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Thursday, August 21, 2008

Photoshop Elements 5 saved Image location

I have purchased your training for Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 but still have a few questions.
I received an email from another person that has Adobe Photoshop Elements 5. It seemed like they were having trouble with having disconnected files and a hard time trying to burn them as a backup onto a CD. What method do I use to prevent that?
I have a file system on the computer where my pictures are organized. I have not moved all of them to Adobe Photoshop as yet especially after i heard this i was hesitant.
I was also confused with making a duplicate copy of all the pictures. When i have edited a picture it seems to make another copy and my original is still there. What is the need to make a duplicate copy?
Thanks Luella

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Hi,
Photoshop Elements always makes backup copies of files and works on the backup. It never edits the original file directly. This is a safety precaution. If you go into the Organizer side of Elements, then open up the Edit menu and click on Preferences, the click on Files (or click on General, then on Files) you will get a page which shows you the different preferences set for saving files in Elements. On the bottom of this page it will show you where Elements saves the catalog (thumbnails shown in Organizer) and where it saves the files that it is working on. You can change where Elements saves files by clicking on the Browse button and choosing a different folder. When you backup the files that you have worked on to a CD you need to backup the files in this folder. If you want to save a specific file to a specific folder location then open the file in Elements Editor and click on File/Save As, then navigate to the folder you want to save to.
My guess on your friend's problem is that they don't understand how Elements organizes files and they were backing up the wrong location. You are also able in Elements Organizer to Move the Files Offline (a file menu option), what this does is put the working files anywhere you choose and only keep a thumbnail in the Elements file folder. Then if you backup the Elements file folder you will only get the thumbnails, not the actual files.
My recommendation in Elements is to set the preferences (as described above) so that you know exactly where Elements is saving the files. Then all you need to do is save that file location. I admit this is one drawback in Elements, that it wants to use its own organization scheme, but as long as you understand what it is doing it should not be a problem.
So, real basic description: When you add images to Elements Organizer it simply creates thumbnails of your original images and displays the thumbnails. It saves the thumbnail images in a location displayed in Preferences/File. When you edit a file in Elements Organizer or Elements Editor it saves the edited version in a location displayed in Preferences/File and leaves the original alone. You can change the location of thumbnails and saved files using Edit/Preferences/File. And you can save a single file to a specific location using Elements Editor/File/Save As.
George