Overwhelmed, what should I do now?

[johnw50536475]

I had purchased Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 in 2007 and was able to limitedly [for photos only] use the same on my desktop computer with Windows XP as the OS.  As the years have passed, I have acquired and used several additional laptops as well as a bevy of external harddrives [5] and flashdrives [8], and of course taken far more photos, added music and videos. Currently, I use a Dell Inspiron laptop with Win 7 Pro as the OS.  To my great surprise, I was able to install and run Elements 6.  While I have done some photo editing, I am now primarily focused on trying to organize my media files.

Thinking that the easiest and best way to do so was to simply import the various drives, I was shocked to discover that all types of file format were downloaded in addition to photo, video and music files.  Such included both software related graphics and my own scanned or prepared document files in .bmp, .jpg and .pdf formats. The result is that I now have some hundreds of thousands of items in my Catalog and a huge number of seemingly duplicates but with different file names.

To complicate matters further, I now have an additional desktop computer with a Win 10 OS; and I have just purchased (though not installed) Adobe Photoshop Elements 2019.  I have found. downloaded and reviewed the 314 page Photoshop Elements 6 User Guide.pdf, but little seems to relate to my current predicament.

My several questions are posed hereafter in hopes of simplifying the obvious challenge to purge/sort/name/tag these multitudes and to achieve the most efficient, but thorough organization of all such media files.  To date, my Elements 6 program displays a large number of seemingly duplicate files, but it fails to group the same by “stacking.”

1. Is it best to start over using the new desktop computer, Win 10 OS and Elements 2019?
2. Can either version of Photoshop Elements be used to remove duplicate/unwanted media files from my various computers and drives?
3. Are there any other guides/manuals/documents available that are focused/devoted to ORGANIZING media files?
4. Is there any feature or addition within Elements 2019 that will better assist me in this obvious media challenge?
5. Is there some way to limit/restrict the type of media files imported/downloaded into Elements?
6. Would Windows Media Player be the better program to organize and access audio/music files?

[Greg_S.]

I think we need a little more information from you to answer some of your questions.

• You have apparently imported a number of unwanted files into your 2019 Catalog by using the Bulk Importer to search all of your drives.  How are the files you want to import organized on your disks?  Do you have them organized in any fashion such as My Pictures, My Photos or My Videos directories?
• How many drive partitions do you have on your Win 10 desktop?  How many are internal versus external drives? 
• You say you also have large numbers of duplicate files.  Do any of these come from backups?  If the duplicate files have different names, how did that happen? Somebody had to copy and rename them at some point in history.  Are the files true duplicates or are the edited files that have a Saved As name?
• Did you not use the Organizer in Elements 6?  If you did use it, do you simply want to move your old computer's catalog to your new computer?

In the absence of this information, here are my responses to your questions:

1. Unless you are trying to copy your old catalog to the new one, I would suggest starting from scratch with Elements 2019.  The program has many features that will assist you with organization, including face recognition which helps with tagging people in your photos as well as "smart" tags which are created by analyzing the content of your photos.
2. Elements does not have the best tools for finding duplicate files but it is easy to delete unwanted files from the catalog.   (Without more information about how you copied the files from your various computers onto your new computer, it is difficult to give a better answer.)
3. Here is a link to get you started: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/getting-started/organize-photos-videos.html#
4. Yes.  See response #1.
5. It seems to me that you need to be more selective in what you are importing to the catalog, rather than import an entire hard drive (if that is what yo have done).  If some files get through your filtering e.g. pdf files, it would be easy to find all of those files and delete them from the catalog.  It is also easy to search for say all bmp files and choose which ones you want to keep and which ones to delete.
6. I don't use the Organizer for my music files. There are other tools that have more automated organization.  I use iTunes, but that is a personal preference.

[johnw50536475]

May I first thank you again for your very prompt and thought provoking reply, and for providing me the URL referenced therein.  To provide both cogent and concise [indeed difficult for a lawyer who charges “by the word” …GRIN!]  responses to your questions and comments, which I find to have been 6, I have herein adjusted their order.  I also have noted that because my questions were set out in numerical order, someone’s software has apparently extended that numbering rather than retaining the same.   

I was indeed surprised to note that your reply posting came less than two hours after my own; and that, as of the time of my return to the site last night [just 3 days later], there had already been 108 viewings by others.  I can only hope that you and others are not offended by my lack of brevity, but I had thought that the following would better explain both the cause and effect of m worded question “Overwhelmed, what should I do now?”.  
Q 1.     How many drive partitions do you have on your Win 10 desktop?  How many are internal versus external drives?  
A.        Presently, I have only used my Dell laptop computer operating on Win 7 Pro.  Although I had bought my new desktop with Win 10 more than a year ago, I have yet to take it out of the box.  Although I am now in my 26th year of retirement from two, concurrent 30+ year careers, I can’t seem to find or make time to keep up with my own “To Do,” “Tasks,” “Work in Progress,” and “Long Term Projects” demands.   
My computer practices have, admittedly, been less than enviable.  In addition to having previously used 2 desktops [2 internal drives each], 3 laptops, 5 external hard drives and some 8 flash drives, I failed to properly pursue regular and timely backup operations and instead tended to simply duplicate those several drives onto others [both internal and external] as a crash protection measure. 
Q 2.     How many drive partitions do you have on your Win 10 desktop?  How many are internal versus external drives?  
A.        Currently, I am primarily working, under Win7 Pro with a single internal drive of 900+ GB and 4 working WD external hard drives with varying capacities of 160 GB, 2 TB, 3 TB & 6 TB.  
Q 3.     Did you not use the Organizer in Elements 6?  If you did use it, do you simply want to move your old computer's catalog to your new computer?
A.        While I had first begun to use Photoshop Elements 6, over 10 years ago, with Win XP, I did so sporadically.  I have only recently returned to its use upon discovering that Photoshop Elements 6 would work under a Win 7 Pro OS. [The software’s “read me” file did NOT list Win 7 as compatible].  I do not want to simply move my Elements 6 Catalog to the yet unused, new computer.  I am more focused on trying to purge, sort, and tag the media that I have among my internal and external various drives.
            Having since installed Photoshop Elements & Premier Elements 2019 onto my working laptop and having likewise briefly perused that software’s .pdf “Help” file, I am inclined to believe that Elements 6 is better suited to my current needs.  Frankly, what I deem to be the additional features of Elements 2019 are mind boggling; and I fear that we are rapidly, and sadly, seeming to replace photography with artistic creativity.             
Q 4.     You have apparently imported several unwanted files into your 2019 Catalog by using the Bulk Importer to search all your drives.  How are the files you want to import organized on your disks?  Do you have them organized in any fashion such as My Pictures, My Photos or My Videos directories?
A.        To clarify, I am currently working only with Elements 6 and its Catalog.  While I have sought to store my photos and videos in “My Photography”, “My Pictures”, “My Photos,” “My Videos” and “My Music” named folders, my duplications practice has nevertheless resulted in additional folders spread throughout those several drives.  Thus, I now have other folders named “My Possible Duplicates,” “My Review for Duplicate Photos,” “My Photos from Removable Media,” and “My Unknown for Review,” as well as assorted “To” and “From” folders of different named computers/drives.  
The problem was, and remains to be, that I could/can never find/make the time to achieve such intended reviews, sorts or purges.  While I have recently purged my internal/external drives of file names having the word “copy,” and emptied my assorted “recycle” bins, I have been overwhelmed with the quantity those duplicates yet remaining, often having differing file names.
Q 5.     Elements does not have the best tools for finding duplicate files, but it is easy to delete unwanted files from the catalog.   (Without more information about how you copied the files from your various computers onto your new computer, it is difficult to give a better answer.)  
A         As you have suspected, I have to date, simply imported 3 of those various drives into Photoshop Elements 6, the results of which, I have only now discovered, are an astounding 105,000+ media files with a breakdown of 1,400+ audio, 500+ video, 12,700+ pdf and 80,700+ photos.  I shudder to think what those totals would become if I were to import from my remaining 6 TB external hard drive.
While I did note that Elements 6 did exclude duplicates of the same file names during the several imports done, it’s “stacking” feature was seriously deficient in grouping readably visual and nearly identical shots of the same subject.  I have also discovered that Elements 6 allows the user to remove files from both the program’s created “Catalog” and, by option, from their resident folders.  
Q 6.     You say you also have large numbers of duplicate files.  Do any of these come from backups?  If the duplicate files have different names, how did that happen? Somebody had to copy and rename them at some point in history.  Are the files true duplicates or are the edited files that have a Saved As name?
A.        As reflected in my last answer, there is a huge number of duplicate files; and yes, some come from backups and some come from both editing/cropping and from being “Saved As” under given names.  But the overwhelming number would appear to be the result of those additional folders referenced in my answer to question 4 above.
 

11:36 AM

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[Greg_S.]

You have provided a wealth of information that will be helpful in suggesting some strategies for getting your files organized.  First, let me see if I can summarize the situation.

• You currently have a Win 7 laptop with a working copy of Elements 6 containing an Organizer catalog with more than 100k media files, including photos, video and audio.  (In your original post, you estimated several hundred thousand media files including graphics from other software.  I am assuming that the latter are not included in the 100+k number and that you want to rid your media catalog of these other media and pdf files.)  Your Elements 6 catalog does contain some tagged files.
• Over the years, you have used several computers and have copied media files from computer to computer.  You also have assembled a number of external drives which also contain multiple copies of your media.
• You have an unused Win 10 desktop computer which will ultimately be used as the main repository of your media.
• You have installed Elements 2019 on your Win 7 laptop but you are unsure whether the added features are of use to you.
• Your goal is to organize and store ALL of the files from your various computers and external drives into a single catalog database without duplicates.

Here are my preliminary thoughts and observations:

    The Elements Organizer has come a long way since version 6.  While it may have a lot of bells and whistles that you may not use, it has a lot of automated organizing tools that I believe will make your goals easier and faster to achieve.

     If you have not already done so, I would recommend converting your current Elements 6 catalog to Elements 2019.  One of the reasons I make this suggestion is that you have already tagged some of your media.  Perhaps you can fill us in on the details of your past tagging practices.  If this is work that you would prefer not to lose, converting the catalog will make the process easier and faster than starting afresh with a new one. Otherwise, you may lose some of the work you have already performed.

    Once you have converted the catalog to 2019, I think your first order of business should be to delete the obviously unwanted files such as pdfs and bmp or png graphics files.  In 2019, there are a couple of ways to do this.  First, you can do a quick search for file types.  Hit Ctrl+Shift+K and type in a search term such as .bmp.  All of the bmp files should be displayed and you can select and delete them from the catalog without deleting them from your computer (as they may be used in other programs).  Alternatively, you can use the Folder view of the grid to display each folder that contains media contained within the catalog.  Depending on your knowledge of where the unwanted files might be, you can view and delete the media files from the catalog.

     Once you have done your initial cleanup of the catalog, you should then do a full backup of the catalog to one of your external drives (presumably, the largest).  You can then restore the catalog to your sparkling new computer after installing 2019.

     Next, the task will be to import any other media from your various external and flash drives to your catalog, without duplicating files that are already included.  For this task, I would suggest using some other 3rd party tools.  One of my favorities is Folder Match.  This software allows you to compare two drives or folders and sub-folders on separate, or even the same, drives.  If, for example, you compare the D:\My Photos folder with the E:\My Pictures folder, the software will report each file that is the same, each "orphan" file that only exists in one of the folders, and, for duplicate files, which is newer than the file of the same name.  Once the analysis is performed, you can either synch the two drives so that they are identical, or copy the "orphan" files to a new location for import into the catalog.

Another tool produced, by the same company, is Doppelganger which can search all of your drives and/or folders for duplicate files.  I believe it can even find duplicate photo files with different names.  Again, the duplicates can be deleted or moved.  I believe both programs have free trials with deep discounts for purchasing within a week of download. They are both reasonably priced.

Once you have located non-duplicate files, you will import them into the 2019 catalog "from files and folders".  Alternatively, you can use "watched" folders to automatically import the files.

Hopefully, this strategy will be a helpful guide for you.  Feel free to reject any of my suggestions, and if you give me your reasons, I can perhaps offer some alternatives.  It would also be helpful for us to know any naming practices you have used for your files and folders.  For example, have you stored all of your photo files in a single My Photos folder, or have you broken them down into sub-folders by year or month or subject matter etc..