Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 Organizer, Part1: Import & Sort

Hi, everyone--Michael Brown back again; welcome back to Educator.com's Adobe Photoshop Elements Beginning and Intermediate course.0000

We've talked about quality; we've talked about light; now, it's time to get down to the nuts and bolts of how to work in Photoshop Elements.0007

If you remember, Elements has two parts: Organizer, which is the editing and sorting program, and Editor, which is the enhancing and working program.0017

Right now, this is the Editor workspace, where we have my lesson files; to get back and forth from Editor to Organizer and back, at the bottom of the workspace in Editor, here is the Organizer button.0027

Click that; here is Organizer; to get from Organizer to Editor, same thing: click the Editor button.0042

In this lesson, we're going to talk about the Organizer: making it easy.0050

The objective of this course is to get you up and running in Photoshop Elements quickly and easily.0056

In that context, the Organizer has several different ways to organize your images, but I'm only going to show you the easiest ways to import, sort, rate, edit, and find your best images, because what we want to here, rather than go over every single feature inside of Photoshop Elements--we want to get your images from the camera, from the card reader, from somewhere that you have them on the computer, and get them into Organizer...let me get this thing right here...to get those images into Organizer, to organize them for easy access, to sort them quickly and easily so that we can identify the best images, get those images on into the Editor, and enhance them.0063

So, in this lesson, we're going to talk about the Organizer: importing and sorting; there will be a couple more lessons on Organizer, but we're going to start here with importing and sorting.0112

The first thing I want to mention is getting organized: how to plan and stick to it.0125

What I mean by that is, put your images where you know where they are, and that you're not going to have to move them, because the original files, wherever they reside--that is where Organizer knows they are.0131

What I mean by that is, all of these thumbnails from all of these images that I have inside of Organizer are not the original images.0152

What Organizer has done for all of these folders and all of these albums--it has connected a thumbnail, that it created from the original, to the original.0162

So, when you open this file in Editor, it's not opening this particular exact file you're looking at; it's going to open the original that the thumbnail is connected to.0175

If you move the file, or you rename the file, Organizer will no longer know where it is or what it is.0186

The point is: be consistent; have a plan; and stick to that plan, OK?0196

Very important; we'll keep revisiting this as we go on.0210

The primary features of Organizer that you will be dealing with--and we'll bounce back and forth here, by the way; this is Editor; I have the lesson plan in here; we're going to jump into Organizer and back as we go through, step by step.0214

Dropdown menus and the media window: in Organizer, there are a series of dropdown menus.0229

We will quickly go over those right now, because we're not going to be using a lot of it--just select stuff.0237

The Organizer dropdown preferences, by default, are fine; you're not going to be using anything here except Quit Elements, right there at the bottom of the Elements Organizer menu.0244

The File menu: we're going to use the Get Photos and Videos dropdown submenu, and that's about it; you might have an open, recently-edited file; the rest of it we are not going to deal with in the File menu--just Get Photos and Videos.0256

The Edit menu: we're not going to be using anything in the Edit menu; the Find menu: again, we're not going to be using that, either.0275

The View menu: what you see here are the thumbnails inside of the media window.0285

If you will drop down the View menu, you will see Details, File names, People Recognition, and Gridlines--they are all checked; I'm going to uncheck Details and People Recognition and Gridlines.0293

Now you see that the thumbnails have no identification whatsoever.0308

View menu, Details, and you see the star ratings option; you see the time it was created and the name of each of the thumbnails now.0312

People Recognition is a facial recognition feature within Elements; we're not going to be utilizing that in this lesson.0326

It's a little bit--not necessarily complex, but--it takes a lot of time, because you have to identify each individual face; the computer is really not that good at identifying faces, so it's going to ask you who this person is, and you have to identify each one; it takes a lot of time.0335

Gridlines separate your thumbnails; you can zoom your thumbnails up and down in the media window; there you go.0352

Back to the Editor: you saw what the star ratings are; I'm going to give you another quick view of that; let's open up this folder of flowers.0365

See, under this thumbnail, there are three highlighted gold stars; let me go with a better one, Japanese Garden.0377

Three stars, four stars here, five stars here: this is how you identify better or worse images; very simple.0384

Folders, information panels, and albums are the three primary places you're going to deal with with your files.0395

Let's go to the Organizer; on the left, in this panel: albums at the top, folders at the bottom; when you import any images into Organizer, they will be designated a folder.0405

This is the folder on your computer where the original images reside.0420

Right now, they are all in alphabetical order; if you hit this icon, right next to the My Folders headline, it will show you (this is a Mac, so you are looking at the hierarchy)--it goes down through, and you can see exactly where that folder that we were looking at resides--inside the Macintosh Hard Drive, on the Desktop, is this folder.0427

Any little folder with a landscape icon contains images; the empty folders--there is a folder within that folder; if I close the Desktop, you don't see anything, but if I open it, you see that there are the folders; here is the Desktop subfolder; and in there reside the Genesis images.0449

That is how you know where they are; you can go back and forth to the computer hierarchy or to the alphabetical.0473

These are your images in these folders.0481

An album is a collection of different images from different places; in other words, I can take some images from one folder and some from another folder that I'm going to use, that are consistent, and access them all at the same time by creating an album with those in it.0485

I'll show you how to do that.0505

That is the folder; the Information Panel is (we're back to Organizer) at the bottom of the workspace, on the far right; this Tags Info button opens up another panel, the Information Panel.0507

If we highlight a specific image, you will see, under the general panel: you can caption this image, you can change the name, and you can add notes; you can also do your ratings from here, as well as from the thumbnails.0523

That is the general; metadata is information about a specific image--all the file properties from the filename to the width and height, color mode, all the camera data, Sonik camera...everything is listed under the metadata.0541

It's embedded inside of that image; you can add data, as well, if you wish.0561

The history is very simply what has happened to that image.0567

That is your Information Panel; primarily, you are going to use the general and the metadata panel, and it's mostly, as it says, informational: we don't really utilize it in sorting or working on the images.0572

The Tags Panel: keywords and people tags are another way of sorting and refining your images by facial recognition or by words that you think you would want to associate with images throughout various places in the computer.0585

They take a lot of time to set up, so we're not going to deal with them in this particular course; we're going to make it easy with the folders and albums--that is all you need.0602

Those were your Tags and Info Panels.0612

Back to the Editor: it opened up that image that I had highlighted.0616

The Create and Share menus, back in Organizer here: you can create a whole lot of things; we'll deal with that in another lesson: photo books, greeting cards, calendars...you can also share your photos right from here in Organizer, out to the Internet, mobile phones, and so on.0621

I still have that thing highlighted!--every time it's highlighted...I'll show you what that is.0639

The image is highlighted; if I click on it again, it goes away; when you highlight it and click the Editor button, it automatically opens the image for work.0646

Now we go back: no problem.0655

Bringing images in: the most important thing we have to do is get the images into the computer and into Organizer.0658

You do this with the photo downloader, which gets images from your camera or memory cards; we'll start with that one.0666

Back to Organizer; let's import some images from a memory card.0675

I have one inserted in the computer here; you either go to the Import drop menu, right along the top of the workspace in Organizer, or along the dropdown menus, the File menu, Get Photos and Videos, from files/folders or from camera.0680

We'll go on to the Import; same thing: From Camera or Card Reader.0698

It's going out to find them; it's now searching for the media in the card; and what I want to do is give you the default dialogue box first.0704

This is what opens up; it only shows one thumbnail--it's assuming you're going to download everything.0716

You get the photos from wherever you want--in this case, it's only the Nikon D7000 memory card--and locations, renames, and delete options.0722

Then, you click Get Media, and it will download everything.0732

I have a lot of stuff in this card; I don't want to download it all; so I'm going to show you--it's a similar method; we're going to go to the Advanced dialogue button--lower left.0736

It opens up a bigger window, where you see all of the thumbnails for every image inside the memory card.0747

They are all checked--notice the check boxes--all the way down to the bottom.0755

That is because, by default, it assumes you are going to download everything.0762

I'm going to show you how to download select images from different spots within a card right now.0766

We'll uncheck all the images; now, you notice that the check marks are completely gone.0773

I'm going to scroll down and find some select images that I want to download.0780

Here is a group of buildings that I shot in downtown LA; I would like to download all of those, so I will highlight the first one--see the blue border?--hold down the shift key, go to the end of the sequence, and click, and it highlighted all of those.0785

I'm going to find some more of them, a little bit further down here, and...there are four more I would like to download.0802

But, they are separated in the sequence, so what we're going to do is: Command on a Mac; Control on a PC; hold it down, click the images that you want to download one at a time, and they will highlight, and now we have four more.0809

I want to do just these four right here, in addition, so once again, Command or Control, click, click, click, click, and if it doesn't click the first time, go back and do it again.0829

Now we have all of our images selected, even though they are separate; notice: no check marks--what we want to do is just check any box from any highlighted image one time, and notice: all of the images that have been selected now have check marks in them.0845

We're ready to go; we have all of the images selected that we want to download, so let's now go with the options.0868

We're going to choose a folder on my Desktop, and I'm going to create a new folder; we're going to call it Downtown Buildings.0874

I have that; I'll create it; it's on the Desktop--"Downtown Buildings."0892

I'm going to choose that folder, and now the location that we're going to move these images to is right there.0898

That is where we're going to put the original images.0903

I can create subfolders if I want to, and you have several options for that, as well as a custom one--I'm not going to do that.0907

You can rename the files in several ways with Advanced options, as well; I'm not going to do that.0915

The only thing I want you to really look at here is this dropdown: After Copying, Do Not Delete Originals.0922

This is very important, because you have two other options; After Copying, Verify and Delete Originals, which is OK--it will check and make sure the copied files are not corrupted; or After Copying, Delete.0930

I like to download my images into the computer, and then back them up on another hard drive before I delete my originals, just as a precaution.0944

I'm going to leave it at Do Not Delete.0956

Apply Metadata: basic metadata--all that stuff that you saw in the Information Panel; I'm also going to put on my name as the creator and the copyright date.0957

Now, I have everything selected, highlighted...Get Media is bringing down the images, the originals, into the folder, and then you will see a second progress bar as it creates the new thumbnails inside of Organizer.0969

It has six more to go...so, in other words, originals are in the folder; it will create thumbnails from those originals and connect the two, and you will see them appear; there is the second progress bar, and here, it is now creating the thumbnails from the originals.0986

There you see all of the images that we check-marked out of the card reader.1004

If you will look over under the Folders Panel, under Downtown Buildings, there is the folder that contains those images.1011

There they are in the folder; there are other folders; we're back here; if I now click the All Media button (because, right now, we're just looking at the images in the folder), you will see that it seems like nothing changed, but if I scroll down, you will see that there is everything else; and there at the top, because I sorted these by import batch, and this is the newest import batch.1022

I could also sort by newest and oldest, and that is the date of creation of the actual picture itself.1050

If you leave it at import batch, your latest imports will always be on the top.1059

Notice, this says "Imported from hard disk on" this date; and if I scroll down, just below the next images, we have an import date, as well; that is the next batch.1064

If we go down a little further, there is the next batch, and so on, and so on.1075

That is how it works.1081

Now, we have them as a folder.1083

Let's go ahead...we got them from the photo downloader; I'm going to import another group from existing files and folders.1088

Back to Organizer: I'm now going to do it from the File menu, this time...or from the Import menu--why not?--from files and folders.1096

Here we have your hierarchy from either a PC or a Mac; this is my Mac; on the Desktop, I would like to import a group of images that we shot of this young girl, Kara, and we're going to import all of the images here, so it's very simple.1107

We're going to hit the Get Media button; they're already in a file, so we just get the media; and here they come.1126

It can be a whole series of them here.1137

It's already imported and in a folder, so all that we are doing here is making the thumbnails for Organizer from the original files.1142

In just a moment here, we will have those in a folder--and there they are!--all the images that we just imported of this girl.1154

You will see that right here is the folder.1166

It connected these thumbnails to that folder, and now they are part of the Organizer.1171

OK, we have images there.1178

Searching for missing items: if you have them, you go under--back to the Organizer--File, Get Photos by Searching or Import by Searching.1180

Don't move your files; don't rename them; and you won't have to deal with this, because it takes a lot of time; you tell it--if you know the name--the name of a file, and it will search through every single file in your computer to find it.1195

It may find it quickly, or it may take the entire computer to find it; it takes up time.1211

Always leave your original images where they are.1219

Now, we're all ready to go.1222

We have gotten through the import; now, to organize the images, we use the folders or the albums; you already understand the folders--they're right here.1225

If you want to see where a particular folder resides, as I said, click the icon, and you will see that there is the Kara folder--it was on the Desktop; that is where we got these thumbnails from.1237

Let's talk about albums: I have one, I have a second--I have two different folders with flowers.1250

I would like to make an album that just contains the red flowers.1260

So, what we're going to do is to deal, now, with albums.1266

I'm going to start by taking the ones out of here; let's highlight all of the red flowers: I'm going to hold down Command on a Mac, Control on a PC, and just click all of the files that I want to put in an album, that are red flowers, in this particular folder.1270

One, and this one--so, I now have my red flowers all highlighted.1295

What I'm going to do is go up here, and I'm going to click on the plus button next to the word "Album" over here.1301

I have the choice of a new album or a new album category; I want to create a category, which is a main heading, called Flowers: New Album Category: we're just going to call it Flowers.1312

Very simple; it's at the top level; it's not a subcategory to either Landscapes or People; it's a top-level.1325

I could put it under Landscapes or People, but I don't want to; I want it at the top; and there is Flowers.1333

I already have these highlighted, so I will go back and click on the plus sign again, and it automatically took the selected images--we'll do it another way--and it inserted them over here, in a new album that we're going to name Red Flowers.1340

It's going to go in a category called Flowers--that is right here--name of it: Flowers; here is the content--all of the ones we wanted from that particular folder.1363

We're ready to go; we have all of them in the album; we'll click OK, and now you see an album under Flowers, called Red Flowers.1377

We're still in the original folder; notice, there are all of our different-colored flowers, but if I click on Red Flowers, look--that is all that it took from this folder.1388

Now, we have another flowers folder, and there are flowers in here.1401

I would like to add those to that, so that when we click on the album, we see the red flowers from two different folders.1407

All I have to do is...I'm going to actually, since there are more red flowers than anything else, highlight the first one, shift, click, and highlight everything, and then--Command on a Mac, Control on a PC--I'm going to click the flowers that are not red, and take them out of the highlight list.1416

Pink? No. All right...not this one...not this one...not this one...not that one, and not that one.1445

I'll include these; so now, we've selected all of the red flowers; all that we have to do to add these to an existing album is click and drag; notice, it has a group, and I just move it over until I highlight Red Flowers, and it's done.1455

Now, let's highlight the Red Flowers album, and look--we have the original ones, and we also have these.1478

So, we have flowers from this folder and this folder, some individual ones that we selected, in an album called Red Flowers.1486

You have a group of images in your folders, and you can refine that by taking some from places, different ones that have similarities, and putting them into an album, which refines it.1500

Now, we have all of our red flowers right here; let's go back...and that takes care of albums.1513

We have now gone through importing and sorting your images, getting them into the computer, into Organizer, creating folders, and creating albums.1523

We will pick this back up in the next lesson and refine your images further.1538