Elements 4.0,any extras to tick!!

[Christine]

seeing as I have had to do a system restore,which has removed Elements 4.0,before I re submit the prog,can anyone tell me,please,there is a list comes up,when one is installing the prog,of what one would like to include ,there is the default settings,and a whole long list of extras.When I originally installed the prog,I ticked for everything to be included,which I think may not have a good idea,I do only want the basics.I cannot remember if JPG was an additional option.
any guidelines would be appreciated please.I find it quite complicated ,with the manager,etc.I do not wish to store photos in the prog,I am quite happy for them to stay in their sep folders in my pics,much simpler.
I am going install the prog tommorrow,so ,please any help would be appreciated.
thankyou,
Christine

much as I would like to help you Christine, I will have to leave it to others with a PC, but checking the file sizes , I see what you mean - 88MB program and a further 110MB bits and then 110MB Bridge (which I regard as a complete waste of time if you have your own storage arrangements) and 71MB (no) help centre which usually just says you have not got the right CS2 module installed

If you need help using it after install, I can do that a bit and you will find most things others say you can do in CS2 are actually there in PSE4 (apart from curves, for which you need additional download), just in different places

[Christine]

Thanks,Chris.I will check the boxes carefully when i do re-install,and anything I do not understand will just ignore.But I may be contacting you when using the Straighten tool,as everytime I tried to use it(all my landscape shots are on the tilt!!),it just rotated the image,even when using the tool from the tool bar at the side,and not from the small images box.

[miketoll]

The programme does not store the photos but leaves them where they are and just remembers where they are for near instant access. Makes organising so easy as in if I want to see all the shots I've ever downloaded of my wife for instance no matter when one click and I have them all before me without having to remember which folder they were in two years ago or whatever. Huge bonus. The size of the programme is not that big to my mind either, it would not take many photos to get to that size anyway.

[Christine]

Mike ,do you leave the same photos on the pc,year after year?.does not having so many on the drive at one time slow things down,and clog up the system.I have just spent an hour removing everything from Oct,to the present day.I put everything on separate discs,and print off a thumbnail sheet to show me what is on each disc.Usually one disc for a month of bird shots,another for assorted for the same month etc.
It has been suggested to me,that one leaves the default options and does not download all the extras which come with the prog.As long as I have the full editing prog,I do not need the storage and manager etc.
thanks for your reply,though,interesting.So if I put all my birds pics back on the pc ,in their separate monthly folders,and asked the photomanager to find all the Kingfisher shots,would it be able to do so,bearing in mind that the folders are labelled-Birds-Oct, Birds -Nov etc.
From what I saw when I did briefly use the prog,one had to attach some sort of tag,and there were gold stars showing up,to the right hand side of the screen.

[miketoll]

At the moment I have all my pics on the hard drive (43 GB pics) which does not slow things too much at present. If it does the simple answer is use the programme to copy the photos to an external hard drive and leave just thumbnails in the organizer part of the programme which will ''fetch'' one for you off the external drive if you want it. Quick and simple. You can get a new 400GB external hard drive for just under £100 at the moment from pixmania including postage. I back up all my photos to two hard drives at the moment (safety in numbers) using elements and the programme will automatically reinstall them if necessary. I used to backup to discs but when the worst did happen the new computer could not read some of the discs so lost some shots for ever. Tags are the key to the organiser and several tags can be attached to a shot so cross referencing is easy. Make you own tags so under say birds you could have each species and another set of tags for say places and when the tag is clicked the photos come up accordingly. You drag a tag onto the photo you want it to refer to and thats it. Will take a lot of work in the first instance if you have lots of shots but it does not have to be done all at once and there are long nights ahead! It only takes a short time to do each time you download new shots so it is not onerous once up and running. Hope this helps and ask if you want anymore info or if I have not been clear.

[miketoll]

Looking again at your message, yes as long as you had tagged all the kingfisher pics at some time then a click on the kingfisher tag would bring up all the kingfisher pics together on your screen from wherever they are on the computer in an instant. I have a ''family'' tag which if clicked will bring up every family shot. Under family I have separate sub catagories for each family member which if I click brings up just the shots with them in. A lot easier than trawling manually through thousands of thumbnails and then individually finding the right file on an ever growing pile of discs. As I said elements does not store the photos themselves but just keeps a data base on where they are on your computer or even external hard drive. You can make or delete as many tags or subtags as you like.

[Christine]

thanks,Mike.a project ,maybe for the long winter days!!!.