Creating your own backgrounds and using in Adobe Photoshop Elements for Photo-Books or Greeting-Cards

Now time has come to create your own backgrounds as per your choice and use them in Content panel of Adobe Photoshop Elements !!! With this, let's starting follow below mentioned procedure to create and place then in Content Panel :

(Note - All steps mentioned below and screenshots belong to 9th version of Adobe Photoshop Elements but should be relevant to most of the version of Photoshop Elements)

1. Launch Editor of Adobe Photoshop Elements

2. Go to File Menu and opt for New > Blank File ...

3. Below shown dialog will be opened :

4. Now it's time to enter appropriate values for :

- Name

- Width : 2640

- Height : 2640

- Resolution : 300

5. Now, do whatever you want to do with your background !!! I have created following background for Valentine's Day :

6. Now Background is ready but how to make is available in content panel of Adobe Photoshop Elements.

7. Now we have to create a metadata file which defines schema for arranging these JPEG files in content Panel. Let's Create a metadata file "Valentine.metadata.xml" for Valentine.jpg which has the following code:

"

"

8. Now we need to give a name to this metadata file and it should be ".metadata.xml".

Next thing to note is that filename is used in tag of XML, like :

9. Next thing is to make appropriate entries in this XML to make sure tha your background is shown in right category; E.g - 

New Categories can be added in this way. I mean Categories which are not in Editor but want to see !

10. Background file with metadata file is ready for placing at right place Place your jpeg and your metadata xml file at location :

On XP : C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\9.0\Photo Creations\backgrounds

On Win 7 : C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\9.0\Photo Creations\backgrounds

Please make sure that your Editor is closed and you relaunch it to see the background created in your content pane.

If you still do not find it in the content pane in Background category, close Editor and rename the file :  "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\8.0\Locale\en_US\MediaDatabase.db3" followed by application relaunch. The launch may take sometime as application creates thumbnails for your background at the location where you have created your jpeg.

So here is where I see my background template in Content pane of PSE :