Moving Photoshop Elements 7 to a new PC

No warranty is offered for any of this stuff, but this is how I did it (for my own, or others’, future reference).

OLD SETUP

• WinXP laptop
• Photoshop Expressions (PSE) 7
• Catalog on the C: drive (internal)
• Photos on the E: drive (external USB drive)

NEW SETUP

• Vista laptop

I wanted to get PSE 7 onto the new machine, get the catalog moved over, and use the external hard drive to begin with. Ideally I’d like to get the photos off the external hard drive and onto the internal one, for sake of performance. I have all the space I need on the new laptop (lack of space was a driver on the old one to move them off).

STEP 1: GETTING PSE ON MY NEW PC 

I was expecting this one to be a real bear, as my experiences at Adobe’s site have been less than stellar in the past.

However, it was pretty much a piece of cake. 

1. Browse to Adobe.com on the new computer.
2. Went to My Account and signed in with my account (from my previous registrations and software purchases there).
3. View Product Registrations. Click through to Adobe products. That got the serial number of my last PSE purchase.
4. Go back to View Order History. That last purchase shows up there, with a Download link.
5. Download the latest version (which was the same major version as on my old computer; if not, I would have upgraded the old computer first).
6. Install. When prompted for the serial number, give the one above. (Note: I plan on uninstalling PSE 7 from my old machine once it’s up and running on the new one.)

STEP 2: CLEANING UP THE CATALOG 

I knew that nearly all the files in my PSE catalog were on the external (E:) drive. But I also knew that a smattering of them had been linked in from the C: drive (on the old computer) by accident. These were mostly from this year, but though PSE will show you the file path for any given photo (Window > Properties), I couldn’t find a way to easily select all of the ones still on C:.

So instead, on my old computer in PSE, I found the earliest instance of them (back in January), and started moving those files into monthly folders on my E: drive.

1. Select all the photos dated for a month (let’s say 1/2009).
2. File > Move
3. Browse to where on the E: drive I wanted the files to go. Create a new folder there (“2009-01”). Hit Enter.

Repeat for each month to the present.

When done, I double-checked any file areas where photos might have been downloaded to and linked from. They were all empty.

STEP 3: FIND THE CATALOG ON THE OLD MACHINE 

I wanted to move the Catalog file on the old computer over to the external drive. The problem was two-fold:

• When I went into File > Catalog > Move, it wouldn’t let me move the catalog.
• I had no idea where the catalog was, so I couldn’t manually move it.

Eventually, I found something online that indicated that on WinXP, PSE 6 stores its files in:

• PSE 6 on WinXP: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\Catalogs

In fact, that was where it was in PSE 7, too.

So I made a copy of the file (about 200Mb worth — I have a lot of photos) and moved it over onto the external hard drive. Then I moved plugged that external hard drive into the new PC.

STEP 4: PLACING THE CATALOG ON THE NEW MACHINE 

That same site indicated that the catalog should go, in PSE 6 and Vista, at:

• PSE 6 on Vista: C:\Program Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\Catalogs

Unfortunately, that folder didn’t exist. But I did find …

• PSE 7 on Vista: Owner\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\Catalogs

So I moved the catalog folder there.

STEP 5: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH 

1. I fired up PSE 7 on the new machine. I told it not to start looking for photos.
2. I let the inevitable, “Hey, there’s a new version!” process run its course, including a reboot.
3. I fired up PSE 7 again.
4. File > Catalog > Catalogs Accessible by the Current User
5. Picked my catalog file, and chose Open …

And there are all my photos. And tags. And albums. Huzzah!

For the future, I’ve love to get the photos (as noted) all onto the internal hard drive. I’m a little bit reluctant to do so willy-nilly, though. When I moved all the photos to the external hard drive in the first place, I ended up losing quite a few photos because PSE doesn’t pay any attention to duplicate file names when moving photos — and when you have multiple cameras, you are likely to have duplicate photo names.

If I can figure out a way that doesn’t lose photos again, or require excessive reconnection of catalog entries to files (for my 6400 photos), I’ll do that. In the meantime — I’m pretty happy, and can start getting back into saveing, annotating, and uploading (to Flickr) our digital photography.

And that’s how I did it.