The Tenuous Link

My current obsession: Templates and tools to save me time. One time-sapping problem is importing photos from my cameras on to my PC, and then probably importing and grouping them in the PhotoShop Elements Organizer application.

The main problem is that I want the pictures to be tidily organised in to folders on my hard drive, but I'm not organised enough to transfer and delete the files on the day that I take them. So typically by the time I decide to copy my pictures on to the computer I have a disk with several collections of photos of different subjects. It's a small pain to have manually create the folders and copy the right pictures in to each, and then to import each new folder in to Elements. However ...

I've recently upgraded to PhotoShop Elements 5.0 from 3.0. Although I was slightly grumpy that a few "effects" add-ins that I've downloaded and installed stopped working, I've just noticed a feature that makes up for that: The Photo Downloader.

The Photo Downloader splits the photos on my memory card up according to time, and allows me to quickly set a name for each set of pictures. Then I can choose a template for the folder names (made up of the date and the names I set), and start the transfer.

As well as moving the pictures on to the computer, they are also imported in to the Elements organiser, optionally via a screen that suggests photo stacks. If I don't agree with the photos that are chosen for the stacks, then I can modify the stack, and reorder the photos in it. All very swift, and you can see in the screen shot below that there are a few more options too.

I've pointed out the sequence of settings that I make when I use the application, but really the only two that I didn't immediately notice in the UI are the ones marked 3 and 7. For step 7, you have to scroll down each group of shots and provide your own "descriptive" name.

I was a bit disappointed that there was no option to format the date part of the folder names with no spaces (for example "20070421 Hammock" instead of "2007 04 21 Hammock"), but the process is so much quicker than what I was doing before that I'll live with that. (Can anyone tell me how I can write my own folder name template?)

So rush out and upgrade to PhotoShop Elements 5 now. Amazon is cheaper than buying the software direct from Adobe:

• PhotoShop Elements 5
• PhotoShop Elements 5 upgrade version for people who already own a previous version
• PhotoShop Elements 5 bundled with the video editor Premier Elements 3

I've not tried it, but Adobe Album Starter Edition has the Photo Downloader function too, and is free from www.adobe.com. So if you don't want to edit your photos but do want to be organised, then try that.

Labels: photoshop elements