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Workspace basics

  1. Elements Organizer User Guide
  2. Introduction
    1. What is Elements Organizer?
    2. What's new in Elements Organizer
    3. System requirements | Elements Organizer
    4. Workspace basics
    5. Importing media in bulk
    6. Using Elements Organizer and Adobe Premiere Elements together
  3. Workspace and workflow
    1. Workspace basics
    2. View and share auto-created collages, slideshows, and more
    3. Use Media view to manage photos and videos
    4. Keys for editing photos
    5. Keys for finding photos
    6. Keys for viewing photos
    7. Using Elements Organizer and Adobe Premiere Elements together
    8. Selecting country or region
  4. Importing media files
    1. Importing media from cameras and card readers
    2. Importing media in bulk
    3. Importing media from iPhoto library (Mac OS only)
    4. Importing photos from scanners (Windows only)
    5. Importing media from files and folders
  5. Viewing and fixing media files
    1. Use Media view to manage photos and videos
    2. View video and full-screen images
    3. Grouping photos in version sets
    4. Fixing photos in Elements Organizer
    5. Fixing photos and videos using other applications
    6. Auto-curate your best photos
  6. Marking places, faces, and events
    1. Adding and managing place (location) data
    2. Marking faces and organizing media in People view
    3. Adding and managing event data
    4. Creating event stacks using Smart Events
  7. Managing catalogs, folders, and albums
    1. Creating albums and album categories
    2. Editing albums and album categories
    3. Create and edit catalogs in Elements Organizer
    4. Back up or restore catalogs | Elements Organizer 2018
    5. Tag your media
    6. Using Smart Tags
    7. Creating and editing Saved Searches
    8. Back up or restore catalogs | Elements Organizer 15 and earlier versions
    9. Troubleshooting catalog issues
  8. Searching photos and videos
    1. Using Enhanced Search
    2. Using the Find menu
    3. Finding media files by keyword tags
    4. Search options to find media
    5. Searching for media files
    6. Finding media files using Timeline
  9. Creating photo projects
    1. Elements Organizer projects overview
    2. Slideshows
    3. Creating photo calendar
    4. Creating slide shows (Windows only) | Elements 12
  10. Creating video projects
    1. Create instant movies and video stories
    2. Viewing video projects
  11. Printing, sharing, and exporting
    1. Printing photos
    2. Sending photos and media files by email
    3. Email photos as PDF file
    4. Share videos
    5. Export photos
    6. Share photos using online services
    7. Set e-mail preferences

Learn how to navigate and use the workspace in Elements Organizer. Use the different views and context menus by navigating through various windows and panels.

The Home screen

When you launch Elements 2019, the Home screen helps you to easily get started with Elements applications. The Home screen showcases a carousel of cards to help you discover new features, try out exciting features, and explore and personalize Auto Creations. You can also quickly search for Help resources of your desired features. The Home screen also allows you to start from scratch with one of the Elements applications.

To know more, see Get to know the Home screen.

Note:

If you have only Photoshop Elements or Premiere Elements, you can still download a trial version. For example, if you have purchased Photoshop Elements, you can select Premiere Elements in the Home screen - you are guided to download a trial version of Adobe Premiere Elements.

Launch an Elements application

In the Home screen, you can click one of the following to launch the desired application:

  • Organizer Select this option to launch Elements Organizer and import, tag, or organize your photos and videos. and 
  • Photo Editor Select this option to launch Adobe Photoshop Elements and enhance or add special effects to your photos.
  • Video Editor Select this option to launch Adobe Premiere Elements and enhance or add special effects to your videos.
Launch any Elements application from the Home screen
Launch your desired Elements application from the Home screen

After you launch an application, you can open the Home screen at any time from Help > Home Screen.

Workspace

Use Elements Organizer to find, organize, and share your photos and media files. In the Media view, you can view thumbnails of the media files you’ve imported. You can view a large thumbnail of a single media file or smaller thumbnails of many media files. You specify the thumbnail size by using the Zoom slider.

The Media view lists all the photos and videos that you’ve imported. Imported items appear in one comprehensive view that you can easily browse and filter. It can even show thumbnails of files stored remotely, such as those files that you want to keep on CDs.

You can fix the most common problems in the media files by using the tools in the Instant Fix tab of the Task pane.

You can create projects, from printed photo books to slideshows, from the Create option in the Task pane.

Finally, you can share your photos, videos, and projects with others, by using any of the tools in the Share option of the Task pane.

The Elements Organizer workspace has the following components:

Menu bar

Contains menus for performing tasks. Elements Organizer organizes the menus by topic: File, Edit, Find, View, and Help.

Search bar

Enter a criteria or select a particular search from the drop-down list to search for photos or media files.

Create and Share

Click Create to explore ways on how to create, creative projects using your media files. Click Share to see various ways in which you can share media files with friends and family.

Import button

Click Import to start importing media into Elements Organizer.

Albums and Folders panel

The Albums created or imported from previous version’s catalogs are displayed in the Albums panel. You can create albums and manage media inside the albums panel to organize media in Elements Organizer.

The Folders panel lists all the physical folders from which you have imported media to Elements Organizer. You can hide/show by clicking the respective buttons in the task pane.

Ratings

You can give a star rating to your media files. This helps you sort and organize media. For example, you can give five stars to a photograph for various reasons such as it has your favorite subject or is an excellent photograph.

You can later then sort all such photos with a five star rating.

Sort By

You can sort media in Elements Organizer by the following parameters:

  • Newest: Orders the media by date from the most recent to the oldest
  • Oldest: Orders the media by date from the oldest to the most recent
  • Name: Orders the media alphabetically by name (A-Z)
  • Import Batch: Orders the media by the batches in which they were imported

Auto Curate

When you click Auto Curate, Elements Organizer smartly analyzes your photos and picks the best photos in just a click. To know more about Auto Curate, see Auto-curate your best photos.

Task pane

Contains buttons to add places, people, events, and create slide shows. You can also launch editors for fixing photos and videos from the Editor button.

Views in Elements Organizer

There are five views in Elements Organizer. The Views tab helps you organize and view your media based on the people present in the photos, places they were taken, and the events that are associated with the photos.

Initially, when you import media, the files are displayed in the Media view. You can then mark faces in the photos, identify places the photograph was taken at, and create event stacks. The four views are listed here:

Views in Elements Organizer
Views in Elements Organizer

Media

The various media files are displayed in this view. You can view the files in this view, fix photos using Instant fix option, view information about specific files using Tags/info option, and perform other operations.

People

The people appearing on your photos can be marked. People’s view helps you arrange stacks based on the people identified in the photos.

Places

Photographs have special association with the places they are taken at. You can tag locations to your photos in the Places view.

Events

You can create stacks of events containing pictures of that event. For example, you can create an event Dan’s birthday and tag photos of that event.

Use context menus

You can use context menus in both the Editor and Elements Organizer workspaces. Context-sensitive menus display commands that are relevant to the active tool, selection, or panel.

  1. Position the pointer over an image or panel item.
    Note:

    Not all panels offer context menus.

  2. Right-click/Ctrl-click and choose a command from the menu.

Using keyboard commands and modifier keys

You can use keyboard shortcuts in both the Editor and Elements Organizer workspaces. Keyboard commands let you quickly execute commands without using a menu; modifier keys let you alter how a tool operates. When available, the keyboard command appears to the right of the command name in the menu.

Undo, redo, or cancel operations

Many operations can be undone or redone. Available memory limits your ability to use these options.

  1. To undo or redo an operation, Choose Undo or Redo from the task pane.
  2. To cancel an operation, hold down the Esc key until the operation in progress has stopped.

Exit Photoshop Elements or Adobe Premiere Elements

To exit Photoshop Elements or Adobe Premiere Elements, close each workspace—closing one does not automatically close another.

  1. In Windows®, select File > Exit. In Mac® OS, select Adobe Elements Organizer > Quit Adobe Elements Organizer.

  2. When closing one of the editors, confirm whether you want to save any of the opened files.

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