Oranizing Images Stored on Multiple Computers -- How?

[Peter Guy]

Oh Great Scubaboard -- I WANT YOUR HELP.

I now do all of my computing on a laptop which, when I bought it two years ago, was foolish enough to think that 100GB was going to last a long time.

A while ago, in order to make up for Hard Drive Deficiency Syndrome, I decided that I'd keep only my "newer" images on the laptop and store all my images on the network's backup drive (of course I'm now thinking that 500GB is way too small -- those music, and video, files are huge! -- but I digress).

So today I thought, I really need to organize/index ALL my images in a way that I can find them so I opened PS Elements 5 to the "Organizer" function and tried to have it index the images on the network drive. It wouldn't -- just says there is an error. I have, so far, been unable to find an answer within Elements.

I know I'm not the first person to want to have an index of all the images spread over a network and I'm sure that some of you have done that.

The question is, How have you done this? Or more to the point, what would be the most reasonable way for a techno amateur to index (and catalog if need be) images that are spread over a network (in this case, on the "main" computer and a networked backup drive)?

How have YOU done this?

 

[alcina]

Any joy finding a solution yet?

I use Lightroom so can't help with Elements.

 

[diversteve]

Ok, given that you can see the files on the network drive from Windows Explorer on the laptop - and your drive mappings are all in proper order.

How did you originally move the files onto the network? Through PSE or through Explorer?

If not through PSE, this might be your issue:

When you move files to a new location or computer using a tool other than PSE (such as Windows Explorer or a third-party backup utility), PSE can get very confused, reporting the files as missing

This tool may help you sort it all out: psedbtool (Photoshop Elements Database Tool)

Wish I could be of more help but I don't use PSE.

I use Acdsee for all my image cataloging. It makes nice thumbnails and even HTML versions of the thumbnailed images. But I'm certainly not a pro photographer, just an ex-web developer with some Photoshop knowledge.