Getting the images into the computer using Photoshop Elements
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.