 1 immediately.

He can do the migration from external drive 1 to his own computer.

Then he transfers external drive 1 to user 2

... and so on.

And the process insures that anything in your catalog, tags, version sets, notes etc. are exactly similar everywhere.

Sending a small external drive by mail is easy. You may only need to have a single one passed to your users one after the other.

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