Photoshop Elements saving back to iPhoto

hello - I want to save an image worked in Elements back to iPhoto but can't seem to do it.

Can anyone help please?

Thank you!

Can't you define PSE as the an external editor and so within iPhoto you edit the image and that should fire up PSE where you can adjust/edit and save your image and the result will show up in iPhoto.

I have defined PSE as the external editor but when I have manipulated and then saved an image, I cannot find the new version of the image in iPhoto. Thank you, by the way...

In PSE you need to change the On First Save behavior in the prefs so that you don't get the Save As dialog box. If these are raw files, they must be reimported as new files after editing.

Conchita said:

In PSE you need to change the On First Save behavior in the prefs so that you don't get the Save As dialog box. If these are raw files, they must be reimported as new files after editing.

Click to expand...

Thank you. So I've edited my photo and saved it in iPhoto with another name to aid identification. Then I go to iPhoto... and select 'import to library'. I search for the photo and select it to import.

Then I get an error message: Unreadable Files: 1 ... The following file could not be imported. (The file is in the iPhoto Library.) ... Users (my name) iPhoto Library/Originals/2009 etc.

Any idea that this means??

Thanks!

Save it to the desktop or other reasonable place where you can find it, then import it from there.

paul2009 said:

Then I get an error message: Unreadable Files: 1 ... The following file could not be imported. (The file is in the iPhoto Library.) ... /Users/(my name)/iPhoto Library/Originals/2009 etc.

Any idea that this means??

Click to expand...

The /Users/(my name)/iPhoto Library/Originals/2009 is a Unix-style directory path, to some file that iPhoto is complaining about. The part up to the "iPhoto Library" looks like it is naming your home directory and the "iPhoto Library" "file". After that, we're talking about stuff inside the "iPhoto Library" package.

A package appears to be a single file in the Finder, but it is really a directory tree. The iPhoto and iTunes applications are packages. So are their libraries. Packages make it easier to keep a bunch of related files together, while hiding the ones a typical user doesn't need to see, and encouraging users to keep their hands off.

Originals/2009/... means that inside the package, there's an Originals directory ... and inside that, there's a 2009 directory. I'd guess that when you told iPhoto to edit a photo in PSE, it gave PSE the path name to an original iPhoto Library file. When you told PSE to save a new file, it took the directory part of the path name and saved the new file somewhere inside of the iPhoto Library.

For some reason (file format? file name?), iPhoto didn't like the file saved by PSE. This resulted in the message.

Just a wild guess, anyway.

Yes, but this always happens when you don't save to a spot you can easily get at.

P.S. - If you right-click on a package, there's a menu option for opening it up as a directory. You can use this if, e.g., you're curious about the internal organization of the iPhoto Library.

(Browsing packages is pretty harmless, but be careful about changing anything.)

Depends on the PSE version you have. Try going to PSE preferences 'saving files' and in the box, select the option 'save over current file'. Once you've finished editing in PSE, select 'save', not 'save as', and it should save the file back into iphoto as a replacement for the one you took out to edit in PSE.

RussC

You can't do that with a raw file, because PSE can't save over a raw file. You have to save the converted file in a standard image (i.e. different) format. What you suggest works well for jpgs or tiffs, but not for raw.

paul2009 said:

hello - I want to save an image worked in Elements back to iPhoto but can't seem to do it.

Click to expand...

To clarify. First make sure your are using file formats that are recognised by iPhoto. The save from an external editor does not work on Raw files, as iPhoto passes the original Raw file to PSE, and Raw files cannot be directly edited, so need to be converted into a standard image format first (Aperture converts to TIFF or PSD first, so the file passed to PSE is already in a standard format, and can be saved back).

To do this, edit in PSE, and use Save As... and save it in a standard image format, such as TIFF or JPG. Make sure you save it somewhere easily accessible, such as the Desktop as a temporary space, and NOT in the iPhoto library. Then import the file from there into iPhoto.

If you're working in JPG, make sure you keep that standard too, I tried using the JPG2000 format, and that doesn't work either.

If you're sending a JPG or TIFF to PSE from iPhoto, then you just need to edit it, and hit the Save button. Job done. Go back to iPhoto, and you should see the image change to the new version - you may need to wait a few seconds while it updates the Preview image.

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Andy Hewitt

Thank you for all this. I am beginning to think, though, that iPhoto has somehow been changed since I first started using it: folders within iPhoto that were created up to about 3 or 4 years ago are clearly visible and reachable through the Finder; folders I create today are successfully opened within iPhoto but are not visible in the file structure of iPhoto within the Finder.

There was a change: "...with iPhoto '08: the library is now stored as a package..."

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/08/14/tuaw-tip-crack-open-the-monolithic-iphoto-08-library/

iPhoto is a bit of a pain in the a** these days. You need to right-click (control click) on the iPhoto Library package and select "Show Package Contents" to see the files. If you'd like to access them, you need to make symlinks of the folders within the package that reside outside the iPhoto library.

I'm wary of adding photos to those folders without going through iPhoto because the XML (or whatever they use) might get all screwed up.

Crimguy said:

iPhoto is a bit of a pain in the a** these days. You need to right-click (control click) on the iPhoto Library package and select "Show Package Contents" to see the files. If you'd like to access them, you need to make symlinks of the folders within the package that reside outside the iPhoto library.

I'm wary of adding photos to those folders without going through iPhoto because the XML (or whatever they use) might get all screwed up.

Click to expand...

Blimey, no, you don't want to be messing with anything in the package, it's pretty easy to screw up the database that way.

You could certainly use it as a Read-Only system, but don't edit anything, once you change the modified dates it starts to go badly wrong.

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Andy Hewitt

I do that all the time.

Like Conchita, I just save it to the desktop, and it's easy to review and import if you want. Just be careful what format you save it in.

I use Capture NX to edit my RAW images and solved the problem as follows.
1. Create a folder with a name e.g Image Edits.

2. Set up iPhoto to use an external editor and to use RAW when editing with external editor. (Both selections are in the preference menus)
3. Open Automator and select the "Folder Actions" template

4. Select "import Files into iPhoto" from the Photos item in the Library of Automator and drag that into the window on the right it will hook up to the Folder actions template.

5. Optionally tick the box to delete the source images after importing. This will delete the image file after it has been copied into iPhoto

6. In iPhoto right click the image you want to edit in external editor, this will open up your image's RAW file in the editing application.
7. Do your editing then "save as" a JPG or TIFF to the folder created in Step 1.

8. The workflow script you created in steps 3, 4 and 5 will now import that JPG to your iPhoto library into a new event (if you selected that option) and you will have the edited version. Meanwhile the original RAW image complete with the list of edits which iPhoto cannot read will still be where it was i.e in the Originals Folder within the iPhoto package structure.

9. Now you can move the newly imported edited image back to the Event it came from.

10. If you delete the original image you right clicked in Step 6 and empty the Trash then the RAW image file will be deleted from your Mac and you will be left with the edited JPG or TIF version you created in steps 8 and 9. This may be what you want to achieve any way.

Finally, don't be tempted to start opening the iPhoto Package to get to the Originals folder where the image files (RAW, JPG etc) that were first imported to iPhoto from your camera are all stored. This has been advocated by some people but you really do not want to do this as you risk messing up the iPhoto application. The other folder called Modified is where iPhoto puts an edited version of the image file if you choose to edit within iPhoto.

Just a further note, when you right click on an image in iPhoto and select edit in external editor, this "duplicate" file is created immediately in the Modified folder. If you right clicked a RAW image that file is a JPG of the original file and no matter what you do in the external editor that original image is what you see unless you follow the steps I listed above. i.e you see the same unedited version of the file you edited in the external editor without re-importing.