How to Use the Photo Organizer in Adobe Photoshop Elements

Finding the right graphic file to edit in Photoshop Elements among the hundreds or thousands of files stored on the computer can take a lot of time. Instead of searching through folders one at a time, let Photoshop Elements find and organize all the graphic files for you.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Photoshop Elements 6.0

Finding Files to Organize

1. Click on the "Organize" button when opening Photoshop Elements.

2. Highlight the folder that contains graphics files and subfolders with graphic files, choose the option to get files from subfolders and click on "Get Photos."

3. Wait while Photoshop Elements finds the files, organizes them and displays them in the workspace.

4. Find graphics files after opening Photoshop Elements by pulling down the "File" menu and clicking on "Get Photos and Videos."

Tagging Files

5. Drag each file to the keyword tag section of the "Organize" tab on the right of the workspace to tag files with one of the default keyword tags provided by Photoshop Elements

6. Create new keyword tags by clicking on the green "+." New keyword tags can be added to the main list or created as subcategories of keyword tags already on the list.

7. Use the face tagging feature by clicking on the face tagging icon at the top of the keyword tagging section. Photoshop Elements will find all faces in all files and display them in a new window.

8. Create a new keyword tag for each face displayed and drag the face to the tag. As each face is tagged, it will disappear from the workspace.

Creating Albums

9. Add a new album by clicking on the green "+" at the top of the albums section on the right of the workspace. Albums can be organized into album groups if you prefer.

10. Drag files to albums one at a time. You can add photos to more than one album.

11. Place all files you attached keyword tags to by creating a Smart Album and choosing "keyword tag," "contains" and the name of the keyword you want to use to create the Smart album.

12. Select all files that contain one or more keyword tags using the "or" feature or choose only files that contain more than one keyword tag by using the "and" feature.

Tips & Warnings

• You can click on the boxes to the left of more than one keyword tag to view only files tagged with all the keyword tags you've selected.
• Face tagging is useful if you want to look for every file that contains the face of a specific person.
• Don't delete files from your computer after Photoshop Elements organizes them. Photoshop Elements has not copied these files; it simply learns where the files are located and displays them in the workspace.