Hi,
I am soon (I hope) moving from a PC to an iMac. I have one particular question.
I have a fairly large photo collection, and have been using Photoshop Elements 4, to index and tag them. I am planning to get the latest version of PE (11) to install on the iMac.
Would I be able to migrate the PC's PE4 Organiser data to the iMac in such a way that it would all be incorporated into the PE11 program?
Would it be better to install PE11 on the PC first, I assume that it would recognise the earlier version and automatically takeover the tags etc., and then transfer that data to the iMac?
I hope that this makes sense, thanks in anticipation.
Before I start answering, let me first say I prefer to organize my own files. I don't rely on Picasa, iPhoto or anything else.
When I upgraded from a PC to a Mac, I had been running Syncback (freeware) for months. Every night at 3am it would copy "my documents" to a network drive and I made sure everything I wanted to save, including photos was underneath that folder. When I brought my Mac home, I merely powered off my old Dell, plugged in and powered on my Macbook, browsed to the network drive and copied all my stuff over. I never powered on the PC again since then, except to wipe and install Linux so it wouldn't be completely useless.
I really don't like adobe software. I actually hate it. I have used Photoshop, Dreamweaver and of course Reader and Flash. I can't stand Adobe's frequent updates and their activation bullcrap. If you want to use PE11, I suggest you only pay for it once on the Mac. Personally I think iPhoto or Aperture is a better investment. Gimp (freeware) will provide many of the capabilities of Photoshop with a somewhat uglier user interface and no activation bullcrap.
I would check with Apple to see if they can import tags from PE. I would also check with Google Picasa. How large is your collection? Mine is over 300 Gig and I find iPhoto works pretty well. Not perfectly but pretty well. I do NOT allow iPhoto to import my photos. My iPhoto Library is just over 11 Gig even though it has metadata for 300 Gig of photos. iPhoto Library is actually a folder you can browse by option clicking and picking "show package contents" but I still prefer to keep my photos in my own folders.
To migrate to OSX, you can share your PC disk on the network, browse to it from your new Mac and copy everything over. Again I recommend against allowing any application to "organize" your files. Perhaps it's because I've been using computers since before Apple and Microsoft existed but to me this is something best done by the end user, especially for a large amount of data. My attitude is I own my data and just like I must clean and organize my own garage, I don't let some outside company like Microsoft, Apple or Google come in and organize photos I've taken, stories I've written or music I've recorded.
