Here’s where you import photos into the Organizer. You can tell Elements to find and import photos and videos:

You can choose to create a new blank file that will appear in the Editor. (The Organizer itself doesn’t create blank files.) Your other options here are:

Choose a file from the list, and the Organizer opens it in the Editor so you can work on it there.

This is where you manage your catalogs (The Photo Browser). A window opens where you can choose a catalog to open, repair, or optimize from a list of your existing catalogs. You can also create a new catalog, and rename, move, or delete a catalog here. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+C.

Use this menu option to quickly burn a project or a group of photos to a CD or DVD. Choose this for sharing photos, and use "Copy/Move to Removable Disk” (described next) when making alterations in your storage location. Ctrl+Alt+C also brings up the same window.

If you want to move a photo or a group of photos to a CD or DVD, choose this command. Organizer Backups has more information about backing up your files. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+O.

It’s wise to keep a backup of your catalog, and this command makes it easy to do so. You can choose to back up your entire catalog or just a few photos. See Organizer Backups for detailed directions on using Backup. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+B.

Choose this option when you want to replace your catalog with an archived version, or if you accidentally delete photos or otherwise run into trouble with the current version.

Highlight a photo or a Create project and choose this menu item (or press Ctrl+Shift+D) to make a duplicate.

Sometimes your Organizer catalog (The Photo Browser) can’t find a file when you ask for it. Usually this happens when you move or rename a file using a method outside of Elements (like Windows Explorer). This command tells the Organizer to find the file again. You can choose to reconnect:

Use this command if you regularly import photos into certain folders. Elements monitors the folders you choose and checks for new graphics stored inside them. You can tell Elements to automatically place any photos it finds into your catalog. If you prefer, Elements can just notify you that it found new files and let you decide what to do with them.

If you want the Organizer to keep track of your photos, you need to move and rename them from within Elements (rather than using, say, Windows Explorer). So if you want to change the name of a photo, choose this menu item or press Ctrl+Shift+N.

Normally your Organizer tags exist only in your catalog’s database. If you want to make the tag information part of the photo file itself, first select it in the Photo Browser, then choose this menu item. Elements writes your tags into the file’s IPTC metadata (Saving Your Work). You can select multiple photos and use this command on the whole group at once.

If you want the Organizer to keep track of your photos, you must move them within Elements once they’re in your catalog. To move a photo, choose this menu item and then select a destination in the window that appears. You can also move files by dragging them if you go to Display → Folder Location or press Ctrl+Alt+3. You’ll see a new pane on the left of the Photo Browser with a schematic view of the folder structure of your hard drive (just like you see elsewhere in Windows). You can drag your photos into the folders you want. Keyboard shortcut for Folder View: Ctrl+Shift+V.

If you want to export a group of photos for use by another program, this is one way to do it. Choose Export As New File(s) from the menu, and you get a dialog box where you can choose the destination of your files and rename them if you like. You can also choose to convert the exported files to a different format. Your choices are JPEG, PSD, TIFF, and PNG. This menu option is a useful feature if you need to create JPEGs for printing at a store kiosk, for example.

This menu item calls up your system’s regular Page Setup window, where you choose the page size, the orientation of your document, and the printer you plan to use. Printing at Home (from the Organizer) has more about printing from the Organizer. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+P.

Choose this command, and you get the Organizer’s Print Photos window, which is discussed in detail inChapter 16. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+P.

This is one way to connect to the online Kodak EasyShare Gallery to order prints or photo books. See Ordering Prints Online for details on how to order prints online from the Organizer.

You can close the Organizer here or by pressing Ctrl+Q. The Editor doesn’t quit along with the Organizer. If the Editor is also running, you must exit it separately.

You can undo your last action in the Organizer by selecting Undo or by pressing Ctrl+Z.

If you undo something and then change your mind, select Redo or press Ctrl+Y.

To copy something to the Clipboard, highlight it and select this menu item or press Ctrl+C.

To select all the photos in any window in the Organizer, choose this menu item or press Ctrl+A.

To clear all selections, choose this menu item or press Ctrl+Shift+A.

Select the photo you want to get rid of and choose this option to remove it from the catalog database. You can press Delete to do the same thing. If you want to remove the photo from your hard drive as well, the dialog box that appears gives you the option to do so.

To rotate a photo 90 degrees counterclockwise, select it, and then choose this menu item or just press Ctrl+left arrow key.

To rotate a photo 90 degrees clockwise, select it, and then choose this menu item or just press Ctrl+right arrow key.

To instantly apply the Auto Smart Fix command to your photo, choose this item or press Ctrl+Alt+M. See Chapter 4 for more about Auto Smart Fix.

Choose this option or press Ctrl+R to automatically find and correct red eye problems in all the selected photos. See Editing Your Photos for more about how this feature works.

This is where you can edit movies to send to wireless devices, like cellphones, that have the ability to play video. Your movie must be in the 3GPP or MPEG-4 format. Select this menu item for a window with your editing controls.

If you want to adjust a file’s date and time settings, select this item or press Ctrl+J. You get three choices:

To add a caption to a selected image, choose this menu item or press Ctrl+Shift+T.

If a thumbnail stops displaying correctly or doesn’t show the correct image, select the thumbnail by clicking it, and then choose this menu item or press Ctrl+Shift+U.

To use one or more of your photos as wallpaper for your desktop, just click its thumbnail in the Photo Browser, and then choose this menu item or press Ctrl+Shift+W. If you select multiple photos, Elements arranges them like tiles so that they all appear as a sort of collage.

Choose this menu item and you can assign your selected image(s) a rating of zero to five stars, so you can quickly find your favorites or sort out the duds.

Using the pop-out menu here you can mark photos as Hidden or Visible, or make all your Hidden photos visible. See Working with tags and categories.

To stick photos onto a Yahoo map, choose this menu item and you get a dialog box where you can enter the location where each photo should appear. (Learn more about maps on Sharing Photos with Yahoo Maps.)

If your photo already has a place on a Yahoo map and you want to take it off, choose this menu item.

If you’ve assigned a photo to a spot on a Yahoo map, choose this menu item to see the map showing the photo’s location.

This is where you create and manage photo stacks. Stacks are groups of photos that you want to store together. Only the top photo shows in the Photo Browser until you expand the stack. Stacks can be made from unrelated photos, unlike version sets (see the next section).

Your stacking options are:

This is where you manage your version sets. When you make changes to a photo in the Editor, you have the option of creating a version set, as long as your photo is stored in the Organizer. In a version set, each time you save your photo, Elements saves it as a copy with a new name, that is, a different version. In this way, you can save many files containing your changes and go back to any one at any time. Your options here are:

This is where you can set your color space (Choosing a Color Space). You can also press Ctrl+Alt+G to bring up Elements color settings.

If you want to see or edit your Contact Book of email addresses (to use when sending your photos from Elements), you can get to it here. See PDF slideshows for more about the Contact Book.

This is where you can make changes to your Organizer settings for getting and saving photos; connecting to cameras or scanners; emailing; editing; and creating tags, albums, and calendars. If you’re using the online sync feature at Photoshop.com (Online Syncing and Backups), this is where you control album syncing. You can also adjust the settings for what you want to see in Folder view, and for using the online Kodak EasyShare Gallery here. In addition, it’s where you tell Adobe whether or not you want to see ads for special offers. You can also get to the Editor’s preferences from this menu.

Choose this menu item, and a dialog box appears that lets you specify start and end dates. The Organizer shows all the photos that fall in the date range you specify. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+F.

After you’ve searched for a date range, choose this menu item to return to your complete catalog in the Photo Browser, or press Ctrl+Shift+F.

When you choose this item, you get a dialog box that lets you search for any text in your captions or notes. It doesn’t have to be the entire caption. The Organizer finds all the photos with those words in either field. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+J.

Enter part of a filename and the Organizer finds the file for you. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+K.

Choose this, and Elements shows you all the version sets in your catalog. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+V.

This menu item makes Elements show you all the photo stacks you’ve made. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S.

Choose to find your file based on any of the following factors:

The Organizer doesn’t organize only still photos. You can also use it to keep track of movies and audio files. Here, you can search for all the files of a particular type:

If you want to search your photos according to what’s stored in their metadata, like the EXIF information (Saving Your Work) from your camera, this is where you start. See Using Tags and Categories to Find Photos for more about how to perform these searches.

Choose this menu item if you want to find any photos that haven’t been properly tagged with the date and time. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+X.

This is a very cool feature. If you want to find photos that have colors and tones that are similar to a particular photo (or group of photos), select the photo(s) you want to match, and then choose this item. Elements ranks all your photos by color. The closest matches appear at the top of the list.

To find photos that you haven’t tagged yet, choose this menu item or press Ctrl+Shift+Q.

Choose this menu item to find all the photos you haven’t used in albums yet.

Choose this, and Elements searches your photos for pictures with people’s faces in them. You can’t choose to search for a particular person, only for all faces. The idea behind this feature is that once you have all your family’s and friends’ faces gathered together in one window, you can quickly tag them with the appropriate tags. Once you’ve used Find Faces, you can choose to find only untagged photos on future searches, speeding up the process considerably. You can also click the Faces button in the Organize pane to do the same thing.

If you need to make the Organizer redraw its screen, choose this menu item or press F5.

Choose this item to bring up a window where you can decide what kinds of media the Organizer displays, or you can use the keyboard shortcuts. Your choices are photos (Ctrl+1), video (Ctrl+2), audio (Ctrl+3), Projects (Ctrl+4), and PDF files (Ctrl+5). Just turn on the ones you want and turn off the ones you don’t.

Use this option to see or hide all your files with the Hidden tag (Working with tags and categories).

When Details is turned on (it usually is unless you’ve turned it off), you see the information about your photos in the Photo Browser window, like the date and the tag icons. Toggle Details off to see just the thumbnails with no other information. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+D.

Turn this on to see your photos’ names displayed below their thumbnails.

Turn this on to see the dividing lines between each thumbnail.

Although you may not really be able to see it, Elements displays a very fine border around each thumbnail, unless you turn this off.

To see every photo in every stack, choose this menu item.

To return all your stacks to single photo view so you see only the top photo, choose this menu item.

If you want to have the entire Organizer window for viewing thumbnails, you can turn off the Task pane here, or just click its edge. (If the Task pane is hidden, this menu item reads “Show Task Pane” instead.)

If you turn on the Timeline, you see each group of photos as a bar on a graph across the top of the Photo Browser area. The height of the bar shows how many photos are in each group. The groups are arranged according to your choice in the Date pull-down menu at the top of the thumbnails area. Ctrl+L is the keyboard shortcut to toggle the Timeline on and off.

The Quick Share pane (Ordering Prints Online ) makes it easy to order prints for friends and family. If you don’t want to see the Quick Share pane (if you never order prints via Elements, for instance) you can turn it off here.

To see the Properties window for a photo, highlight the photo and then choose this menu item or press Alt+Enter.

When you send photos to Kodak EasyShare Gallery for printing or sharing, or to Photoshop.com, the Upload Progress Window lets you track how close your upload is to being completed. Turn the window off or on here.

When you call up the Elements Help files here or press F1, Elements launches your Web browser to display the Help Files.

Choose this to see a window with information about the version of Elements you’ve got. You’ll also see a very long list of patents and credits—an impressive testimony to the complexity of the engineering that went into Elements.

If you want the Organizer’s patent numbers, you can view and copy them here.

The Elements Help files include a glossary of terms relating to digital imaging. If you’re wondering what a particular term means, choose this menu item and it’ll take you to the glossary so you can look it up.

Choose this item for a window showing information about Elements itself and also about your Windows operating system. If you can’t remember which service pack you have, for instance, you can check here. There’s also information about some important plug-ins. If you’re not sure whether you have QuickTime, for example, that information is here, too.

If you didn’t register Elements with Adobe the first time you used the program, you can choose this menu item to bring up the registration window again.

Select this menu item and Elements searches for updates. You can also change the update preferences by clicking the Preferences button in the window that opens when it’s done updating or searching for updates or trying to connect to the server.

Choose this option, and Elements launches your Web browser and opens Adobe’s support Web site. If it fails because you’re not connected to the Internet, Elements launches an Internet connection window.

This menu item takes you to the main product page for Photoshop Elements on Adobe’s Web site. As with the online support link, Elements launches your browser and offers to connect to the Internet if you’re not already online.

For the basic Photo Browser view, where you see thumbnails of your photos, choose this menu item or press Ctrl+Alt+1.

Select this menu item to see your photos grouped according to when you imported them. Each batch is separated by a header giving the import date and time. Ctrl+Alt+2 is the keyboard shortcut.

Choose this option for a view of your photos grouped by the folders that contain them, You also get a folder tree view of your computer and networked drives on the left of the window. The header for each group of thumbnails in the middle of the window gives you a button you can click to assign the name of the enclosing folder as an Instant Keyword Tag. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+3.

Date View displays your photos on a calendar. You can switch to Date View by selecting this menu item, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+D. (If you’re in Date View this menu item reads Photo Browser, so you can get back to the usual state of the Organizer.)

Choose this option to bring the Yahoo map into view. There’s more about using Yahoo maps on Sharing Photos with Yahoo Maps.

Choose this menu item or press F11 to get a full-screen slideshow of your photos. Elements presents you with a floating control strip to help you navigate through the photos, but it appears only when you pass your mouse over it. It’s a great way to check through a group of newly imported photos, and you can even choose music to listen to while you watch your slideshow. The Escape key takes you out of Full Screen view.

This option is similar to "View Photos in Full Screen” in that you get a full-screen view. But in "Compare Photos Side by Side”, you get to see any two photos of your choice side by side. It’s great for choosing which photos you want to keep or print. You can also get to “Compare Photos Side by Side” by pressing F12. To bring in a new photo for comparison, click the photo that you want to get rid of. Press Escape to exit this view.

Choose this item to go to the Editor’s Quick Fix window (see Chapter 4).

Choose this item to go to the main Edit window. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+I.

This option takes you to Guided Edit mode where Elements walks you through some basic editing tasks (Getting Help).