Help with Lightroom Catalog

[ryee3]

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Dear All:

 

I am getting a new computer and about to change from Windows XP to Windows 7. I do not know how to transfer all the metadata on my Lightroom Catalog as well as the catalog and all the folders that I created within the catalog itself.

 

Can someone help me through that process? I am afraid I won’t be able to do it correctly and lose all the previous hundreds of hours of work and effort within that Catalog. Yes I tried doing this once before but had to start over the whole process again. I would like not to make this same mistake again! Dealing with the experts from Adobe over the phone was not very encouraging and more due to my computer illiteracy than theirs. Thanks for any solutions.

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[t024484]

Transferring all your images from XP to Windows 7 is like making a copy of the relevant folders to your Windows 7 system, and then importing them again in Lightroom with copy, move or add.

That is what I did, but the history of all manupilations was lost.

 

Hans

[rob_w]

It should be very easy to retain all your photos and your edits/manipulations/etc as stored in the catalog. You can either transfer the catalog file itself, along with the photos (the DNG files) in the same folder structure, or use LR's "Export" feature. If it were me I would buy an external hard drive then use "Export as Catalog" to export the entire collection to the external drive. Once you have installed W7 and LR, you can then import the entire catalog and continue as before in your new setup. Either approach should preserve the history of your manipulations, and a byproduct of the second approach is to have a complete backup of your catalog and photos on the external hard drive as a result.

 

That said, I have not used Windows 7 myself. As a Mac user I have transferred catalogs between multiple Macs as I have described, but it would be valuable if a Windows 7 user could confirm the technique I propose. Good luck!

[wda]

I changed from XP to Windows 7 Professional 64 bit mode earlier this year. I made sure that all LR manipulations were embedded in the relevant files and then backed up the catalogue twice for insurance. I then migrated all wanted files from my old PC to the new one (took many hours). Once LR was installed and running, it recognized my last working LR catalogue and work continued seamlessly.