Elements 11 Storing/Importing Photos

Dem55

Dem55

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Lorraine
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Hi,
I'm not sure if this is the right place for this post, if not, feel free to move it.
I've just bought Elements 11 and I'm slowly getting to grips with it.
My problem is that the hard drive on my pc is just about full. Most of my images are saved to external hard drives.
If I import files from the external drives into Elements, does this mean that they effectively go back onto the hard drive? Or is there a way to set a default so that the files stay on the external drive?
 
Elements does not store your images, within itself. It just builds a catalog of where they are on whatever hard drive or media you loaded them to.

What you see in the Organiser is just a thumbnail. When you want to do anything with the image e.g edit it, Elements opens the image from where you stored it.

What you need to be aware of is that once you've Catalog your images in Elements, don't move them around, delete them or rename them, outside of Elements because it wont know what you've done. Do all of this from inside Elements.

Hope this helps
Colin
 
Thanks Colin. If I understand correctly, as long as I import the files from an external hard drive, that's where elements will look for them in future - is this right? I'm guessing that if I then amend files and save them, they'll be saved to the external drive too?
What I'm trying to do is keep the RAW files off my pc's hard drive, if this makes sense
 
If I understand correctly, as long as I import the files from an external hard drive, that's where elements will look for them in future - is this right?
Click to expand...

Yes

I'm guessing that if I then amend files and save them, they'll be saved to the external drive too?
Click to expand...

You'll have the option to save them where ever you like; doesn't necessarily need to be on the same place they came from.

Colin
 
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That's great - thanks again Colin.

I have the Scott Kelby book, but it didn't seem to cover this - or maybe he was writing from the point of view that most people buy the editing software before they clock up a few thousand images :)
 
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