Photoshop elements retrieving photos to tags

[mahaca]

Hi

I'm hoping someone can help me.

Below is the history which is basically that when my computer crashed I lost my cataloguing and tag details and hadn't used photoshop to back up (lesson learnt the hard way). I have however been able to retrieve the photos and the tree of tags but there are no photos in it.

My question at the end to Michel, who I think has retired from this scene, is whether there is some way for me to get the photos into the tags.

The thought of retagging 15 years of photos is not good.

mahaca  wrote

Hi, I have been using adobe photoshop elements for cataloguing and tagging my photos for around 15 years.

I recently upgraded to the 2018 version and was able to transfer my tags etc from the earlier version. 

Well recently my computer crashed  and although I had backed up my photos (D drive) I lost the program off my C drive. 

If I reinstall the program my question is, 'is there any way I can retrieve my cataloguing and tag details.  Cheers  Warren

If your backup has been a full backup created by the organizer, there should be no problem. You have to run the 'restore'  process from the same menu.

If it's a simple copy of your photo files tree made by the explorer/finder or another utility software, you'll have to search for your catalog folder. You can't recover the tagging if you don't find that folder. Depending on what happened to your computer, the catalog folder may be there. It's in your 'user' folder. Do a search from the explorer/finder for a file named 'catalog.pse16db'. It is in its catalog folder. That folder may be 'hidden' and you may have to allow the explorer to show 'hidden files and folders'.

I am assuming you are still on the same drive as before the crash.

9.  Re: Retrieving cataloguing details

  

       warren Frank     May 29, 2019 2:01 AM  (in response to warren Frank)   

Hi Michel

This a reply to your response above to question 1 on 27Sep 2018.

I finally found the 'pse..db' file and was able to get the tree of tags.  However there no photos attached to the tags.  If I try to open a tag I get the following message "No media available. Please clear applied filter and try again".

Any help would certainly be appreciated as the thought having to re-tag every photo for the last 15 years does not appeal.

Cheers

mahaca (warren frank)

[MichelBParis]

If you are able to restore the tags hierarchy, the only advantage is that when you import files with embedded tags, you don't only get the tags (which are recovered if they have been 'written to files') but you restore the hierarchy of the tags. You don't recover any links between a tag and the related files.

If you have been able to find the original catalog file, the 'catalog.psexxdb' file, it contains all those links relative to the old drive.

Then the expected way to recover that information is to 'convert' the old format catalog to the current format of your catalog.

The idea is first to copy that catalog folder to the new computer with the current PSE version, and to convert the catalog.

Then, the links to the location of all files are wrong, since your recovered media files are no longer in the original drive. Reconnecting an important library is possible via the 'reconnect' function of the organizer, but it's not an easy task. Anyway, it's much better than having to retag the whole library.

The first question in your case is to state which PSE version was the original one and what is your current one. The issue is that older PSE version before PSE6 did use a different database engine (Microsoft Access and not Sqlite). Then you may need additional conversion steps before starting the reconnection process.