A Reminder for Mac Folks upgrading to Yosemite

Posted by Barbara

If you use a Mac and Photoshop Elements and plan to upgrade to Yosemite (OS X 10.10)  right away, just a reminder that in all recent versions of OS X, it has been critically important to delete all preferences before running PSE.

If you have once run PSE it is necessary to also delete the saved application states.
So you would need to go to your user library and delete:

com.adobe.PhotoshopElements.plist
Adobe Photoshop Elements < version > Paths
Adobe Photoshop Elements < version > Settings
com.adobe.Elements Organizer. < version >.plist
com.adobe.ElementsOrganizer< version>.plist

and any lockfiles with the same names, then (if you’ve used Elements in Yosemite) go to Saved Application States (at the same level as preferences) and delete any for PSE, then repair permissions and launch PSE again.

To see the User library, click the Go menu in the Finder and hold down the Option key and it will appear below the little house for your user account.

I’m not using Yosemite myself yet, but I would not be surprised if some of the older versions of PSE that work fine in 10.9 no longer work in 10.10, so I would suggest that if Elements is important to you, be sure you have a good clone of your system somewhere so that you can revert it if necessary.

 

EDIT 9/19/2014: Some people are having a lot of trouble with Elements 12 in Yosemite, especially the tools in the Enhance section and layer behavior, so if you are using Elements 12 and don’t wish to upgrade to PSE 13, you might want to stop and think before going to 10.10 if PSE is important to your work.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • RSS
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

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.

 

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • RSS
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

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.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • RSS
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

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.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • RSS
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

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.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • RSS
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac and the Blank White Screen

Posted by Barbara

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.)

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • RSS
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

More About the PSE 12 Auto Analyzer

Posted by Barbara

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.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • RSS
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

PSE 12 and Mavericks Updated

Posted by Barbara

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):

deleted preferences

 

(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

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • RSS
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

The Elements 12 Auto Analyzer–Adobe’s Evil Undead

Posted by Barbara

EDIT 3-13-14: I’m pleased to say that there’s a better fix now than what is described on this page. If the  PSE 12 Auto Analyzer is giving you problems, in the Editor go to Help>Updates and update to 12.1. You can read more about 12.1 and the Auto Analyzer here. If you did put the space in the Auto Analyzer’s name be sure to remove it before running the update. And Adobe has asked me to point out that they DO NOT RECOMMEND renaming it.

 

Since it’s Halloween, this is a good day to discuss Adobe’s own vampire zombie: the Photoshop Elements 12 Auto Analyzer.

If you’ve used a recent version of Photoshop Elements, you may be aware that one of the Organizer “features” is something called the Auto Analyzer. Its function is to evaluate your photos for you and add what Adobe calls Smart Tags, to your photos. “Smart” in this case meaning “really-hard-to-get-rid-of”. So the Auto Analyzer may tag your photos as “high quality, in focus” or it may judge your photo to be blurry and low quality and add helpful tags to that effect.

Now if you’re a fan of the Auto Analyzer, everything is fine, but since most people don’t see this as exactly a desirable feature, the first thing they do is to turn it off, since it runs constantly in the background (even when Elements isn’t running), and it’s a real memory hog on top of everything else and can really slow things down. In previous versions of Elements, all you had to do was to go to the Organizer preferences->Media Analysis and turn it off there and it obligingly went away.

Alas, in PSE 12 that does as much good as shooting Dracula or the Wolfman with a regular ol’ bullet. It just comes back again and again. I have no idea what it’s doing when you’ve stopped it from tagging things, but if you really want to kill it, it’s not so simple now. For Windows folks, it’s not usually so much of an issue, but on a Mac it can bring your whole system to its knees. If you have a Mac that has suddenly slowed down enormously, the first thing to seek out is the Auto Analyzer.  I’ll also include how to stop it in Windows, since even if it’s not making trouble you may be as uneasy as I am about processes that insist on running when you don’t know what they’re doing.

Before going through all the steps, I will say that you may be able to get away with just doing Step 4 and restarting your computer on either platform, but if that doesn’t do it, you’ll need to do everything in the list.

EDIT I’m advised by Adobe that doing this will also kill your ability to upload video to Revel from within PSE. So if that’s important to you, you probably don’t want to do this.

It also turns out that the Auto Analyzer can cause big problems with stacks and version sets in Windows. If you’ve upgraded to PSE 12 and you can’t stack and your photos aren’t saving in version sets anymore, try turning off the Auto Analyzer in Task Manager. If that fixes it, follow the steps to shut it down completely.

2nd EDIT As of March 6,  2014 Adobe has released PSE 12.1. If you removed the space from the Auto Analyzer’s name, be sure to put it back before running the update (available via Editor>Help Menu>Updates). Note that the update will reset everything pertaining to the Auto Analyzer back to where it was initially, so if you don’t want it running all the time, you will need to go back and remove it from your startup/login items and put the space back in. EDIT 3-13-14: The Auto Analyzer behaves so much better since the update that I would recommend just leaving it alone after the update unless you have a serious problem with it.

Mac

If you never once open the Organizer,  you won’t need to do any of this, but just looking around in the Organizer one time is enough to start things going.

1. Go to Elements Organizer->Preferences->Media Analysis and turn off everything circled here.

Auto Analyzer Prefs

 

That should be enough to stop it, but it isn’t.

2. Go to Applications->Utilities->Activity Monitor and select ElementsAutoAnalyzer in the list of running processes, and kill it by clicking the red Quit Process button at the top of the window:

Screen Shot 2013-10-31 at 11.29.06 AM

 

Now you would think that should do it, wouldn’t you? And it’s true that as long as you don’t open the Organizer, log out of your OS X account and back in, or restart your Mac, it’s okay. But do any of those things, and back it comes again. So how do you really kill it dead?

3. First of all, Adobe has been really sneaky about this. It put the Auto Analyzer into your Login Items (really unconscionable, in my opinion). So go to System Preferences-> Users & Groups, and click on your name in the list on the left side of the window, then on Login Items and you’ll see this:

Screen Shot 2013-10-31 at 11.29.46 AM

 

Select ElementsAutoAnalyzer in the list and click the Minus button at the bottom of the window.

Now you would think that would do it for sure, wouldn’t you? But nooo. You’re good to go as long as you never open the Organizer again, but as soon as you do, the Auto Analyzer, like the true Undead that it is, comes right back and puts itself back into your Login items again. So how can you drive a stake through its evil heart? Here’s the trick:

4. Go to your Applications folder and right-click (control-click if you have your mouse set up for one button) Adobe Elements 12 Organizer and choose Show Package Contents from the popout menu. You will see a folder called Contents. Open that and you’ll see ElementsAutoAnalyzer in the list of contents. Click its name and insert a space in it somewhere:

organizer contents

 

That’s all you need to do to keep the rest of the program from finding it and starting it up again. Remember that you did this, and go back and delete that space before you try to uninstall PSE, though, to make sure the uninstaller can find everything. So far I haven’t heard of anyone having problems as a result of doing this–Organizer works just fine without it, but if you do have trouble, the answer is just to delete the space.

Windows

The process is similar in Windows.

1. Go to Edit->Preferences->Media Analysis and uncheck everything:

Auto Analyzer Prefs

 

2. Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and open Task Manager and stop the Auto Analyzer there.

3. Go to Run and enter MSCONFIG and run that. In the Startup tab, turn off the Auto Analyzer:

Screen Shot 2013-10-31 at 12.04.39 PM

 

4. Go to C:\Program Files [Program Files (x86) for 64-bit systems]\Adobe\Elements 12 Organizer\CAHeadless and insert a space into the name of the ElementsAutoAnalyzer:

Screen Shot 2013-10-31 at 12.13.11 PM

 

You will need to have hidden file viewing enabled to see the entire path.

The same caution applies here: If you’re going to uninstall PSE, or if you have any trouble after doing this, just go back and remove that space.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • RSS
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter