Loading Katie's Drop Shadow Styles - PSE6 on Mac

[jphutc]

I am a new Mac user -- and also new to PSE6 (had been using PSE3 on a PC). I purchased the drop shadow styles and placed them in the Photoshop Styles folder, but they are not showing up in the Style pallette. I've read through all of the questions on the forum related to this, but can't seem to find an answer for PSE6 on the Mac. Can anyone help?

[hguenthe]

Check out this thread

[jphutc]

That did not make any difference. It seems like perhaps I need to "install" or "load" it, but I can't seem to find any options to do that.

I have Mac OS X (I think that's OS 10). I used to be a proficient PSE user, but 6 is very different and I'm wondering if the Mac OS makes it even more different?

Thanks for trying to help me!

[hguenthe]

Hopefully someone with PSE6 on a mac can help out. They are a great set of styles to use.

I upgraded from PSE4 to CS so never upgraded my PSE to 6 so am pretty clueless to its changes from PSE4.

[jphutc]

After searching on the internet, I found my answer on the Adobe Forums. I had to add the following steps to Heather's instructions (in the above link). It was a little scarey, but worked!

Thanks again.

In case of layer styles (unlike brushes) you need to add metadata corresponding to the .asl file you are trying to add.

Close PSE6 if opened.
Now add your .asl file for style in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/6.0/Locale/en_US/Photo Creations/Layer Styles/

Now you need to add metadata for the asl file you just added. For this, you need to goto /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/6.0/Locale/en_US/Photo Creations Metadata/Layer Styles/
Copy paste an existing xml file there(say 'Bevels.xml'). Now open the xml file you just created using Notepad. You will see two places where layer stle name is listed: 'CatBevels' and 'Bevels'. Replace 'Bevels' with the name of your style using exactly the same word structure. For example : 'CatNewStyle' and 'New Style'
Save the changes.

Now you need to rebuild the MediaDatabase. To do so, goto /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/6.0/Locale/en_US and rename MediaDatabase.db3 to MediaDatabaseOLD.db3
Restart PSE6. It will take some time to open as it builds new Contents and Effects.

You can find the new style listed with the PSE's default style in Effect pallet now.

[hguenthe]

Glad you got it all worked out!

[Island Girl]

Hi I am still having trouble with this (Anna's freebie, I got Katie's drop shadows to work). I want to take the extra step that jphutc recommends by adding metadata. my question is can I use TextEdit to edit the file or does it have to be notepad (I don't seem to have that program). Thanks, any help appreciated.

[hguenthe]

Yes, you should be fine using TextEdit. It is the Mac equivalent of Notepad on Windows.

[jphutc]

Just thought I'd let you know that I was not successful getting Anna's freebie loaded using this technique either, I'm not sure why. Logic tells me it should work, but I didn't have any luck. I decided not to worry about it since all of Katie's drop shadows were available.

[AllynD]

But, Anna's freebie loaded for me perfectly with this method!