I downloaded the Hidden Powers of elements, for my elements 1 program and the read me file was corrupted. (twice) I can get it to show up in the welcome window when I open the program, but nothing appears to be loaded so I can use it. Is there a link or a "walk-through" that could help me complete the set-up in simple language? Thanks in advance!

Sue

You are probably using an older utility to unstuff/unzip the file. Try Enzip (http://www.cpam.freeserve.co.uk/) if you are on PC and Maczipit (http://www.maczipit.com/) for mac.

Download the file from the website again, and unzip the fresh file with the new utility.

Richard

Thanks, It seems to be working now, although I don't see where the 87 pre-installed actions are located. There is nothing in sets. The frames are there and working. Am I still not set up correctly?

The "frames" are actions. that accounts for about 60. there are additional actions for other things in a few of the other categories. The idea is that you will be able to add on as you like.

does this make sense?

Wow, that was a fast reply! I guess it didn't occur to me that the frames were actions. I am still new to the terminology. Thanks for setting me straight.
Sue

Ok, now I'm starting to really feel stupid. I downloaded some actions and I thought I put them in right, but apparently not. I still can't get the stinkin' read me files to open, and I've tried several locations without any luck. Is this stuff at all difficult, or am I just too blonde to handle it?

It is my guess that without consulting the read me files you will have limited success. It isn't entirely easy, no. However, you should be able to use the pre-installed actions. If there are others you want to use, I would be glad for a discussion of that here. A pretty big frustration for me has been that i expected some people would share some information about either actions they want/need, and that we could come together and make them available. This would mean the more technically oriented folk (or myself) could snap together some stuff so the less technical could easily install -- and I could make it all available in one place.

Few have stepped forward. it would make a big difference.

The readme files are included with the installation and should be right in the Photoshop Elements program folder. Take a look theere. If they aren't there, you may have installed incorrectly.

I can use the actions that came with Hidden Elements, (at least, I think so, I don't know how many came with it, but it seems about rigth) I downloaded some other actions and I can't seem to access them. Perhaps you could tell me the proper folder to place them in or if there is a step I am somehow missing? Sorry to be a pest about this. It seems like I am so close to making this work...
Sue

Hi Sue, I think I am in the same boat. I have everything successfully downloaded and finally into my computer(Mac), but when I click on the new Welcome screen with all the wonderful new tools staring at me, nothing happens. I am beginning to think that where the tools are inside Photoshop Elements 2 could be possibly in the wrong folders. That is where I become vastly confused.
I put up some screenshots on another thread here, and I am hoping that Richard can see from them what I have done wrong. As soon as we find out, and if I am able to correct it and finally use the tools, I will take new screen shots and put them here. I have to see my errors, to learn how to correct them.
I am somewhat of a beginner, taking lessons, and really really neeeeeeeed these great tools!
Jane

Hi Jane,

Glad you found your way over here.

Are you sure the tools are not working? Try this out for me:

Open a photo, use the lasso to draw a small shape. Do cut then paste. Get the welcome screen up and click on layer mask. Then check the layers palette ... is there not a new layer in there?

Let me know how you go on

Wendy

Sue,

Richard posted a walkthrough for installing actions a little while back ... if you go to http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7218

then scroll down the screen I think you will find it. I did a screen print and have kept a copy for the future.

Wendy

Hi Wendy, Yes! the Bonus Tools work! Layer mask did add a new layer! But I do get a message saying that "The command 'Make' is not currently available".

I had been trying to use 'Frames' over and over again, and when nothing happened with the tools across the top, I gave up. I needed to use the top tools to follow my lessons.

I do think we are figuring out my problems, I think that, when you look at my screen shots, that things are not in the proper places.

But this sure is a breakthrough for me, to be able to use the tools on the left.

But Frames I would LOVE to use, as that is the current lesson.

We are gaining! Thanks, Wendy for the help, there are others watching here, and this is a great help for them too.
I must put dinner on the table, so my husband wont starve, but I will be back very soon.
Thanks, Jane

Jane,

You are getting there ... I believe you get the message "The command 'Make' is not currently available" when you are trying to apply a mask to the background layer. You need to copy the background layer click on the copy layer and then try again.

Now Frames: Open a photo then click on the little frames heading on the top right hand side. The bottom part should now change to Buds Wooden frames 1. If it does then click on preview mode right at the bottom of the list and you should then see thumbnails of the frames. Click on one and it should then frame your picture.

Let me know how you go on :)

Wendy

Hi Wendy, This is the problem area, nothing happens when I click on Frames or anything on the top. Everything on the left side works.
But I need Frames, and nothing up there works at all. Its not greyed out, it acts like a link, but is inoperative.
I started fooling around with the innards of Photoshop Elements and copied Frames into various parts of it, figured if Frames was in multiple places, that eventually it would get into the works. But no.
Frames is jinxed for me. I did get Jodi Frye's frames downloaded, installed, and applied in less than 5 minutes, so I can't be that dumb,,,,,
I will try more tomorrow, and thanks for your help. Wish Richard would tell me something, he must have some kind of an idea what I have done wrong,,,,,,,,
Jane, the dunce of HiddenPowerville:(

"I started fooling around with the innards of Photoshop Elements and copied Frames into various parts of it, figured if Frames was in multiple places, that eventually it would get into the works. But no."

AHA! see, you ARE fond of customizing, and this is as I suspected in the other thread. If you copy the files to enough places you will get them to show up, but you WON'T get the actions to work. The files are installed to different places in Elements, and not all to one directory. That has to do with the way elements works. You are now seeing the screens because you copied them to the right place, but the actions are in the wrong one.

You need to install one more time, and install you the Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 FOLDER (read the screen -- do not target the program FILE). Read the screens during installation and be sure you target the right program folder.

What you might want to try is doing a clean install of Elements, and then the tools. If it fails, throw out the whole thing and try again...targeting a different folder. Be sure you are starting Elements from the new install (though you could just trash the old one entirely, or rename it Temp Adobe Photoshop Elements 2).

I hope that helps.

Hi Richard, I think that I am going to be able to figure this out with your help.
I did post my other info in detail, in the other thread, and will follow your instructions from start to finish.
Being able to get everything on the left side of the Welcome screen working, has given me confidence to see if I can get Frames and the Actions to work.
I am going back throughout today and carefully place everything where you say to.

Then will re-install if needed,,,,,,,

I sure am looking forward to these wonderful tools!
Thank you, Jane:)

No..no. Please let the installer do what it was made to do. You shouldn't be moving files around -- you'll just make things confused within the directories. use the installer, read the directions and follow them. It is all you need to do for a successful install.

Hi Richard, I will do it over again, new install, as you say.
I sure don't know what I am doing, I won't move any files this time, even tho I did get the bottom left Welcome screen things up and running. I will just leave things where they 'land'.

I mentioned in the other thread that I don't know if I should remove anything before I re-install it?

Also, the instructions with the HPA3.sea were Microsoft Word, I can't open them, so my instructor sent them to me in plain text, so I now can read the instructions!
Now lets see if this old brain can follow what they say to do.

But I won't do anything before I hear from you tomorrow. that is a promise.
Thank you so much for helping me thru this process, I must admit that I never have had this much trouble installing anything before. I need to read the instructions and understand them before I do the re-install.
Thanks, Jane

Most installations you do will be for stand-alone programs and that is far easier to do (if often more complicated to design). This installation is different in that it is a modification. It has to be targeted to add to existing components. If you target the installation correctly using the installer, there should be no need to change things around, and I can almost guarantee that unusual things will happen if you mess with the files and aren't sure of what you are doing.

when you do a clean install (after reading the instructions), if anything goes wrong, I can tell what it was and we can go from there. Just install ONCE -- don't try it multiple times if it fails, as that will make it harder for me to figure out what's going wrong.

OK?

Hi Richard, OK that sounds good. So I assume that I don't need to take any of the old files out from my first and second install.

I have moved my 6 screenshots to here,
http://www.pbase.com/image/23210952
and the captions explain what each one represents in the order of what I have done.

I will wait until you see these and determine if I need to take stuff out, or just install again.

Thanks! I really am looking forward to your wonderful tools!
Jane

From what I see here things seem to be in the right place. The only other time I have encountered a problem like this is when a user had more than one installation of Elements. They were looking at the file structure for the one they weren't using.

Can you do a search for Elements and see what you come up with? I would also be interested in seeing what you get when searching for hiddenpower.html (how many times it appears and where). The other test you can do is this:

In HTMLPalettes/Welcome, open the index.html file in a web browser by dragging it into an open browser window. You should see the hidden power welcome screen. Click on the Frames link and you SHOULD see the frames layout. if not, then there is either something wrong with the index.html file or the content of the Frames folder. I am not clear why a problem would happen with your installation in this way and no one elses...Just so you know, you will get a page error if you click on one of the tools/actions in the web browser. This method is only good for testing the navigation.

Let me know.

Hi Richard, First, the search for Elements brought up 55 Items
(Some of these are Lisa Neals actions that I had from long ago and never installed and forgot about) I am going to move that folder off my computer right now,)

OK now I have 39 in my Elements search, thats better.

Elements 2 brought up 10
Hiddenpower.html brought up none
HTMLPalettes/Welcome brought up none

But when I dragged the index.html into Netscape, there was everything!
Clicked on Frames, and there they were!


(I took all my Elements version 1 off the computer last March, when I purchased Elements 2)

Last week when I installed HiddenPower, I put it in the wrong folder first, I put it in 'Adobe Photoshop Preferences' realized my mistake, so re-installed them into 'Adobe Photoshop Elements 2'. Wonder if that is part of my problem.

Closer and closer to success!
Thank you so very much for helping me with this, I will put up more screenshots this afternoon if you want me to.
Jane

well, this is really very strange. I will have to assume that you obviously do not have the tools from the book, which is fine. However, that you see everything from netscape makes no sense. you see, the welcome menu in elements is really just a modified browser. the files you access through Netscape are the same Elements will access, using the same links.

The search for Elements 2 brough up 10 items? I would be interested in seeing that list eventhough that seems OK.

There are two things to try (not at the same time).

1. Restart Elements (shut down Elements and start from the icon) while holding down Shift+CTRL/Command+ALT/Option (PC/Mac). This will rebuild your preferences, and delete your settings file.

Try the tools after that. If they don't work try the next idea.

1. install a second copy of Elements to your desktop.
2. Run the installer for the tools and target the program folder on the desktop.

Once you have done that (ONE TIME), don't move any of the files and send me screen shots of the Recipes and Welcome folders, with one level of subfolders open.

How much RAM do you have on your machine? can you tell how much is available? do you use virtual ram? how are your scratch disks set?

Let me know.

Hi Richard, Here is a screen shot of all my Elements 2 stuff.
http://www.pbase.com/image/23330942

(Have 448 MB ram, never had a memory problem or message, have given plenty to each program.
I do forget and have many programs open at once and far too many windows going all at the same time, but the computer never complains, I just have to wade thru stuff.. Then I remember to quit stuff that I am not using.
Do leave virtual memory on most of the time.)

Never have rebuilt preferences on Photoshop Elements as it works fine, but let me know just what keys to use for the Mac, as the PC ones confuse me. And I will try it.

Oh, I think I know what I should do, lets install Photoshop Elements 2 on my G3 powerbook and try this on it. I don't want to upset my G4, as everything on it including Photoshop Elements 2 is working just fine.
Maybe part of the problem is that I do have sooooo much stuff on this computer, that maybe I could have some kind of a conflict?

Thank you for your continuing help, the powerbook with the new install might be the way to go.
Jane

Hi Jane,

To delete prefs ... Close Elements then restart Elements whilst holding down Control + Alt + Shift (Some people call the three keys Apple, Option, Shift ... which can be a bit confusing). A little box will pop up which says "Delete the Adobe preference file" just click on yes.

I'm amazed that you haven't had to do it yet ... I seem to have to do it every couple of weeks or so.

Won't be long now before you are using the tools :)

Hi Wendy, Thank you for the Mac keys. I never have done this, and was wondering if it changes my settings or if there could be any harm done to Photoshop Elements such as losing my collection of filters, Jodi's neat frames and other goodies that I have added to Photoshop Elements?

I am going to try the whole HiddenPower installation on my powerbook, but first I have to install Photoshop Elements 2. I just have an old version of Photoshop on it, and should take that off.

Then when and if it works, I can compare between the computers, and can show Richard my screenshots so he can diagnose my errors.
Thanks for the info.
Jane

Jane,

When you delete prefs you keep all your frames etc ... the only thing you lose is any personal settings you have in Elements Preferences (changes you have made under Photoshop Elements>Preferences) for example I have set the History State to 50 instead of the default 20.

Goodies are left intact BUT it is always a good idea to keep a copy of them in a separate file in case you have to reinstall Elements again. If you don't know how to do that just let me know and I will talk you through it.

you will get there :)
Wendy

Hi Wendy, What a great idea!
I always put copies of everything on my external HD, so this is what I will do with this.
To do this correctly, should I take the whole Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 folder inside my Applications folder on the hd, and just copy it to the ext hd?
If that is the way to do it, I will do it today, like right now!

Then all my extras are there, in their proper places.

Another question that I have wondered about, when you re-install a program, first I should go thru everything and search to get all the old stuff out. So that everything new is new? Or will it just install over and re-write the program.

You can see that I am a bit confused with tinkering with my programs.
Thanks!
Jane

Hi Jane,

Normally I just put a copy of all the "goodies" in another folder on another partition of the internal HD (or on my LaCie drive). There really isn't any point in backing up all of PSE2 onto another drive as you already have that on your original disc. Same thing with Richard's tools.

Now to backup your goodies:

Create a new folder (I do it on the desktop) , go to Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 folder then find the Plug ins folder and the Presets folder and work your way through them making copies of all the brushes, styles etc that you collected from other sources.

To copy them into your new "backup folder" hold down the ALT key and drag and drop from the Adobe folders into the new one ... that copies rather than moves ... take a look and you will see a little plus sign come up.

After I had finished I moved the folder from the desk top to another partition of my internal HD.

I then created folders within the Backup folder so that I could sort the goodies by type (Brushes, Styles, Gradients etc) ... It just keeps them tidy and makes them easier to find. Now when I download anything new I install it as usual then drop a copy into the Backup folder)

As far as re-installing ... the Mac usually overwrites BUT as you are having so many problems I would remove the lot before I started a re-install, just to be on the safe side.

Hope this all makes sense :)
Wendy

Hi Wendy, Yes, that makes perfect sense. I will make the copies and have them identified, then slide them over onto my LaCie hd.
Then if I ever need to do a re-install, all my goodies are there and waiting if I need them.

Actually my Photoshop Elements is working perfectly, so I guess that I didn't cause the Photoshop Elements itself any problems, just with the Hidden Power tools.
But I think that I will try the install thing with my Powerbook, and maybe that will uncover my mistake, and it will be good just for practise for me.

Today is my littlest grandson's 3rd birthday, so probably I won't get back to my computer projects until later in the evening.

Thank you for all the great info! When I learn something new, it sure helps to have it explained in steps.
Jane

Hi Jane,

When you install just take it slowly and maybe you will uncover what when wrong before, as you say its all good practise.

Enjoy the birthday ... three is such a lovely age :) and grandchildren are so special.

Speak to you soon
Wendy

Thanks, Wendy, I will do this, practise and practise.
My husband took many pictures of Max, our grandson, he always manages to be a big part of my Photoshop Elements lessons.
Your challenge is really neat! I even tried one this time too.
Jane:)

Jane,

I have just been over to look at your challenge entry ... its really good. Is that a Jodi frame I spotted ... she is so talented. Just wish I had half her talent.

On my challenge the Eyeballs came from a tutorial I have just finished ... its quite good.

The link is http://teamphotoshop.com/photoshop/tutorials/techniques/eyeballs/eyeballs.php

Its only a short one but very effective.

Let me know how the install goes

Wendy