# Catalogs, Playing Together Nicely?



## MPRamsey (Dec 22, 2011)

Hi,
I've been using Photoshop Lightroom 3.5 now for several months and love it!  I recently purchased Photoshop Elements / Elements Premiere 10 and have installed them with no problems.  I understand that PSE has a Organizer that uses a similar catalog system much like Lightroom.  I expected Elements to locate and use my Lightroom catalog when I started it and was surprised that it did not.

Am I making a wrong assumption or must the Lightroom and Elements Catalogs remain separate?

Thanks in advance,
Michael


----------



## erro (Dec 22, 2011)

I know (?) that you can migrate an Elements catalog to Lightroom (upgrade from Elements to LR so to speak), but I don't think it is possible the other way round. I guess it is a "political" statement from Adobe: you shouldn't "downgrade" from LR to Elements.


----------



## Hal P Anderson (Dec 22, 2011)

In addition to what Robert said, it's probably a bad idea to manage your photos with two different catalogues at the same time. If you want to use Elements as an editor, it's easy: just right-click on an image in LR and choose Edit in Photoshop Elements.

Hal


----------



## DawMatt (Dec 23, 2011)

Hi,

Like has been mentioned previously, users typically upgrade from Elements to Lightroom and not the other way around. That said there are benefits to having Elements around. Not everyone can afford the full Photoshop and Elements is great for building panoramas and other creations that are difficult to impossible in Lightroom.

I'm assuming you are using Elements to create panoramas, calendars, photobooks, or similar items from your photos? Some of those need to get into the Elements Organizer so you can't avoid having some of your data in both catalogs. A suggestion is to keep a directory on your HDD that you drop all of your photos into that will be used as input to the Elements Organizer. You can export to HDD, using the "specific folder" destination, and create a sub-folder for each creation you work on. Then you can set up Elements Organizer to automatically import files in that drop zone folder you create. 

If you aren't creating items that require your photos in Elements Organizer then you can Edit In -> Elements Editor as previously mentioned. Alternatively if you shoot in RAW you might want to try my TPG Elemental plugin (see my signature) to avoid creating all those extra intermediate rendered files.

Thanks,
Matt


----------

