For both Photoshop Elements and Lightroom a new way of looking at collecting images and saving was introduced called Catalogs. For a long time looking at images was just going to a folder and seeing what was inside. However as we started to collect more and more images it was decided by the powers that there had be a better way of viewing than thousands of images in one folder or images spread out in hundreds of folders. Nothing is more frustrating that looking for one image and not be able to find it.

Catalogs are different in that instead of just seeing inside one folder they can see across multiple folders or just be a collection of all images. This can be another way of organizing our image files this can be very helpful. As mention earlier if you are tagging your images then a single catalog of images can work. But you can create different Catalogs of subjects but there can be drawbacks. As I said Catalogs are collections and if an image was not in it then you are not going to find the image. The good news is these are smaller groups of images so finding something is easier and if you are the type who makes backups of groups on CDs or DVDs a Catalog makes this very easy.  Plus with Catalog you can create separate tags for each one.

With Photoshop Elements we are given a very powerful tools for handling images and making it handy for keeping our lives in order.  Some a automatic and some do require just a little effort from us. Let’s talk about the automatic ones first.

Tagging our images

Elements tend to handle images differently than just a normal file viewing program. While the Organizer does allow us to see all the images on our drives if we don’t something to keep them in order then it just becomes a huge shoebox of pictures that we have to view every time we want to do something. Here is an easy way to start to clean up the mess. It is called Tagging.  Tagging is nothing more than attaching words like vacation spots, people and pet’s name, locations, and the like to images so when you want to find just those images you just click on the tags and those images pop up.  It is not hard to create tags or to tag images.

From Organizer you go the Keyword Tag Pallet. Normally it is on the right hand side with some pre set colorful tags there. You can start to use these preset right away since they are generic titles like People, Place, Events and even the most useful one Other. A good place to start is with People since most of the images will be family and friends. Here you can add names of your family. Pick the category you want to add to like family, click on the Plus Sign at the top of the pallets and just add a name then click OK. Click and drag the tag to any image with that person in it and it is done. Now when you click in the box next to the tag all images that you have tagged will come up. Selection can be made even easier by getting groups of this person selected by Ctrl or Command Clicking or selecting the first image in a group then holding down the shift key click on the last image in a group. All the images in between will be selected.  Then with you click and drag the tag all the images will be tagged. This same trick works for vacation images or shots taken at a birthday party. The more tags you have the better your search will be. You can even put more than one tag on an image so that if there is a group of people you can tag each one so later you can find the images with that person in it.

This will work for landscapes or location photos too. Set up a category for your landscapes then place tags under it for Mountains, Plains, Beach, Snow, Desert, Flowers or what ever and tag the images. That way if you are looking for your shots of Snowy Mountain tops you can click on Mountains and Snow and just those images will come up.

One Bonus Tip, since Photoshop Organizer works as a Catalog Viewer (more on that later) when you create tags they only live inside of Photoshop Organizer. One good thing to do every once and while to embed them into the megadata for each image.  This command is found in File/Write Tags into Megadata. Then your tags are now in the keywords of the megadata which is always with any image file. Then if something should happen to your Photoshop Elements or you update then the keywords are always there.

In our continuing drama of Camera to Computer to Publish we first talked about getting the images out of the camera with a card reader. Now the fun part of what to do as they come into the computer. There are two powerful programs built into Photoshop and Photoshop Elements that not only help upload the images but can help organize them. The first one we will talk about is under Photoshop Elements called the Organizer. One quick note if you have Photoshop Elements 8 for Mac you really have the Bridge from CS 4 which we will talk about in the next post. The Photoshop Elements Organizer works different from Bridge in that rather than a file viewer it creates Catalogs of images which is much like a copy machine which opens the images and creates a small sub set of thumbnail. These catalogs allow you create separate catalogs of images that can be backed up to other folders, hard drives and even CDs or jump drives.

What happens when you first load Photoshop Elements is that it will look for all the images on your hard drive to set up a master catalog of images. These will come up as thumbnail images in Organizer that can be resized for ease of viewing. There is a little slider at the top of the page which you can click and slide or click on the icons at each end. The one on the left makes the thumbnails the smallest size and the one on the right makes each one full size. You can even click and drag the order of the images around for grouping.

However before we get too much into the operation of Organizer let talk about what happens when you use it to import images from the camera card.

A menu box will come up asking what you would like to do with the images on the card. This same message can be gotten right from Elements under File/Get Photos or Videos/ then select Camera, Scanners, Files or folders, or just searching if it doesn’t pop up. If you are using a card reader just find this as an external drive.

This box is more than just a simple click on the Get Photo button. First you can set up a main folder where you always import your photos to.  If you already have a folder set up like a My Photos then you can use this or if you want to set up an folder on an external drive you can do this too. Elements will remember where you set this folder so next time you can quickly move to the next section which is Sub Folders. A sub folder is just that, a new folder under the main folder for holding images. This is a very useful feature since it acts like file cabinet with labels rather than a shoebox with all the images piled in it. Later we will show how to view all the images or just those in the sub folders.

So with a sub folder made you can chose to rename the files as they are imported. I do recommend this since the camera uses such useful names like 281908.jpg for an image of mountain lake, (Just kidding, mountain lakes are always numbered in the 5000s) or some other sequential number from when you first purchased the camera. By renaming you make it easier for you find the images later if you are using a simple system. One system is to get your subfolder a location and date name. Let’s say you shot a bunch of images in Yellowstone Park in June of 2009 while on vacation. A good name for the Sub Folder could be Yellowstone09. This same subfolder name can be used for the files with a numbering system like Yellowston09001.jpg. You should be able to recall that wonderful mountain fall you took there and the approximate year. From there it is a quick visual search of the folder for the image.  Before you click on the Get Photos button please make sure that the box at the bottom which says Do Not Delete images from card is highlighted. I feel you do not want to delete the images with a computer but reformat the card in the camera to delete images. This is because a computer does it just like any computer drive or external drives devises like a jump drive. It is much better to let the camera do this because with some cameras it need a special folder or bit files for writing image. You don’t want to risk a stray 0 or 1 that would keep images off the card or not allow to transfer them off the card when you get back home.

So that is the simple way for a few images. But what if you have a number of cards or 1000s of images and want a more effective way of finding them? That will be a job for Tags, Catalogs and Albums which is going to be in the next post.

One of many questions I get not only in class but from strangers in the street. (And you thought that you ran into strange people on the street) is “Before I can even get started on editing my photos how do I get the images from the camera and into computer?”

For years we have been trained by camera makers with film to load the camera with a new roll and when you can’t advance the film any more to rewind the film and take it to the local drug store and wait for the prints. With digital we can not only shoot but view the images on the back of the camera. For those that want a print then we take out the camera card, go to camera desk at the local department store and upload them for prints. So at this point we are still in the shoot and print mode.

However for all the normal people out there (you geeks and photographers do not fall into this group) it is just a bit of mystery for getting the images into the computer for not only editing but sharing in emails. So for the normal people here is a new term and gizmo for just this function.  The gizmo (a real computer term) is called a Card Reader. These are simple USB devises that just hook up to the computer which you put the cards into and the computer will see it and upload the images to the computer. (See Below)

A couple of Card Readers

These can simple one card type of readers to 7 or 11 in one readers.  Now I know every camera comes with a USB cord for uploading right from the camera I really don’t like these for a couple of reason. First uploading from the camera can be slow and there has been a couple of reports that an energy spike from the computer has caused problems in the camera. To me I would much rather lose a $10 card reader and maybe a camera card than a $300 (or more) camera.

Here is even more good news for those who have purchased a printer in the last few years. Many of these new printers have card readers built in. Once you have put the card into either of these readers most computers will automatically see the card and give you the choice of uploading and saving the images to the computer.

So to keep the posts short for now just upload the images to a folder where you can locate them later like the iPhoto or Images folder. For a bonus tip I even suggest a separate folder for each time to help in finding the images. If they are of special event like a birthday or trip then make the folder name that has event and a date like Buffy’s Birthday 6/10 or Yellowstone 09. Then when you look in the main folder you can more quickly find the images you want.

Next posts will include how to better organize the images and even set up quick ways to find the ones you want with just a few key words.

As a Photoshop and Digital Photography teacher I have written many workbooks for my classes from Basic DSLR operation to full Photoshop classes. Lately I have been getting requests from other teachers for these workbooks for their classes.

Well at first I was just going to give them away till my loving wife said “Are you crazy!!!!” So I will be setting up links on this and other websites for the workbooks in various formats so teachers (and people who are interested in knowing more) can purchase and download. The prices will be low so even a teacher can afford them.

With a new year I promise (pie crust promise???) to try and post more lessons in both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. With a new version of Photoshop promised for this year, CS 5, and Photoshop Elements just came out with Elements 8 for both Mac and Windows.

The main difference between Elements Mac and Windows is the file browser. Window is still the Organizer while Mac has the Bridge from CS 4. I wish it was the same for Window for those of us who work in Raw files. With the Mac and Bridge you can access the full version of the ACR or Raw Converter by right clicking on the image for the drop down menu.

A few months back (Gee were we ever that young?) I posted on how to make copies of images in different formats in both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements (PSE). This was one of my favorite tools called the Image Processor.

This tool worked pretty much the same for both but in the newly released PSE 8 it changed. It is found under File>Export New Image. You can still pick the type of file copy you would like, Tiff, PSD, Jpeg, but now when you pick Jpeg you get a sub set of fixed sizes like a web size of 800 x 600 but if you have a custom size in mind you need to click on the Custom for it. Not a big deal but a little confusing for those of us set in our ways.

There is a new Photoshop User Group starting in Fort Collins Colorado at The Center for Fine Art Photography. For those who have never been in an user group before this is a loose knit group of Photoshop fans who get together to talk and share tips, tricks, links, and mostly talk about everything Photoshop.  There is a leader chosen just to keep things going but mostly it is a great chance for people to talk about that software we all love and curse over.

If you are interested go to the Adobe Photoshop User Group website or chick here for the Fort Collins Photoshop User Group. Once there click on the Join Group icon to become part of the fun. This group is open to anyone in  northern Colorado or southern Wyoming who would like to come down once a month at our f Stop Coffee Shop. We are even open to those brave souls who would like to drive up from Denver or Boulder on a Colorado Freeway.

I love layers, it is great that I can do so much to an image that if necessary (mostly from clients) something needs to changed I just go to that layer and rework it. Here is quick tip for creating a Merged Layer with all the work layers intact. We call it the Left Hand Keyboard dance because it seems to use mostly all the keys on the left side.

So here is how you do it. Go to the top layer on your PSD or Tiff. Hold down the Shift + Ctrl + Alt + E (for the Mac Lover Shift + Command + Option + E) and a new layer will appear with all layers merged into one new layer at the top. This is very helpful for a number of things. A Copy of everything or a workable layer for sharpening or more effects. With this merged layer you can even drag it over to new image for a copy image.

When you start with Photoshop you learn by clicking on tools and using them. Need another tool just go to the tool bar and click on it. Simple but what a lot people don’t know is that with many of the tools if you hold down the Alt (Ok you Mac users the Option) key you can get more from the tool. For example if you are using the Clone tool you know to hold down the Alt key to take a sample but did you know that when you are using the Quick Selection tool and it is in the plus or add to selection mode and you hold down the Alt key you are now in the subtraction mode. This works also with the Marquee tool for add or subtracting from the selection.

The Alt key also works with many of the sliders. If you are making an adjustment with Levels and want to know when you are clipping your highlights just hold down the Alt key while moving the highlight point (that little white triangle under the histogram on the right). The image will go white and when you start to move it to the left the highlights that are being clipped (blown out) start to show up. The same will happen if you hold down the Alt key with the Black point (the black triangle on the left side under the histogram). The image will go black and start to change when you move it the right.

This also works in Camera RAW ACR for Sharpening. Holding down the Alt Key while moving the sliders will show you Masking and Detail in the overlay mode.

So if you are bored and want to see what might happen if you hold down the Alt key try it with tools and sliders. Many time you might be surprised.