The basics

ADVANCED PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 5.0 FOR DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHERS
4.07 Collections and how to group photos
Suitable for Elements – 5.0, 4.0, 3.0 | Diffi culty level – Basic | Related techniques – 4.11, 4.12
Apart from tagging, Photoshop Elements also uses Collections as a way to organize your photos.
Collections allow you to group images of a similar theme together in the one place making it
easier to locate these images at a later date. After creating a collection in the Collections pane,
photos can be dragged from the Photo Browser workspace to the Collection heading to be added
to the group, or alternatively the Collection entry can be dragged to the photo to produce the
same result.
The Collections feature allows you to allocate the same image to several different groups. Unlike
in the old days, this doesn’t mean that the same fi le is duplicated and stored multiple times in
different folders. Instead the picture is only stored or saved once and a series of collection associations
is used to indicate its membership in different groups.
When you want to display a group of images based
on a specifi c subject, taken at a particular time or
shot as part of a certain job, the program searches
through its database of collection keywords and only
shows those images that meet your search criteria.
The Collections pane is the pivot point for all your
collection activities. Here you can view, create,
rename and delete collections. If the pane is not
displayed in the Photo Browser workspace then click
the Organize Bin at the bottom right of the browser
and then choose the Collections tab.
Adding photos to a collection
To start using Collections make a new collection fi rst and then add it to your photos.
FEATURE
SUMMARY
Grouping with Collections >> Sort your pictures
into groups of the same subject or theme using the
Elements’ Collections feature. (1) Collection Pane.
1. Start making a new collection by clicking on the New button in the Collections pane
and select the New Collection menu item.
2. In the Create Collection dialog choose the group that the new collection will belong to,
add the name and include any explanation details for the group. Click OK.
3. Select the photos to be included in the collection in the Photo Browser and drag them to
the Collection heading in the Collections pane.
4. To view all the pictures contained in a collection double-click on the Collection heading
or click on the column to the left of the collection. A Binoculars icon will appear.
5. Single photos or even groups of pictures can be added to more than one collection at
a time by multi-selecting the collection names fi rst before dragging the images to the
pane.
Book resources at: www.adv-elements.com
83
PHOTO ORGANIZATION
AND MANAGEMENT