A typical workflow example

For your reference, here's how I use Elements.


First off, I always transfer images from a card reader directly into a prenamed folder on my computer or external hard drive (Mac or PC, whichever I am using at the time).

After each download, I try to remember to back up everything to a second drive—by dragging and dropping from one drive to the other (my external hard drives are formatted to be 100% readable by both PC and Mac computers—a tech term called ExFAT formatting).

Card reader: Here's a glimpse of how I work with images. I manually download images straight into labeled folders. This is my travel file—so folders are labeled by year and destination. Inside each are more folders corresponding to each day of travel in that location.

As I always specifically name folders each time I download a new batch of files, I don't need to use the Organizer a great deal—but I would recommend...