I’m sure Ray will be along with some first-hand help, but in the meantime you might want to look at this:
Barbara Brundage "Photoshop Elements vs. Photoshop Album" 8/9/03 7:47am </cgi-bin/webx?13/25>
Ryan,
I don’t think that there is ANY other program, irrespective of platform, which can inherit PSAlbum’s tag information.
Byron
Byron, Album uses a MS Access database, so I’m sure there is a way to export it as a tab delimited file or something. The trouble is linking it back up again. Ray has been dealing with this, so hopefully he will have some answers.
If it makes any difference, I have PhotoShop CS on both platforms.
No, alas, Ryan, that won’t help here. You might want to try a cross-post in the Apple iphoto forum:
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http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?14@@iphoto>
There are a lot of switchers/cross platform folks there. I did a quick search and didn’t find anything relevant.
Thanks Barbara… I’ve added a post there.
You know, I’ve been thinking and I wonder if there is any way within windows to convert your album tags to file info in CS, especially with that extended metadata they have. PS CS will read that on either plaform.
It won’t help you much in iphoto, but iphoto’s file structure is so different that you will have a lot of reorganizing going on anyway, and if you could find the file via CS you can still find it, so maybe there’s a way there.
Hi all,
Sorry for being late… tough day…
Ok, here it is… There’s no automatic way of importing Photoshop Album pictures into iPhoto. Sorry, the plain truth. Further more, believe it or not, of all the gazillion applications for the Mac, n-o-n-e will open MS Access File. None. Nada. Niet. Aucune (application is a feminine word in French, is case you can read French). I think it’s a conspiracy thing… X-Files… XP… Ok, enough! Even FileMaker Pro won’t open MS Access through ODBC (Open DataBase Communication, or whatever..)
So, as it goes, here’s what I did. I exported pictures from PSA by tags, to folders designated with the according tag name. That made importing the pictures a little easier in iPhoto (File / Import / Pick the folder), in iPhoto now group them, and assign keywords / comments. As for the comments, I tried to tampered with iPhoto database, but it’s not a text file per se, so I simply (and painfully) retyped everything back in iPhoto.
I used Smart Albums as categories in PSA, based on the content of the comments (like ‘comments contains ZZZZ’). I used Keywords to group pictures that would have, otherwise, no relation between each others (digital imagery, edited pictures, cinema, family, etc.). That makes it possible for me to, say, bring up all the pictures of my family (grouped on keyword Family), or have only the pictures of my sister Lyne (smart albums based on comments content).
The files that would have been involved are iPhoto.db and Library.iPhoto, but they are in binary format (as far as I can tell), and I’m too new to the Mac to understand them. And I don’t have a programming language I understand enough installed to open and edit them. Although RealBasic sounds a lot like Visual Basic, I have so many other things to learn on the Mac, I just didn’t have the time to start programming right away.
The only other option I was left with was to wait for Microsoft to publish Virtual PC for the G5 (it’s not supported at the time), and run Photoshop Album under it. Since the release date of VPC isn’t known, even now, I wasn’t ready to wait not knowing when it’d be available.
And, running VPC to get Photoshop Album would also have forced me to use PSE under VPC (Edit / Edit with PSE…), that wasn’t making sense, to me that is.
Sorry I couldn’t be of any more help…
Ray
Ray, as we’re fond of saying here, you certainly worked the problem! 🙂
Thanks Chuck 🙂
One thing I forgot to mention is that iPhoto will retain the dates embedded in the images. So, all is not lost!
Ray
I am not too good at this type of thing between programs and PCs. But here is how I got all, yes each and every single one of my photos from my old Mac (OS 9) to my new Mac with OS X.
First, I always take my original photos, name the folders, date them, and otherwise identify them,,,,,,,then I copy each folder over to my external hard drive.
I do this anyway, long before I even thought of a new computer. So when I got the new Mac, all I had to do was to drag all my picture folders from ext hd, to my new Mac. These are the copies of all my originals, now happily sitting in a folder on the desktop.
Then, after this is done, you can take any of them, and put them into iPhoto. I have only put a few into iPhoto so far, as there are so doggone many. I also have the best of each folder, in another folder titled "Best". This is how I did it, I know its a bit convoluted, but you dont lose any, and they are originals. Hope this helps a little,
Jane
Oh, I did have Virtual PC for a while several years ago, and it made the G4 run very slowly and it was a bit buggy with some programs. I just didnt have good luck with it.
J
Thanks Ray for the depth of your answer! I may end up just keeping my photos on the PC in PSA. I have several thousand pics and every one is tagged with each person in the photo. I can’t imagine trying to manually type each person for iPhoto. It sure would be nice if Adobe made PSA for OS X.
Ryan,
I haven’t abandoned the idea, once I can understand how iPhoto’s library is oganized, and once I have a programing language (other then C++) on my Mac, I’ll give it some thought. I’ll post again if, and when, I come up with a better solution.
Do you have a G4 (or G3) Mac? If so, you might just use Virtual PC. Since PSA isn’t a game or something rather processor consumming (like a 3D design application), you might be lucky. If you have VPC, give it a try. Organizing will be easy, and modifying your computer will only involve a few more steps, which would be to copy your picture on the Desktop, edit them, and re-import them in PSA. I’d say it’s worth the "detour"
Ray
Ray,
I have Virtual PC on the iMac and it is really slow … I did try a Photoshop 7 demo on it but everything took forever.
I now only use VPC for a College course I am doing.
Wendy
I suspected it wouldn’t be a good idea for Photoshop 7 (it’s very, very slow on my PIII 500 at work). But, Photoshop Album is less demanding (at least, I think).
Anyway, that being said, I’m getting closer to scripting the transition between Photoshop Album 2.0 and iPhoto. I found out how to script iPhoto. Now, I need to construct the program, and learn how to extract the information in Photoshop Album. But… there’s hope!
Ray
Ray, Photoshop Album 2.0 bogs down badly on my admittedly out-of-date PC (Athlon 850, 512 MB RAM). I’ve basically abandoned it until such time as I get a screamer with sufficient RAM.
Chuck
Chuck, you need a Mac with iPhoto… (now, I’m asking for it!!!!!!!!!) Come on, everyone, bash me hard 🙂
I didn’t recall it being that slow. I had a P4 with 1.25 GB of RAM. But I suspect RAM isn’t an issue or your system. And I know nothing of Athlon’s processors. Can’t compare.
Ray
Ray, if you could figure out that script, it would be AWESOME!!! Thanks for your help!
As a matter of fact, 2 hours ago, I bought ‘Learning Applescript in 24 hours’ 🙂
I understand there were better books, more technical, more adapted perhaps, but when I looked at all of them, that one stroke me as being more like me, that is, quick overlook, so that I get the basics to look by myself on more specific topics.
I don’t want to set everyone’s hope up too quickly, this could take me a few weeks (or months), but I’ve alread got my hands on a script (publicly available) that’ll scan the entire iPhoto database.
In order to simplify the process, and speed up dev team, I’ll base my work on the assumption that the user has exported his/her pictures using the Export command, by categories, out of PSA. Those pictures are already categorized and imported in iPhoto, and that there are no duplicates (same name, different location). You’ll have to understand, there are no ways to make sure which picture in iPhoto’s folders equals which other one under PSA (thus the limitation on duplicates).
I’ll also have to find a way to export PSA’s tables an AppleScript readable format. This, I can do myself at home as ‘the beige box’ (i.e. as per Carl’s other post!!) has Microsoft Access / Excel.
That’s where I am for now! I’ll report back a.s.a.p. I have something to share.
Ray
Any update on your progress Ray?
I’ve not yet completed the project. I can’t tell you precisely when I’ll be able because I’m going off-line in about 10 days for an unknown period of time. I’ve experimented with some basic scripts and it seems easy to work with.
I’ll report back when I have something substantial to show 🙂
Ray
