Viewing and finding photos

Photoshop Elements offers a variety of options for sorting and viewing the media in your catalog, and a range of tools to help you quickly find just the files you need. In the Organizer you can search your catalog by media type, filename, date, folder location, star rating, album, keyword tag, text, or a range of other criteria, and then refine, sort and view the search results by album or in chronological order.

• The Find bar You can drag a photo, keyword tag, creation, or album onto the Find bar across the top of the Media Browser to locate similar photos and media files. The Find bar also offers options for sorting the search results.

• The Find menu Use the Find menu commands to search your catalog by date, caption, file name, history, media type, metadata, or by visual similarity. The Find menu also provides options for finding photos and media files that have unknown dates, are un-tagged, or are not included in any album.

• Keyword Tags, Albums and Star Ratings View only those files with a selected keyword tag, or combination of tags, by clicking the Find boxes in the Keyword Tags panel, or files in a particular album by clicking in the Albums panel. Use the Star Ratings filter in the Find bar to see just those photos and media files with a specified rating, or to narrow a search based on any other criteria.

• Text Search box Type in the text box above the Find bar to locate media with matching text—whether it’s in the filename, caption, metadata, or album name. The Text Search box also includes a dynamic list of all your existing keywords.

• The Timeline Choose Window > Timeline to display the timeline above the Media Browser. Use the Timeline as a search tool in its own right, or in combination with any of the other tools and views to help you refine a search or navigate the results. You might search for photos with a particular keyword tag, and then use the Timeline to limit the search to a specific folder or date range.

  In Thumbnail view, click a month or set a date range in the Timeline to find photos and media files by capture date. The Timeline shows you a breakdown of your catalog by import date in the Import Batch view and an overview of the folder by folder distribution of your media files in Folder Location view. The height of the bars in the timeline indicates the relative number of files in each group. The Timeline becomes particularly useful when your catalog contains a large number of files captured over a period of several years and spread over many folders on your hard disk.