Lightroom catalogue upgrade

[keithd]

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Hi all can anyone advise best practise to upgrade Lightroom 5 catalogue to lr classic cc. Will they import directly as I have upgraded my laptop to a mini Mac and most of the files or stored on external hard drives. I am proposing to to make a copy of the lr5 catalogue and open in lr classic cc.

I do not wish to have to move all the files across to the new machine just connect the external HD when required

cheers keith

[LocalHero1953]

The two risks you are managing are 1. changing laptops and 2. upgrading LR.

1 is not a problem. If you simply install the old LR5 and old .irdat catalog file on your new laptop, it may not see your images at the outset, but once you tell it where the new top level folder is on the external drive, LR will do the rest.

2 is not a problem either. Just upgrade from LR5 to LR Classic and LR will do the rest - it doesn't move your images, but I think it will do some housekeeping to update your .irdat file.

It is probably possible to set up LR Classic on your new machine, ask it to read your old LR5 catalog and find the images on the external drive, but that is the sort of double task that has caused me software problems in the past! In your shoes I would try to do the two setups separately. I would install LR5 on the new machine, check it can see the images, and only then upgrade to LR Classic.

 

[keithd]

Thanks for the advise I have already installed lr cc on new machine but will see if it will let me install lr5 and see how that goes or I could uninstall lr cc and do as you suggest 

many thanks for the input

cheers keith

[LocalHero1953]

I try to avoid telling people what they should do rather than saying what I would do in their shoes - a cop-out, but then I don't know your system or technical talents......

But in your shoes, now that you already have LR Classic installed, I would take a copy of your LR5 catalog (.irdat) and see if LR Classic will open it and find your images - it can't do any harm to your images, and might save you having to uninstall LR Classic, install LR5 and repeat.

[keithd]

Thanks  I have tried opening a lr5 catalogue but arc does not allow you to open catalogues that are on external drives or networks so have to transfer across to the mini Mac and connect the external drive that the images are stored on and see if that works. My whole strategy has to change as my external hd's are daisy chained via firewire but I can only connect one at a time via usb 3 a bit of a pain unless I get a hub of some description

Alternatively just get 1 larger external hd not my preferred option as I would like to have more than 1 location for storage and separate backup etc. They joys of upgrading all driven by the fact that my epson photo 2100 started to give me grief and not being able to get epson inks for it any more has sent me down this path have ordered an epson P900 (P906 in OZ ) 

 

[LocalHero1953]

Good luck! I keep my catalog files on my C drive and images on a NAS, which is backed up to another local drive, in turn backed up to the cloud. To speed up processing (and for when I'm not connected to the network) I use the LR Classic option of editing smart previews, which are stored on the C drive as well. I can't remember how many image management structures I've devised, implemented and discarded over the years.

Edited June 22, 2020 by LocalHero1953

[keithd]

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Thanks Paul I have found a hub that will do what I need so I just need to rationalise my management system and reorganise my external hd’s 4 in total and add a networked laptop all I need to do now is sort out my scanner and Silverfast.

thanks for the input Paul

keith