I was in the same boat because I was quite happy to have Vista use Windows Photo Gallery to preview my pictures on a double-click, as typically I just want to look at them without having to open a whole new application to do so, but wanted Photoshop Elements to open on a right-click Edit. After lots of searching I've concluded that it isn't possible to do in Vista using the GUI, but if you feel confident enough, you can change it in the registry. And here's how:
- Open up the registry editor (Regedit.exe) as an administrator
- Under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, find the file extension you want to change (in this case .jpg)
- Take a note of what is listed under this key as the Default value (in this case it was "jpegfile")
- Find this entry further down under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT - it'll be located past the end of the file extensions bit
- Expand this entry and you will probably find three subkeys - CLSID, DefaultIcon and Shell
- Expand "Shell" and under here will be a subkey for each right-click menu item (in this case I had Edit, Open and Print)
- Under "Edit" you'll find another key called "Command", the default value of which is the program currently used to open the file when editing
- Change this value to the full path of your chosen editing program (in my case it was "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 7.0\PhotoshopElementsEditor.exe")
- After the final speech mark you will need to add a space, then a percent sign and the number one (e.g. Editor.exe" %1) - this tells the program not only to open, but to load the picture file you were right clicking on at the same time.
Hopefully that should work for you - it did for me!