MY CONFESSION
I have a confession to make.
I have many people thinking that I use ACDSee to tag my digital scrapbooking supplies. The truth is that I have never utilized any program fully to tag, but only tested the programs.
I know many other digital scrapbookers are as timid as I am about spending many hours tagging, only to have all of the work lost. Anyone who has been in the digiworld for a while has read story after story of lost tags. I know many are like me and have a program, but are still afraid to spend the time tagging.
Before the trend to utilize ACDSee (after the Digital Scraproom program went away), my personal choice was to simply not tag anything until a better solution came along. I was hopeful that solution was ACDSee.
MY ACDSEE EXPERIENCE
After having spent numerous hours learning how to network the database and approximately 10 hours learning how the program worked while tagging items, I developed problems.
A few weeks ago I began getting an error message when clicking on tagged items indicating that the thumbnails were no longer associated with the files. My first realization was that I had renamed the root folder of my digital scrapbooking files (yes, my human error) and I thought that was my problem (but later realized it probably was not the problem).
Finally, it had dawned on me that my problems began when I first optimized the database. I had optimized from the laptop, but the database is on the desktop. I had thought my problems were associated with networking, but now I think it may have been another problem (read all the way to the bottom). I have read now of one other person who has lost all of her tagging when she optimized her database also.
After hours and hours attempting to rebind the files and repair and optimize the database (oh, the joys of watching and waiting for the program to do its thing and bring up the next screen), I decided all was hopeless.
Having resolved to wipe out all of my tagging and start all over again, my problems continued.
After deleting my database file and re-importing my file to put my tag categories in the sidebar (not all my tags), I attempted to retag a few items, only to arrive at the same problem as before (the tags were not associated with the files directly after importing).
I uninstalled the program again and manually found every file on my hard drive associated with the program and reinstalled. It still did not work. It was as if the program was still finding some old settings and retaining them.
I believe I uninstalled and reinstalled the program 5 or 6 times all together, but Heidi finally gave me a clue and instructions to manually delete the registry. After the last new install, the program finally worked again.
I tried importing my database, only to arrive at the same problem. Sigh. So I uninstalled the program, wiped out the registery, reinstalled the program, and gave up. I could have gone back and tested an earlier database, but after about 15 hours working with the program in a two day period (a few weeks ago), it was not worth my waste of time any longer.
All of my time installing the program, learning the program, figuring out how to network it, tagging, and fixing this big problem were all wasted time now. Nothing gets me more stressed than going backwards and wasting my time.
I think anyone who has lost tags and all their time will know exactly what it feels like and knows how hesitant you are to retag.
I did purchase the upgrade the other day, but immediately had problems again. I installed it on my laptop first and when it converted the database, it asked me if I wanted it in a certain location. I could have changed the location, but instead choose the "no," button as I knew I would not want to convert the database twice and the desktop was the better choice to do that. The stupid program proceeded to convert the database anyway and now the program settings are completely messed up again. With all my recent problems (keep reading below) with PSE6, I just sighed and gave up for a while. I know it can be fixed, it will just be more time consuming.
Now I've paid for this program twice and still am not able to utilize it.
It is a great program and does many great things and Connie and Heidi are the most awesome people. No other program has available to us two people to help us with our problems personally as ACDSee does. In addition, the two ladies are always around, easy to contact, and fast to help. You cannot get that with any other software company. In addition, the company is attempting to cater to digital scrapbookers and is listening to them to continue to improve the program.
I am not knocking the program, only sharing my personal frustrations with it and why I am choosing not to spend more time tagging at this point in time.
MY PSE6 ORGANIZER EXPERIENCE
I have never used the Organizer before because I always read such bad things about it, mostly regarding it using too much RAM. I've had so many various types of problems, anyone not computer savvy would have given up long before me as they would be helpless.
First, I had great problems just importing images and I have read others are experiencing the same problem. The program seems to be very picky.
I have 7 root folders for my camera images for 7 years and I was trying to import one year at a time. After churning for a very long time indicating that it was importing everything correctly, at the end, I got a pop up message saying the import had failed, with no explanation. Upon clicking okay, I received the normal popup indicating which files were not imported, most often those were .txt files or unrecognized video files, but it did not indicate anything with regard to the files that were causing the real trouble. After all that time sitting there watching it import, nothing was imported at all.
However, after pushing and pushing and pushing myself to continue on, I had to proceed with importing one individual folder at a time until I located a trouble folder. Finally, I narrowed it down to folders that contained .jpg's that were created with Pinnacle Studeo by grabbing still shots off of my camcorder. Now, these .jpg's work fine in every other program, but it appears that Adobe is very picky and did not like these files. What I do not understand is why it failed the entire import rather than just excluding them as it was doing with the other files it did not like.
I am hopeful that this is a bug in the program and an update will come along soon
My main problem, though, was that when I clicked on an image directly after importing it, it indicated that the thumbnail was not attached to the file and that I must have moved the file. What?!! I just imported it! This was the EXACT same problem I was having with ACDSee. However, PSE6 Organizer gave me some additional clues that I believe has helped me resolve my problem.
I discovered that it was trying to find the files on my F drive (my extra internal backup drive), instead of my C drive. I could see this from the reconnect box. However, I had just imported it from my C drive. Why was that? I have never associated it at any time with my F drive.
In fact, when I right click on the folder and choose to show the explorer location, it pointed to the correct folder on my C drive.
None of it made sense. This is all brand new tagging and cataloging on a fresh install...I should not been having this many problems.
When I tried to manually reconnect one file only directly with where it was located on the C drive, it said the reconnection was not complete....I am not even able to reconnect.
I tried to repair the catalog. Did not help.
I tried to optimize the catalog. Did not help.
Then I found the below on the adobe site and so I selected all 30,000 unattached files and pointed them to the c drive, which ran and ran and ran until it final became an unresponsive program.
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Hard drive references in the catalog's internal database are changed from the name of the drive (for example, "MYDISK") to the serial number of the drive's logical volume. It is possible to have multiple drives connected to your computer with the same serial number. Although this is unlikely, if you keep photos on multiple hard drives and the drives have the same serial number, the converted catalog may not correctly identify the location of some or all of the photos. If this happens, choose File > Reconnect > All Missing Files. Click the Browse button to specify the drive where Photoshop Elements should look for the missing files.
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I realized that there were files from Adobe installed on my F drive. It appeared that the majority of the files were installed on my C drive, but a few were installed on the F drive. I began to realize that my problems occurred when I first installed the program.
In fact, there were also some ACDSee files installed on my F drive. I tried deleting both the PSE and ACDSee files to no avail.
It appeared to be picking up my F drive as the same serial number.
Finally, I spent a long time last night fixing the problem. First, I moved things from my F drive to my C drive because I was going to be reformating it. Because I was afraid of losing files on my C drive during the process, I watched my computer back up my files for hours onto my external backup. Then I watched my computer for a long time as it reformated the F drive. Then I watched my computer work for a long time uninstalling and then reinstalling the program.
It appears to be working again, but we shall see what time holds. I am currently watching my computer reimport all of my camera images again.
I am getting so tired of watching my computer work while I get no work done. Everytime I tried to rebind, optimize, repair, import, uninstall, reinstall, etc....I was wasting my time just watching my computer run. I am SO stressed.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Maybe all my problems with both programs were caused by the computer mixing up the two drives. Maybe, hopefully, all of my problems will be gone now.
However, with all of my loss of tagging and loss of time, I highly doubt I will do much with these programs until new technology comes out. My time is better spent on making layouts than on tagging that may eventually be lost.
Heidi shared with me that the Pro version of ACDSee also writes tags to files, but that it only writes to .jpg's because files such as .png's do not contain the technology to accept tags yet. I might be inclined to purchase the Pro version of that program so as to not lose my tags, but not if it will only write to certain files, excluding others. I am imagining then, that what I thought was so great about PSE Organzer is not so great either as it probably only writes to .jpg's.
I plan to continue to play with both softwares, utilizing my camera images in PSE Organizer and my digital scrapbooking kits in ACDSee. Because the files have to be moved within the program, two programs cannot be used for the same files at one time. This will allow me to continue playing.
However, until Microsoft gets its head out of its horse's patoon and realizes the great need of a great many people and works on the technology of tagging, I probably will not commit much time to tagging anything other than my photos which can be written directly to each file. Microsoft could so easily resolve our problems by giving us the ability to put tags into the properties of all files, even being able to view them with the details view to sort them, but I bet they do not even realize there is a great need for it. Everyone, hurry up, write Microsoft!
Although this is less convenient than importing directly from the browser (XP or ACDSee), it does import the title of the element as the name of the layer which is very helpful when giving credits. 
