Elements 2021 Organizer keeps crashing while importing. Are HEIC files to blame?

[James5C1A]

Just installed Elements 2021 Photoshop and Organizer and trying to import about 17,000 images and Oranizer keeps crashing (and rebooting my PC) before completing the import.  I have many HEIC pics from my various versions of iPhones over the years. I am running Organizer on a Windows 10 PC.

[Greg_S.]

Are you importing from your iPhone or from your hard drive? 

Do you have the Microsoft HEIF extensions installed?  See this article.

[James5C1A]

Uploading from images already in my PC, and I believe I do have the HEIF extensions installed...Going to the MS Store and trying to launch the install and the program states it is already installed.  Is there a way to see what is installed in Windows 10?

[Greg_S.]

Go to Settings>Apps and Features and you should see the following listed:

However, Microsoft has just issued a vulnerability warning about HEIF files and have apparently updated the extensions within the past few days.  Take a look at this link.  It may be worth using this opportunity to update the extensions on your machine.  There is a link in the web page for updating the extension.

[Sirideain]

I am experiencing the same issue. There is a massive memory leak in the Photoshop Elements Organizer when importing HEIC files. The graph below is approximately 200 images and 2 minutes into the import and you see it is using 26 GB of memory. The memory usage just keeps going up at the same rate until the organizer crashes. If I import 100 images at a time, then it completes successfully. That is not a realistic option though when I have thousands of images to import.

[Karel0D4C]

I have the same issue. It seems to be a memory leak indeed!

[SSN1978]

I am facing the same issue. Whenever try to import media from PC, organizer leak memory so much so that the running browser also crashes.. I am not sure if it is related to AMD machine as I have Ryzen 7 PC! It is very annoying as I cant use organizer at all and even Premiere Elements 2021 crashes too often!

[Lambduh]

Same issue.  Software uses a ton of memory then freezes.  Tried on an A10pro amd with 8gb ram and intel i7 with 24gb ram.  Two seperate machines and replicated error.  Sad, this software worked so well in the past.  Adobe stop installing so much bloatware and get down to what the software is supposed to do.  Organize photos/video with a light ability to edit.  Create a realtime analyze button to turn it on and off when needed.  Why bury it when the average user has not clue.  The built windows photo organizer is 10 times better than this one.  Microsoft caught up.  Wondering why I wasted money on this software to beta test it for Adobe.  Wait, I thought Adobe was reputable software vendor name...