If you’ve used older versions of Elements, you may be surprised to find that Elements 11 doesn’t recognize your scanner, even though your old version did. That’s because Adobe has stopped installing the necessary TWAIN plug-in, although they still provide it with Elements.
It’s super simple to take of this, though.
Windows: Go to C:\Program Files [Program Files(x 86) for 64-bit systems]\ Adobe\Photoshop Elements 11\Optional Plug-Ins\ and move the Import-Export folder to C:\ Program Files [Program Files(x 86) for 64-bit systems]\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 11\Locales\en_US\Plug-Ins (the “en_US” part will be different if you aren’t in the United States). If you don’t want to hassle with this, you may be able to use WIA (the Windows system scanning) instead, from both the Editor and the Organizer.
Mac: Go to Applications>Adobe Photoshop Elements 11>Support Files>Optional Plug-Ins and move the ImportModules folder into Applications>Adobe Photoshop Elements 11>Support Files>Plug-Ins.
This is a bit different from the last couple of versions where you just moved the actual plug-in file, but it’s just as easy to do.
EDIT Well, that’s the official way to do it, but a little experimenting shows that a much simpler file path that works just as well is to just grab the Import-Export s folder (depending on your operating system), and move it into the main Plug-ins folder.
So in Windows put the Import-Export folder into C:\ Program Files [Program Files(x 86) for 64-bit systems]\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 11\Plug-Ins. The Mac file path is the same as the one given above.