I’m happy to report that Apple has evidently fixed whatever the problem was with the Mac App Store versions of Photoshop Elements. (See this post if you missed the problem.)

The solution is quite simple. Go to your Applications folder and send the old copy of Photoshop Elements to the trash, then launch the App Store, go to your Purchases and reinstall PSE. Contrary to what I said in the first version of my previous post, you will find out of date versions available for download now.

Note that this only applies to the Mac App Store version of PSE. If you got Elements from anywhere else, you cannot uninstall it by trashing it, and nothing in this post applies to any problems you may be having with your version of PSE.

EDIT 11/14/15: A few people have found that simply downloading and reinstalling isn’t enough. In that case, empty the trash with the old version in it, sign out of the App Store and back in, then try downloading and reinstalling. You will need a fresh download, not a copy from a backup, in this instance.

Second EDIT 11/16/15: If you have PSE 13 from the App Store, you may need to follow the direcions in this Adobe kbase document to fix things:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/kb/editor-does-not-start-error-mac-app-store.html

As many of you know by now, Adobe has released Photoshop Elements 14.

Many thanks to all those who’ve been asking, but there isn’t going to be a Missing Manual for this version of PSE, I’m afraid.

Thanks to everyone for all your interest and support over the years but everything comes to an end sooner or later, and for me it’s just time to move on to other interests.

If you’ve encountered problems with PSE 11 or 12 in Yosemite, the latest version of Apple’s operating system, there’s finally a fix. Just update to 10.10.1 and that should fix things for you. If you installed the plugin that Adobe made available as an interim fix, be sure to remove it. The file path would be:

Applications->Adobe Photoshop Elements (version number)->Support Files->Plug-Ins

For more information, see Adobe’s help document:

http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/kb/pse-stops-responding-yosemite.html

A lot of folks who’ve been using PSE 6 for Mac for a long time with no problems at all are suddenly finding themselves confronted with a blank white window when they launch the program now. It’s a problem with the Adobe registration servers and the fix is easy, if not obvious.

Just disconnect your Mac from the Internet (turn off wifi or unplug the cable) and start PSE 6 again. This time you should see the Registration window. Choose “Never Register” and all is well (this won’t remove your previous registration from your Adobe records, and in any case, registration for PSE 6 was voluntary, unlike later versions that require it).

The Adobe kbase  document about this:

http://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/blank-registration-screen-cs3.html

(Thanks to Elements forum user R_Kelly for first figuring this out.)

Last week I told you how to disable the auto analyzer in PSE 12 if it’s causing problems:

http://barbarabrundage.com/2013/10/31/the-elements-12-auto-analyzer-adobes-evil-undead/

Adobe has asked me to warn you that if you do this, you won’t be able to upload video files from Elements to Revel. So if that matters, don’t do it. If you don’t use Revel, or don’t use it for video, no problems.

When I posted about PSE and OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) the other day:

http://barbarabrundage.com/2013/10/28/photoshop-elements-and-os-x-mavericks/

I was having trouble inserting images into posts. So for the benefit of those who’ve asked me just which preferences to delete, tt depends on which version(s) you have, but you want to look for files and folders beginning Adobe Photoshop Elements, Elements Organizer,  and com.adobe. Here’s the trash on my Mac after doing this, if it helps (remember I have a lot of different versions on my computer–you probably won’t have more than three files if you only have a single version of PSE installed):

(I’ve since updated the main post, but I don’t think updates get sent out to subscribers, so here’s the list for those of you who get this blog via email.)

If you still have problems with PSE crashing when opening or saving a file after deleting the preferences, adobe recommends switching your finder windows out of coverflow view:

http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/freeze-or-crash-using-open.html

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about PSE and the latest OS X update, 10.9 (Mavericks). The news is mostly good: all versions of PSE that I’ve tried (6 through 12) work just fine, with one exception. If you have PSE 11, the Comic and Graphics Novel filters will crash PSE. So far I don’t know a solution for this. Also, I haven’t tried installing or uninstalling, and that could be a problem with the oldest versions.

If you upgrade to Mavericks, it is very important to delete all existing PSE, Organizer, and Bridge (for PSE 6 and 8) preferences.  To do this, you need to go to your username->Library->Preferences and delete everything relevant there.

Mavericks is a bit different than the past couple of versions of OS X, thankfully, for how you get to that library. Open a Finder window and click your user account in the list on the left side of the window. Now go up to the top of the window and and click the button with the gear icon on it. Choose Show View Options from  the popout menu. If you look down the list of checkboxes, you’ll see the library at the bottom of the list. Turn this on and from now on it will show up in the top level of results when you click on your name in any Finder window:

If you don’t delete all the preferences, you are likely to have problems. If you do, things should go fairly smoothly, although some people find that older versions of PSE tend to run more slowly in 10.9 than in earlier versions of OS X. Which preferences? It depends on which version you have, but you want to look for files and folders beginning Adobe Photoshop Elements, Elements Organizer,  and com.adobe. Here’s the trash on my mac after doing this, if it helps:

EDIT A reminder to PSE 6 users who are upgrading from 10.6: you must make sure you don’t have PSE 6 set to run in Rosetta before you upgrade OS X. This is about Lion, but it still pertains:

http://barbarabrundage.com/2011/07/29/photoshop-elements-6-and-lion

Oh, incidentally, if you have PSE 11 and your menus are grayed out after updating, that usually means you need to update the driver for your Wacom tablet.

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.