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Yosemite and PSE, Updated

Posted by Barbara

Just an update about problems with Yosemite and Photoshop Elements.

To summarize, for now it appears that PSE 9 and lower work fine in 10.10, as does PSE 13. PSE 10 is also okay, unless you bought it from the Mac App Store, in which case it has a disconcerting tendency to switch languages to German on updating to 10.10.

As far as I know there’s no real solution for this, at least not yet. Something similar happened after an OS X update back when PSE 10 was the current version of PSE, and this was the suggestion, then, but I haven’t heard of it working now, since OS X has changed a lot since then:

http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/kb/mac-app-store-version-german.html

PSE 11 has some problems in Yosemite, but the biggest problems are with PSE 12. First of all, there are problems if you use a trackpad, and Adobe is recommending using a mouse as a workaround. But even without a trackpad some people are having problems, especially with the Move tool.

Adobe has announced that they are working with Apple to try to resolve the PSE 11 and 12 problems in an upcoming update (by which I’m presuming they mean an OS X update, but they don’t specify). They’ve also posted plugin that is supposed to help with the problem for now. See Jeffrey Tranberry’s post in this thread for more information and a download link:

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/photoshop-elements-hangs-in-yosemite

EDIT  (Oops, the discount link is gone today–they must have removed it shortly after posting the plugin.)

Stuck Windows in Photoshop Elements on a Mac

Posted by Barbara

In the past couple of versions of OS X, more and more people are having trouble with the top of the Organizer window getting trapped up under the menu bar at the very top of their screens (the one with the black apple, the application’s name, File, Edit, etc). More rarely something similar happens with the editor. (To be fair, this isn’t strictly an Adobe problem; other third-party programs do this, too, but I don’t know how to fix those.)

While it can drive you nearly crazy trying to get ahold of that window to move it, there’s actually a relatively easy fix. If it’s the Organizer that’s stuck (and it usually is), just quit the Organizer, then go to your username->Library->Application Support->Adobe->Elements Organizer-> ( version number )->Organizer, and delete the file “status.dat” there, and relaunch the Organizer. You may need to go to File->Manage Catalogs to choose your catalog on opening the Organizer, but that’s all there is to it.

EDIT Forgot to mention that the way to see your username library is to click the Go menu in the Finder and hold down the Option key. Then it will appear below the little house for your user account.

When the Editor window gets stuck, you can usually unstick it by going to System Preferences->Displays and setting your monitor to the lowest available resolution setting there. You may need to do this a couple of times and sometimes choose more than one of the lower resolution settings, but sooner or later the Editor window will snap back into position. Then set your display back to its proper (highest) setting.

PSE 8, 9, 10 Can’t Sign In, Error 404

Posted by Barbara

If you’ve been using Photoshop Elements 8, 9, or 10 and suddenly you’re finding that you’re stuck in an endless loop for signing in when you start PSE, or getting some kind of error message (usually Error 404 or 400), or it’s just impossibly slow, the problem is your photoshop.com account.

Photoshop.com is gone. Well, the URL is still active, but it’s just a promo page for Photoshop now. (Just clarify, since a few people don’t seem to understand, you can’t log in anymore. There is nothing to log in to now.) If you had photos stored at photoshop.com you should have gotten a bunch of emails from Adobe over the last several months about how Adobe Revel was replacing photoshop.com and your photos were going to get moved.

Most people got the emails, but Adobe evidently didn’t make it very clear that Revel is not a direct substitute for photoshop.com. Elements doesn’t understand anything about Revel (except for PSE 11, which always had links to Revel rather than photoshop.com), and you can’t use Revel from within PSE 8, 9, or 10.

So the problem is that Elements is trying to contact photoshop.com and that isn’t there anymore. Here’s what you need to do get PSE working right again. When you see the sign-in screen, click Cancel. Then:

1. Disable backup/syncing.

Do this from the Organizer’s preferences>Backup/Sync if you can. If not, go to the System Tray/Notifications area at the bottom right of your screen in Windows or the icon in the menubar at the very top of your screen on a Mac and disable everything you can.

2. Stop using the Welcome Screen.

The Welcome Screen is programmed always to try to phone home, even if you had it set to automatically take you straight to the Editor or Organizer, and it will keep trying, bringing PSE to a crawl. So you don’t want to use it anymore.

  • Windows: Go to C:\Program Files or Program Files(x86) for 64-bit systems\Adobe, and find the actual .exe file for the Editor and/or Organizer. (In Windows 7 and 8 its Type is called Application and doesn’t display the .exe. extension.) Right click that and make a desktop shortcut. From now on, use that to start PSE.

 

  • Mac:  For PSE 8, skip this step. For PSE 9 or 10, go to the Applications folder and find your version of PSE. The Organizer will be Adobe Elements  < Version number > Organizer. The Editor for PSE 9 is the top file in Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Editor. In PSE 10, it’s in Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 Editor->Support Files. Make a Dock icon. The easiest way is to just launch PSE from there and then go over to your Dock, click-hold on the icon for the running program, and choose “Keep in Dock” from the flyout menu.

3. Go into the Organizer and check your Albums.

For any that show the Sharing symbol, turn off sharing by right-clicking (control-clicking on a Mac if your mouse is set up for one button) the Sharing symbol and stopping it there.

These steps should make PSE usable again, but there’s some bad news, too. Adobe chose to store all online content for these versions at photoshop.com, so none of it is there anymore. That means that anything in your Content panel with a blue or gold banner, or any album templates with banners aren’t there anymore. If you haven’t downloaded those yet, it’s too late now, and you’ll lose them if you ever have to reinstall PSE. Also, if you signed up for photoshop.com, your Organizer contact book was stored there, too, so you can’t use the contact book anymore.

If you’re confused about what happened to photoshop.com, there’s more about the move here:

http://forums.adobe.com/community/ps.com_sharing_and_storage

If you need help with Revel, the basics are covered here:

http://forums.adobe.com/community/revel

(Note: None of this pertains to the Mac App Store versions of PSE 9 or 10, but you can’t reinstall those at all now, since they’ve been replaced by PSE 11 in the store and Adobe’s way of making older versions available for re-downloading requires the 24-digit serial number and won’t accept your Apple ID instead.)

You don’t have to Move

Posted by Barbara

If you’ve used the Type tools in Photoshop Elements 11, you’ve probably noticed that as soon as you commit your text (by clicking the green checkmark or pressing Enter/Return), suddenly the Type tool is gone and the Move tool is active instead. If you want to edit your type, you have to go back over to the Tools panel and click it again.

Adobe reasons that most people will want to position their text once they’ve created it, which is why they made this change from older versions where you had the Type tool till you yourself clicked on a different tool. If you don’t like the new behavior, it’s very easy to change it, although it’s not obvious how to do it.

Just go to the Editor preferences->General, and turn off this checkbox:

turn off Select Move tool after commiting text

From now on, the Type tool stays active until you change to another tool.