Plugin: Adobe Photoshop Elements Catalog Viewer

[cncb]

This plugin allows you to browse/view an Adobe Photoshop Elements catalog (PSE v6 and above) in SageTV. You can select photos and videos to view based on the albums and tags you create in PSE and/or by different date ranges, ratings, etc. You can then view the results as a slideshow supporting both photos and videos. Your files do not have to be imported into the SageTV database. The Photos main menu item is modified to show the PSE screen.

Notes

• The "horizontal" and "vertical" browser styles can be toggled in the Options menu.
• The Calendar view shows the years and months and number of files that exist for the current filter.
• Note that only the PSE database is used and files are NOT imported/duplicated in the Sage database.
• The custom slideshow player displays captions that can be toggled with the Info button and it handles mixed photos & videos.
• "Smart albums" from PSE cannot be accessed in Sage.

Usage - Slideshow

• "Select" will display a menu that allows you to pause/play the slideshow and other options.
• "Play" when a video is displayed and the slideshow is paused will play the video.
• "Channel/Page Down" will display the previous file.
• "Channel/Page Up" will display the next file.
• "Info" will show/hide the captions.

The date format and additional preset date ranges can be changed in the .Properties file. See the v6 PSE Viewer thread for details.

[cncb]

[nwboater]

Hi Craig,

Wouldn't you know that I'd be the first one to post here with a problem! Installed your plugin and was very happy that during the process I no longer needed to do stuff in the Sage folders.

What happened is when I went to Photos after the install it asked me for the catalog location. The catalog is on the server and I drilled through to get to the correct file. Trouble is I didn't get all the way and I accepted it. So now I get the "Invalid Directory" message and it keeps showing the bad path I gave it. Going to 'Up Directory' to try to get to the correct directory does nothing. I guess I could try Specify, but my folder has a really long path.

I tried uninstalling and rebooting and after reinstall it still gives the same problem. I went looking in the Sage folders and found your PSE folder but it was empty. Strange because the bad path is being stored somewhere.

Any ideas Craig?

Thanks very much,
Rod

[cncb]

Hi Rod,

I'm not sure why you were able to select a directory and now the directory browser considers it "invalid"? In any case, select "specify" in that browser and just type in c:\ which will allow you to navigate again from the c drive.

[Brent94Z]

Dang... I don't have the Elements program but might have to look into it... this looks very nice!

[nwboater]

Originally Posted by cncb

Hi Rod,

I'm not sure why you were able to select a directory and now the directory browser considers it "invalid"? In any case, select "specify" in that browser and just type in c:\ which will allow you to navigate again from the c drive.

Boy, I should have thought of that one. Duh! Thanks.

Still having a problem though with getting the "invalid Directory" error. I had given it the correct Folder BTW. It works fine on extenders on the network. On the Client I notice the pathname it has for the Catalog begins with smb://mellserver/...... I haven't seen that smb anywhere else. The folder is on the mellserver, just don't know what smb is.

Could that be related to the problem?

Thanks a lot Craig.

Rod

[cncb]

Originally Posted by nwboater

Still having a problem though with getting the "invalid Directory" error. I had given it the correct Folder BTW. It works fine on extenders on the network. On the Client I notice the pathname it has for the Catalog begins with smb://mellserver/...... I haven't seen that smb anywhere else. The folder is on the mellserver, just don't know what smb is.

I think that is just a peculiar way to specify a network drive - I have seen some strange behavior with network drives and Sage before. I would recommend that you map the network drive so that it appears as a standard drive letter that you can then select in Sage. Otherwise, you can edit the .Properties file manually to remove the smb: part.

[nwboater]

Hi Craig,

Not sure what you mean to do when you say "Map the network drive". And is this something I do on the Server or Client?

I have tried to edit the "Client Properties" File on the Client. I remove smb from the file and the Bak and save. As soon as I run Sage again, even if I don't do anything with photos, and then check the Properties file it's there again. Something is putting smb back.

Have some other strangeness. I have two different extenders (besides the Client) and each one has latched onto a different catalog on the server. Yes I should delete the old catalog, but it just happened to still be there. I'm sure that I selected the old catalog. The problem is when I do an uninstall and then reinstall I don't get to select a catalog - it just automatically uses the same one. For some reason the Uninstall routine doesn't do a 'full' uninstall.

Thanks for any help you can offer Craig.

Rod

[cncb]

Rod,

Map a network drive on the client. In Windows Explorer on the client, navigate your network to see the catalog directory, right-click on it and choose "Map Network Drive". The drive letter you assign to it will then be selectable in Sage.

Make sure Sage is closed/not running on the client when you edit the SageClient.Properties file or it will be overwritten with the previous values when you close down Sage.

All you have to do to re-select a different catalog is push the Options button when in the PSE screen. Then, select the Catalog directory name (first item) and it will show the directory browser where you can choose a different one.

Originally Posted by nwboater

Not sure what you mean to do when you say "Map the network drive". And is this something I do on the Server or Client?

I have tried to edit the "Client Properties" File on the Client. I remove smb from the file and the Bak and save. As soon as I run Sage again, even if I don't do anything with photos, and then check the Properties file it's there again. Something is putting smb back.

Have some other strangeness. I have two different extenders (besides the Client) and each one has latched onto a different catalog on the server. Yes I should delete the old catalog, but it just happened to still be there. I'm sure that I selected the old catalog. The problem is when I do an uninstall and then reinstall I don't get to select a catalog - it just automatically uses the same one. For some reason the Uninstall routine doesn't do a 'full' uninstall.

[nwboater]

Hi Craig,

Everything you said makes it work great now. One little thing perhaps because I'm on XP. Mapping is not available as a right click - it's from the Tools menu.

Only two things that make this not be totally wonderful:

1. The Tag list and Album list are not alphabetized as they are in PSE. Just seems a random order.

2. The photos that are shot with the camera orientation sideways are always shown re-oriented in PSE. Here many photos are rotated 90 degrees.

We could live with these if need be, but if anything could be done about them it would make it an ideal way to view all our photos. Your whole layout and set of choices is great. It's so nice to be able to always have the most up to date photos available anywhere in the house, and without having to import and keep updating a catalog.

Thanks so much for doing this plugin!

Rod

[cncb]

Originally Posted by nwboater

1. The Tag list and Album list are not alphabetized as they are in PSE. Just seems a random order.

2. The photos that are shot with the camera orientation sideways are always shown re-oriented in PSE. Here many photos are rotated 90 degrees.

Rod, I'm glad it's working for you now. I should be able to fix #1 (I think it is currently using creation order). #2 would be somewhat difficult for me to deal with as I would have to look at the "Orientation" tag and rotate at display time. When I first used PSE several years ago I noticed that many of my photos were not being displayed/rotated properly in other programs because of this so I turned off the "Preferences|Files|Rotate JPEGs using Orientation Metadata" option inside the PSE program. You will then have to manually rotate photos but they should appear properly in all other programs (including Windows Explorer). I'm not sure if this is something you want to do but it would be pretty easy to turn this option off, search for all "Portrait" photos in PSE, and rotate them left and then back right again to clear this tag.

[nwboater]

Hi Craig,

We will try your suggestions re the rotation. It's really a good idea as it will be nice to have the photos all show rightside up, including those we put on CD's for friends. I'm going to do a backup first though!

Would be great if you could easily alphabetize the Albums and Tags though. As it stands we have a lot of both and it's cumbersome going though the lists.

Thanks so much for making this great plugin available for us.

Cheers,
Rod

[Brent94Z]

Just a quick question... will this work with Photoshop CS5. Not sure if CS5 has anything similar to Elements. I've done some reading and it doesn't look like it will but just wanted to ask anyway. Thanks

[cncb]

Originally Posted by Brent94Z

Just a quick question... will this work with Photoshop CS5. Not sure if CS5 has anything similar to Elements. I've done some reading and it doesn't look like it will but just wanted to ask anyway. Thanks

It looks like CS5 has "Bridge" which as far as I know is a fancy file browser. PSE has the Organizer which builds its own database of files that are imported into it. So unless CS5 has something similar with the same database format it won't work. Sorry.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by nwboater

Would be great if you could easily alphabetize the Albums and Tags though. As it stands we have a lot of both and it's cumbersome going though the lists.

This should be fixed now:

v1.1 - Albums and tags are now displayed alphabetically with "folders" (categories and sub-categories) grouped at the end like in PSE.

[nwboater]

Originally Posted by cncb

This should be fixed now:

v1.1 - Albums and tags are now displayed alphabetically with "folders" (categories and sub-categories) grouped at the end like in PSE.

Craig,

Thanks a lot - that will be a big improvement!

We're having difficulties with the rotation issue. On a few sample photos we tried your trick to rotate left, then right to clear the tag. It worked! It then showed up properly in Windows Explorer. Darned if I know how you figured that one out - very clever!

Our problem comes in when we want to do it on the whole catalog. It keeps finding photos that it gives a warning message on. It says that rotating will result in a loss and that it's going to make a Version Set to preserve the original. Trouble with the Version set is we will have two identical photos side by side and one will probably be rotated wrong. That will really clutter up the display. I think this is a part of PSE and don't know how you could get around it, but thought I'd put it out anyway.

We were excited about phase 1 of the operation, but the second part is a bummer.

Anyway thanks again for making Tags and Album alphabetical.

Cheers,
Rod

[cncb]

Originally Posted by nwboater

Our problem comes in when we want to do it on the whole catalog. It keeps finding photos that it gives a warning message on. It says that rotating will result in a loss and that it's going to make a Version Set to preserve the original. Trouble with the Version set is we will have two identical photos side by side and one will probably be rotated wrong. That will really clutter up the display. I think this is a part of PSE and don't know how you could get around it, but thought I'd put it out anyway.

Rod, It gives that warning when the photo is not a standard aspect ratio (not 3x5, 4x6, etc.) because apparently there will be some loss when rotating. If you are worried about the plugin showing both the rotated and unrotated photo that should not happen because only the photo that is at the "top" of the version set is displayed which would be just the rotated photo (if it is not working like this for you let me know).

[nwboater]

Originally Posted by cncb

Rod, It gives that warning when the photo is not a standard aspect ratio (not 3x5, 4x6, etc.) because apparently there will be some loss when rotating. If you are worried about the plugin showing both the rotated and unrotated photo that should not happen because only the photo that is at the "top" of the version set is displayed which would be just the rotated photo (if it is not working like this for you let me know).

Thanks Craig,

We'll give it a try later and let you know either way. Guess I'll first try it on a chunk of the catalog. We have over 9,300 photos so have to be careful. Also did a back up before starting this.

Cheers,
Rod

[cncb]

Originally Posted by nwboater

TGuess I'll first try it on a chunk of the catalog. We have over 9,300 photos so have to be careful. Also did a back up before starting this.

I would not recommend doing this on your entire catalog. Do a "metadata search" for "Portrait" photos first and just rotate those (Find | By Details (Metadata) | Orientation is Portrait).

[vividweb]

I'm not getting the picture to show up, I just get the date in the top left and a black screen. All the thumbnails show and I get all the tags. Tried looking in the logs, but no errors. I am getting this on extenders and my client machine.