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Automatic Photo Backups
So what are you going to do with 20 GB (or more) of online storage at Photoshop.com? Photoshop Elements 7 introduces an extremely welcome new feature: Automatic online backups of your images.
When you create a new album (or edit an existing one), you have the option to enable a Backup/Synchronize checkbox. All photos in that album will be copied to your Photoshop.com account in the background. (Obviously, you would want a decent broadband Internet connection to make full use of this feature.) When you edit a photo in Photoshop Elements, the edited version is synchronized to Photoshop.com. The same applies the other way around, too: edits you make online are synchronized back to your Elements library.
The interface is no-frills; you can choose to view photos that have been backed up or are pending backup. If you’re concerned about network performance, you can right-click the Backup/Synchronization Agent in the Taskbar to set backups to work only when your connection is idle, or you can pause them entirely.
The feature currently works only on an album-by-album basis. If you want to back up everything in your library, you can create a new album and add all your photos to it; unfortunately, Smart Albums can’t be backed up, which would be a good way to automatically add new photos to the backup.
But the fact that Adobe is offering an easy way to back up your important photos is a great feature. Everyone knows that they should back up their data, but all too often the point doesn’t hit home until a hard drive fails or computer is stolen and all of their photo memories are gone forever.