Star ratings integration with other applications

[mdkiwis]

Does anyone know how to make stars assigned in PSE 2021 appear in other applications such as MS Explorer and vice versa?

[Somya_Agarwal · Accepted solution]

Hi,

After applying the star rating to the media, write metadata to file. For this select media you applied star rating to, choose File->Save Metadata to file.

Now go to the media file in File Explorer, right click and choose Properties. Go to details tab.You will find the star rating has been written to the media properties, and is visible outside of Elements organizer.

Let me know if this solves your query.

Thanks,

Somya

[mdkiwis]

Thanks - that seems to work most of time. Occassionally I don't get the confirmation that the metadata was saved. So in those circumstances I manually update the file properties in explorer. Any ideas about how things work the other way - how can I ensure that star ratings changed in other applications get imported into PSE?

[MichelBParis]

That depends on how other applications do write the changed fields in the metadata.

If they write them in the same fields as what the organizer or the editor do, then the only thing to try is:

- use the update thumbnail option.

You'll discover that if you change the rating and add some keywords in the Explorer, the changes will not be updated in the catalog itself, but they will appear in the files properties, both in the IPTC panel of the organizer and in the File >> info of the editor. If the keyword is written by other compatible applications, then the catalog may be updated; for instance changes made in LR or in a different PSE catalog. Some types or data are written in several distinct locations in the metadata, for instance exif and IPTC. That's pretty confusing for the numerous date fields.

[mdkiwis]

I've looked into this a bit further and it all seems bizarre.

First, if from PSE organizer I select a photo to edit in Photoshop Elements Editor and then in the Editor change the star rating in in the file info screen and then save the file, that change to the star rating is NOT reflected in the PSE organizer catalog. So it does not even seem that there is integration within the PSE products to ensure ratings assigned in one place carry across.

I also just selected 156 photos with the same ratings in the catalog, wrote their Metadata to file, and then checked their ratings in 3 other environments/applications - in all of those 3 (including MS explorer) only 97 of the star ratings in the catalog carried across. So my conclusion is that PSE is pretty useless at integrating star ratings with other applications, because changes made to ratings in those other applications all show up as the same across those 3 environments. It is only the PSE catalog that seems to be the problem.