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I'm running Photoshop Elements 18 on an iMac and recently went through the MACOS Catalina upgrade from the prior release. My main photo library was defined at the root level of the iMacs hardrive and my Elements catalog was built off of that folder location (many sub leveles of folders with photos). As part of the MACOS Catalina, Apple has introduced a new restriction where only authorized operating systems folders can be stored in the root of the hard drive. The migration process moves the now unauthorized folders from the root to a new folder: /USERS/SHARED/Relocated Items/Security. And here's the key, you can not define any files/folders at the root level of the drive.
So here's my delema. My Elements catalog basically is looking for all of the cataloged photos starting with a folder in the root of the hard drive. That folder is no longer there and can not be put back. So my catalog of over 49,000 photos is broken and I'm not sure if there's any way to correct the internal pointers?
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If you upgrade to PSE 2020 it should convert your previous catalogue. Apple has been pushing out messages for some time regarding the incompatibility of 32 bit apps. While Elements has been a 64 bit app for some time, installation, licencing and uninstall have been handled by 32 bit apps.
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The catalogue file will be untouched. So it should be possible to upgrade, if not automatic; using the Organizer menu:
File >> Manage Catalogues
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For a Windows user like me, it seems extremely dangerous to:
- first to migrate to a new OS version without checking if it will support old applications, that's what I have always read from expert Mac users (but the risk also exists for Windows users). I have also been impressed at the number of posts about warnings about the consequences of the new Catalina. Difficult to believe so many Mac users were not warned.
- Secondly, I can't imagine users can plunge into a drastically new system without backing up the media files and the catalog. That should be obvious for all organizer users, but too many users think that they can do without it.
From your description of the new limitations, I can see how that may be critical for the applications themselves, but I believe that for catalogs and media file trees, that just means that they should be in authorized locations. That means practically anywhere except the reserved locations. That means the catalog should also be on 'custom' location where you want. That can be in a dedicated master folder or even in an external drive. For instance, moving both media library and catalog folder on an external drive before the OS update. If you miss that, a full backup made before the update will restore them where you want after the update.
As mentioned by 99jon, the update to PSE2020 should work for the catalog conversion, that's what you should verify. If you can create a 2020 version catalog, even from a PSE trial version, this should enable you to test the full backup and restore process if you later want to store your library and catalog on custom location.