Elements & PC storage

[JOJO]

It's me again!

I've just checked what's taking up most of the storage on our rather old PC and it appears that it's Photoshop Elements (900+ MB).

We've recently bought a 1 terabyte external hard drive which I was planning to transfer existing photos to.

Would it be possible for me to install Elements onto the external drive instead, then I can just keep it for my photos and use it as and when?

Many thanks,

[John]

The actual program should be on your PC, but the storage of images can quite happily be on an external drive.

[JOJO]

So am I correct in thinking I'll be able to edit the photos whilst they are still on the external hard drive?

( At present I've been having difficulty getting anything done as the PC keeps saying something about not enough scratch memory (don't quote me )

Thanks again

[John]

Yes, the external drive is just another location, just like a folder on your PC.

Scratch memory is the temporary space used by Photoshop to handle the files you are working on. You can select which drives are used as the scratch disk in the properties section of Photoshop. I can show you at the club.

[JOJO]

Ah right, it all sounds so simple now
That would be great.
Many thanks

[PhilipHowe]

Jojo, what I'd do is copy the older photos you are no longer working on to the external drive. Keep any you are currently working on, on the local PC hard drive. This will enable you to process faster, and, will also encourage you to backup your precious photos.

One other thing people don't tend to do is, have a good scan through them and DELETE any that you won't be processing, you'll be surprised how many out of focus, badly composed, test shots you'll have on there.

Don't work directly from the external drive.

[JOJO]

Thanks Philip.

I managed to transfer the thousands of old photos to the drive (without help from the kids might I add!), two and a half hours of my life I'll never get back.

I did end up deleting whole files of footy photos that were rubbish
And I've done as advised and kept this year's photos on the PC... So now I can get cracking with Elements