Adobe

PSE from the Mac App Store Stops Working

Posted by Barbara

If you bought the Photoshop Elements Editor from the Mac App Store and you’ve tried to use it in the past couple of days, you’ve discovered that it’s not working. Instead you see something like this:

Photoshop Elements is damaged.

Before this, you may get a weird message that you originally downloaded PSE on another computer and you need to sign in to authorize it on this one, even though you know it’s not true.

It’s not anything you did, nor is it the result of some update to El Capitan (10.11). Everyone is having this problem with all the App Store versions on all versions of OS X, and for now there isn’t really a solution.

Evidently there was a problem with expired security certificates that made practically everything from the App Store (not just PSE) stop working the other day, but it’s supposedly fixed now. However, I can confirm that the fixes you will find posted all over the Internet, like here, for example, don’t work for PSE at all, at least not for anyone I know who’s tried them:

http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/12/all-mac-store-apps-stopped-working-due-to-expired-security-certificate/#.c2lpn5:QtJ1

First of all, unless you have PSE 13 (the latest App Store version), don’t uninstall PSE unless you have a backup copy someplace. When Adobe releases a new version of PSE for the App Store, the older one becomes unavailable for download in the future.  EDIT I see they’ve changed this; in the past I could not download older versions again, but now the App Store does make the old versions available, a great improvement.)

(You should always keep a backup copy of the App Store versions; normally you can reinstall them by simply dropping the PSE folder into the Applications folder on another Mac. Note that this only applies to the App Store version, not at all in any way to the regular download or disc versions of PSE.) Adobe does offer downloads of older versions on their website, but those all require a serial number for installation, which you don’t have, since your Apple ID takes the place of a serial number for the App Store, so that doesn’t help you, either.

It appears that most App Store apps are fixed, although Elements is still majorly broken. For whatever it’s worth, I have one other App Store application (a silly game that is quite old) that also remains broken, so it’s not totally just an Adobe problem.

Right now all I can say is that Adobe is investigating this, but so far there is no fix for it.  When they get it figured out, I’ll post the solution for you.

If you bought PSE elsewhere, either as a download or on disc, it should be working normally, and any problems you might have aren’t related to this particular issue.

A fix for scrolling in Photoshop Elements 13.1

Posted by Barbara

If you use Photoshop Elements for Windows and you’ve applied the update to PSE 13.1, you probably noticed that you have trouble scrolling in the organizer since the update. Adobe has finally released a fix for that, which you can download here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/kb/photoshop-elements-13-1-hotfix.html

(If you don’t use the Organizer, or if you have a Mac, there’s no need for this.)

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.)

Photoshop Elements 12 and Mac OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted by Barbara

Since Apple released Yosemite, it’s been kind of puzzling–most people have had no special trouble with PSE 12 since the update, but some people have been having a heck of a time with any of the tools in the Enhance section of the PSE toolbox causing PSE to freeze completely.

It appears that the problem is something to do with trackpads only, so for now, if you switch back to using a mouse everything should work again.

Adobe Announces Photoshop Elements 13

Posted by Barbara

Adobe has just announced PSE 13, which is a pretty major update to Photoshop Elements, although the biggest changes are under the hood. There’s  a 64-bit version for Windows (there’s still a 32-bit version if you need that), and finally Elements works correctly with high-resolution displays, like Apple’s retina display.

https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements.html

Other features: no more having to hassle around with adobe mail verification codes–you can use any email provider now. Content-aware fill, new crop tool, more effects and frames in Quick Edit, a new Refine Selection brush for tweaking selections, Photomerge Compose to help move stuff from one photo to another, a totally new slideshow (good and bad–now there’s feature parity on both OS X and Windows, it’s easier than the old slideshow, but much less customizable), a new Create project for building a facebook cover photo, a new view in the Organizer, a revision of the albums/folders tab from PSE 12 that puts each section into its own tab, some new guided edits, and Elements Live, which is kind of like Postano for PSE–a new tab in both the editor and the organizer  that aggregates tutorials and inspirational stuff for PSE from all over the web, not just Adobe.

Missing features this time: no more photo mail (a small price to pay for sane emailing), and if you have a 64-bit version of Windows, no more TWAIN scanning (still available in the 32-bit Windows version and the Mac version).

Also, you need at least Windows 7 or OS X 10.8 for PSE 13. As always, I’d suggest downloading the trial and giving it a good hard workout.

 

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.

A Better Fix for the PSE 12 Auto Analyzer

Posted by Barbara

I’m pleased to report that the PSE 12.1 update seems to have taken care of most of the performance issues with the Photoshop Elements 12 Auto Analyzer, at least on Macs. Since the update the auto analyzer does pop up again when you restart or log out and then back in to your account, but it only runs briefly and then disappears from Activity Monitor if the PSE Organizer isn’t running. More importantly, it doesn’t seem to be gobbling up resources even when it does run. I’ve kept it going for two days now and the most ram it ever used was about 46MB of real memory, less than, say, Dropbox uses when it’s idle. With the Organizer closed, it only got up to about 20 MB before it stopped.

So I would definitely say that while I don’t think Adobe specifically addressed this problem as part of the 12.1 update, something about the update does make a huge difference in performance. In its idle state, the whole Organizer now uses less memory than OS X Mail does when it’s not fetching or sending, so I would strongly encourage everyone to download the update and just forget about disabling the auto analyzer other than by the checkboxes in the Organizer preferences>Media Analysis.. That still doesn’t stop it completely, but it’s not running constantly the way it did before.

(For Windows, I never had the catalog/version set problem that some people had with converted catalogs, so no way to test there. If you use Windows and the update helped, I’d like to hear about it–you can contact me via the link at the upper right of this page.)

EDIT 3-15-14: I’m told by several people that the update does fix the version set problem in Windows, so that’s another good reason to go for it.

Once again, if you did rename the auto analyzer or put a space in its name, be sure to remove the space or rename it back before running the update, or it will fail. In Windows the update may run, but it may be overlooking anything to do with Auto Analyzer.

On either platform, if the update still fails, if you’ve installed the Adobe TWAIN plugin, put it back into Optional Plugins and try again. If the update succeeds, you can reinstall it.

If you’ve never installed TWAIN and never renamed the auto analyzer, or if the update still fails after fixing both of those, just uninstall/reinstall and it should work.

Adobe Updates PSE 12–Auto Analyzer Disablers, A Reminder

Posted by Barbara

Today Adobe released Photoshop Elements 12.1, which PSE 12 users can get by going to the Editor’s Help Menu>Updates.

A reminder to those who’ve disabled the Auto Analyzer by adding a space to the name: Go back and delete the space before running the update to be sure it can run properly. I don’t yet know if the update fixes the undead Auto Analyzer problem, but if it doesn’t, you can put the space back in again after updating.

EDIT In Windows, the update will usually run without doing this, but it’s probably skipping the auto analyzer when updating. While the space doesn’t prevent the rest of PSE from updating, it’s a good practice to put the space back, then turn the Auto Analyzer back off again afterwards.

On a Mac you’re likely to see Error U44M1P7  if you forget to remove the space and try to run the update. Put the Auto Analyzer’s name back to its original form, and the update should run.