New and under the gun

[dwible]

Hello,
I've been searching the web for answers. Wishing that PSE help was actually helpful and now I found your site. Hoping that someone out there can give me a pretty standard answer.

I've used PSE since it was version 2 (I think.) It's a love/hate relationship. It does amazing things, but then lets me down when I am doing basic things like backing up my catalog. Right now I'm under a crazy deadline and need advice. (I will offer advice in the future, promise)

I'm working in PSE9. I've been on a PC and just purchased a iMac so I could see photos in larger format. I will be running PSE9 on the iMac. But I can't get photos/catalog into that new computer. I am now running into problems doing a full back up from the old PC so I can use it to move to the new mac. I keep freezing at 77% and each freeze corrupts yet another photo file. I've done all the repairing etc. recommended by Adobe, but still no dice.

I DO have a full BU from last year plus 4 incremental back ups. Can anyone tell me if I can move/restore from that series of back ups? I need to know WHICH backup file (full or the last incremental backup) I restore first. I have seen advice to do it both ways. So which is it, my guru friends, newest BU to oldest (full) or Full BU to newest incremental?

Help me please! I've been trying to do this for 4 days. Losing my mind. :(

Denise

[Steve]

Not enough info.
A "full backup" is a mirror copy of the entire disk.
That's not going to work from a PC to a Mac not even 1 PC to another PC with different hardware.

So are we talking about a "full backup" or a backup of your photos?
Also you're using the term "catalog" not something normally associated with PS.
Aperture uses catalogs, PS just has the camera files, raw or jpg in a directory.

If the goal is just to get the images from the PC to the Mac I assume you can network the computers and drag them from one to the other.

Like I said I assume this, I have no Mac experience at all.

[dwible]

Steve -
You're right. I'm working in Photoshop ELEMENTS, which is a little different than the full version. What I'm trying to do is export my catalog of thousands of photos. I moved them a year ago and just can't seek to make it happen again -- freezing on the export of my catalog of photos (all indexed). I'm trying to get out of my PC into the Mac. I do have all the photos in files that should have the meta data written to each, so in the worst case, I can reconstruct my catalog of photos from the ground up.

Steve or anyone else have any ideas related to this move??

[Steve]

I have PSE7 installed but don't really use it so I'm still guessing here.
If you go to File|Write Keyword Tag and Properties into Photo I assume you can embed all the metadata and catalog information.
At that point maybe a drag and drop may work, I don't know.

Good luck.

[sam123]

welcome to PSG