If you want to learn more about how to "move lightroom catalog to new computer" subject , you need to visit: ▶ ministryofphoto.com This video shows you how to move lightroom catalog to new computer the correct way This video shows you everything you need to know in order to: -How to extract the lightroom catalog from an older computer -How to import the lightroom catalog to a new computer -How to re-link the RAW files in lightroom after moving the file's location -move lightroom catalog to another computer -how to move your lightroom catalog to a new computer -how to move lightroom catalog to new computer Something I noticed when I was looking for info on "move lightroom catalog to new computer" was how many people didn't know the correct way to move your lightroom catalog to a different computer. Move lightroom catalog to new computer came about because there seems to be a lack of understanding on how to do this properly. If you are wondering how to do this, this video should be of interest to you. UA-cam is the best website to visit when searching for videos about move lightroom catalog to new computer. Move lightroom catalog to new computer is explained in detail so that you can follow along.. To like a video, hit the like button under the video . To dislike a video, use Thumbns down button. The Autoplay feature on UA-cam makes it easier to choose what to enjoy next. After you enjoy a UA-cam video, it will instantly play another related video based on your viewing history. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ REMAIN TUNED: UA-cam 👉 ua-cam.com/users/dancantero Facebook 👉 facebook.com/dancantero Twitter 👉 twitter.com/dancantero I hope you enjoyed my "move lightroom catalog to new computer" video clip.
It may have been a little bit different back hen you made this video but at least by today I hope you, and thousands of other 'photographers', LEARN . . . "Lightroom" doesn't have a 'catalog''. That beast belongs to LIGHTROOM CLASSIC!
Don't keep your photos on a local drive and you won't need to go through this lengthy procedure. I've long ago moved all my pictures to a NAS drive. All you need to do when getting a new computer is mount a network drive and importing a catalog. Done.
Hi Dan. Thanks for the informative tutorial. I remember you mentioning that you backed up your photos drive. Could you tell me what program you use as a backup utility? I use Acronis, however find it somewhat tedious.
Hi Dan, thanks for your video. Unfortunately I still don't understand how that would work for me. My situation is as follows: I currently run Lightroom on my Windows pc The photos and catalog are all stored on an internal SSD (second drive) Now I (finally) bought myself a MacBook Pro, but it only has 512 Gb of internal storage. I want to move Lightroom to my new Mac, but since internal storage is rather low, I bought an external SSD of 2T to store the photos and the catalog. Since I will not be using the Windows pc a lot, I decided to format the external SSD in the Mac format. I installed Lightroom on my new Mac. Now my question is, how do I transfer the catalog and photos from my Windows PC to the Mac. I cannot use the new SSD as it is formatted for Mac. I do have other external SSD's but I am looking to transfer without breaking anything, any suggestions ?
Great video! One question after you’ve downloaded your catalog from your old computer into a drive and getting ready to download it into my new computer what file in my new computer do I download it to? Thank you! 😎
Hey Anthony, if I understand the question correctly, you have 2 choices. You can leave the catalogue file on the external drive and have everything in one location or just create a folder anywhere on your new computer and copy all files except for the actual images. I hope that helps but if you have any other questions let me know. Dan
2024 question. I have my old laptop with all my raws and edits stored on an external drive. 20,000 photos to be exact. But I'm trying to move my catalog to my brand new computer. Can I just move the catalog over without having to copy all 20k photos?
Hey! Sorry for the late reply. Since making this video, this process has been made easier. Perhaps it's time for an updated video! The answer is yes you can just copy the catalog to your external drive and just unplug from your old computer and plug into the new computer and you should be good to go. Just make sure to not rename the drive or any other change like that. Hope this helps. Dan
Hi Dan I currently use a laptop and i have the main catalogue, and backups, and images on the external SSD. I'm soon getting a desktop PC which i want to use most of the time, and sometimes use the laptop with the same catalogue What i want to do though is transfer the main catalogue from the external SSD to the new desktop PC for better performance, while keeping the images on the external SSD, along with the backups of the catalogue, but also occasionally use the external SSD on the laptop. Is this possible to do or even beneficial? I prefer not to store the images on the desktop nor the laptop
You actually have the ideal setup. I also keep all my catalogs and images on an external drive and I back them up to my local drive on the computer. If you can have the catalog and images on external drives it's going to give you the best performance. Actually.... having the catalog on an external drive and the images on a different external drive will give you the best performance but it's not really practical and the speed difference is minimal. If you move it to your pc drive it may actually go a bit slower because Lightroom will be competing with all the other window file operations. Hope that makes sense.
Great video Dan, very easy to follow, liked & subscribed Just a couple of quick questions (please bear with me I'm a bit of a dinosaur/technophobe) Following this procedure does this copy the files to the EHD/new computer leaving a copy on the old computer or does it move files from the old to the new. Only ask because I have just bought a new set up & want to move everything over but would like the security of knowing I still have it on the old computer just in case I make an error :-) Secondly I am still using the old standalone Lightroom 6, does this procedure still work with the old LR ? Many thanks
Hey Lenny, welcome to the channel. This is a good question. The process in this video won't delete the original files. It makes a copy of the files for your new location so it means that you'll still have the photos on the old computer. Something to keep in mind is that any new edits made on the new computer not be applied to the old computer and vice-versa. Still this is a good way to have a backup just in case something happens to the new one. I hope that makes sense.
Does this mean that you now have two catalogs, and each time you do this you add a catalog? My situation is a new computer, where I am moving some hundreds of folders and thousands of photos (everything) from the old machine to a new machine.
Hi Michael, the number of catalogs stays the same as in the old computer. The idea is that once you migrate everything from your old computer to the new one it would look just like the old one. It would also mean that you would stop using the old computer from that point. I hope that helps.
Great video! Buy a question....I have all my raw pictures on an external hard drive. My catalogue is on the actual computer. I intend to put the catalogue on the same hard drive for the purpose of a new computer. When I do your method for a new computer will it automatically save all the RAW images again like it did with your 'Tethered Test' folder or will it know they are already on the external hard drive? Thanks!
Hey Joe, your situation is probably the best case scenario. I would simply make a copy of the catalog files and store them in a folder on the external drive. The catalogue already contains the location of the raw files so it should just work. Think of the catalogue as a directory that contains the location of your raw files. The location of the files must exist in the directory but the files won't care about the location of the directory. Hope that makes sense. If it doesn't please let me know.
@@joennick1 hey joe! Did this work for you? I currently have the same thing where my current catalog is in my desktop but all my RAWs on an external hard drive. I want to move the catalog to the external hard drive so I can have the catalog on the go if I want to work on my laptop. If it’s gonna make a folder with all the raws again, I won’t have enough space. Let me know please!
Hi Dan, I really need help..... Just moved from PC to MAC. I have installed Lightroom on the new computer and then copied the catalog folder into the new computer. I have all my photos on an external hard disk which I've connected. Doubled clicked the catalog and lounged Lightroom. Since all files had a question mark I right clicked to "find missing folder" and directed to the correct folder. after pressing choose nothing happens, it just goes back to Lightroom, and when I try to do the same on a different file I get a message saying: "The selected folder or one of its subfolders is already in Lightroom" . I have tried to uninstall Lightroom and then install again, after watching several videos, thinking that maybe something in my process was wrong but still nothing helps.... I don't know what else to do..... I hope that i managed to explain myself and describe the problem and that you can really help me. Thanks in advance 🙏
Hi, sounds like a weird problem! The first thing that comes to mind is the disk format. Can you check that on your external hard drive, it is not formatted as NTFS. Only windows can read NTFS so this could be the reason. Be careful with this though. If you change the format of your drive, it will wipe it! If this is the case, you will need to copy the files to a newly formed drive (use Expat format) and copy the photos to it and then attach this to your Mac. When you copied the catalog over, did you just do a straight copy/paste? If so, try doing it again except use the export catalog functions. Inside of Lightroom, go to the file menu and you should see the export catalog option. I hope this makes sense. Let me know how you go. Dan
@@DanCantero wow thanks Dan for the detailed answer. I really appreciate it! 🙏 I will try to do what you said, wishing that this is really the problem. Will update you. Thanks so much🙏
I am migrating from a self built desktop PC with LR 6.14 to a latop that will have LR subscription. The internal HDD (not main boot drive) that holds my 200,000+ photos works fine. Could I just place the internal drive into an external case and call it a day? Thanks for any feedback.
I'm not sure if you can help me but I got a new much faster laptop. I'm stuck on the exporting catalog step with my old computer, which is very old and slow. I have about 135,000 photos (mostly raw). After 24 hours, the progress bar only moved a little. At this rate, I'm estimating it might take a week or 10 days. Is there anything I can do to make this faster? There are three things I wanted to export in the catalog: a) my edits to all old pictures, b) the star ratings I gave each picture (5 star, 4 star, etc.), and c) the color label (green, blue, etc.). The stars and colors are how I know which pictures are most important. If it would make this much faster, I'd be willing to sacrifice A (the edits) as long as I had the stars and color labeling. I could click "reset" for the 135K pictures and I believe it would keep the star and color info. Would that help? Or, is there any other way to do this? I appreciate your help!
Hey Lee sorry for the late response. Are your photos in an external drive? If so you can simply copy the catalogue files only to your new computer and just plug the external drive to the new computer. As long as you don’t rename the external drive it should just work. Hope that helps. Dan
Can I duplicate the catalog and remove all the folders except the ones I want to keep and move that catalog to a new computer? The relevant photos are on an external hard drive.
I didnt get a tethered test when I followed the steps, also it says Ircat-data (and not Ircat alone) and when I click on it it opens to a "design Icon" so something went wrong if you have some insightr on the problem and would share that would be awesome, Thanks!
Hey Dan, I have one question. All my images are on an external drive. So when I bring up the Export as Catalog dialog do I still need to check the "Export negative files box"?
Hey Mike. No you are in luck. If your image files are on an external drive, all you have to do is copy the catalogue file to your new computer and attach the drive and your computer should see everything.
Please help. 1. I am using a 10 year old laptop with lightroom 5 2. I want to export all my catalog (probably 5 to 7 thousand pictures) to my 2tb external harddrive 3. I am getting a new computer and will get the latest lightroom (yearly subscription) 4. I want the new computer and the new lightroom to recognise my catalog, however, I want the photos to stay on that external harddrive. Basically I want that harddrive to always be plugged in to the computer and store all present/future photos only on this 2tb harddrive not on the computer itself.
Hi, you will need to export the catalogue to the external drive directly. You will also need to make sure you select the option to export the images as well. You can then connect the external drive to the new computer and simply double click on the Lightroom catalogue in the external drive. This should launch lightroom and you will see all your images on the external drive. From this point onwards, if you want to use the hard drive only as your destination for images, you will need to do the following. When you do a photoshoot, manually copy the files to the nard drive in whatever folder you decide to store them in and then when you import into lightroom make sure you select the ADD function at the top of the screen and not the COPY. By selecting the ADD function, lightroom will simply add it to the catalogue and leave the images where you copied them to. I hope this makes sense. Good luck.
Hi! At 6:04 I get a triangle with an exclamation mark in it, and I cannot proceed further. Lightroom will not open the catalog. Any advice? Going from macbook pro 2016 to external hard drive to macbook pro 2019 model.
Hey Chase, can you check the format of your external drive? A while back apple changed one of the drive formats and it is not readable on the newer macs. I've had this happen with one of my drives. Try doing this and see if it works. On your old computer create a new catalogue on a thumb drive. Format the thumb drive to something universal like ExFAT. Drop insert a few images on the catalog and the try to move that one and see how you go. If this works, it might mean that your old mac has the drive formatted to an old format that the next MacBook can't read. If that is the case, get a brand new drive, format it to exfat and then copy the catalog to it so you can bring it across. But make sure you use a new drive to do this. Don't try to update the format of your existing drive or you may lose all your data. Hope that makes sense. Let me know how you go. Dan
@@DanCantero Hello, I think the issue was that there was more than one .lrcat file saved on my external drive. I believe what I did was retry one by one each .lrcat file to the new Lightroom, and eventually I found the one that worked. Thanks for your help!
Hi, Dan, I have about 160,000 images on my old iMac 27" (El Capitan) with Lightroom 6.14. I have bought a new iMac 24" and have installed the latest version of Lightroom Classic. I want to move my image archive (in which the images have their metadata from LR) to an external hard drive AND I want to have my Lightroom catalog on my new computer. (Is it a good idea, i.e. does it work faster, to separate the catalog from the images or should I have both the catalog and the images on the external drive?). What is the best way to do that, considering that the image archive is very large? My images are sorted by year-month-date.
Hi there. Thanks for checking out the video. Personally, what I would do is export the whole thing to the new external drive. This way it is all organised and in one place which makes it easier to backup. Having the catalogue on the same drive as your images is not going to make a massive difference given the speed of drives these days. Still... if you wanted to make it as efficient as possible having the catalog on your computer and the images on your external drive would be the fastest way to configure it. It sounds like you have a specific file structure format that I'm assuming you want to keep. If so, just plug the new drive into your OLD computer and move the folders to the new drive from inside lightroom. If you don't do this from inside lightroom it loses the references and won't be able to find the photos. Let me know if that doesn't make sense. Good luck and let me know how it goes. Dan
@@DanCantero Thanks, Dan. What you suggest is one of the methods I have read about. The other is to move the image archive to an external drive and to move the LR catalog either to the same drive or to the main computer. My question is, would LR recognize the image folders in that case?
@@DanCantero Dear Dan, This little piece of advice has rescued me from 2 days of Angst after a disk failure. New machine, new LR download, locate backups of all the catalog files, etc. etc. The secret step was: put the catalog files and the photo files on the same drive (I use an external drive for photos themselves). Finally, LR could connect when nothing else I did would work. Thank you!!!!!!!
Thanks for this video Dan. I have a questions. I have been using about 5 different external harddrives that store my raw files and copies of the them to DNG. I wish i had a better system when i started but i ended up grabbing whatever hardrive was availavle at the time when importing my pictures. My LRCAT is stored on my internal harddrive with the previews. When i open LR now on my old laptop i can see the all the External Hardrives. When i export my catalog following your video and bring to my new laptop all the old external harddrives disappear and they are all lumped into one Folder / Drive. Now that i type this out it makes sense that it is happenign this way considering what LR is doing but is there a way to keep the old system? Thanks
Hey Tod. Good question. If I understand this correctly, and you want to keep the existing file structure, you should be able to just physically connect the old drives to the new computer and it should just work. The LRCAT file has the location of the files as part of it's database so if you connect the existing drives to the new computer and then just double click on the LRCAT file it should open up and see everything because you haven't changed the drive structure. Let me know if this doesn't make sense. Dan
@@DanCantero I have the same type of setup and also have a question regarding this, do we need to have all the drives connected at once or can we do them one at a time? I only have two USB ports which is why I'm asking! Thank you so much for this video btw!
@@tristenwilliams6226 Hey Tristen, you can move them one at a time but you will only be able to see the photos on the connected drives. Any photos on drives that are not connected will show up as a missing files error. Something you could do is to consider a cheap USB hub so that you can move them all at the same time. Hope that works. Let me know how you go. Dan
Hi Zach. No the process for exporting the presets is different. To do this, simply open up an image and go to the develop module. On the left side of the screen you should see all your presets. To export any of them, simply right mouse click on the preset you want to export and a menu will show up. Select Export and you will be able to save a copy that you can then import into your new computer. You can't select multiple presets using this method. If you want to do multiple presets you will need to find where they are stored and copy the files from there. I hope this helps. Dan
If you want to learn more about how to "move lightroom catalog to new computer" subject , you need to visit: ▶ ministryofphoto.com
This video shows you how to move lightroom catalog to new computer the correct way This video shows you everything you need to know in order to:
-How to extract the lightroom catalog from an older computer
-How to import the lightroom catalog to a new computer
-How to re-link the RAW files in lightroom after moving the file's location
-move lightroom catalog to another computer
-how to move your lightroom catalog to a new computer
-how to move lightroom catalog to new computer
Something I noticed when I was looking for info on "move lightroom catalog to new computer" was how many people didn't know the correct way to move your lightroom catalog to a different computer.
Move lightroom catalog to new computer came about because there seems to be a lack of understanding on how to do this properly. If you are wondering how to do this, this video should be of interest to you.
UA-cam is the best website to visit when searching for videos about move lightroom catalog to new computer.
Move lightroom catalog to new computer is explained in detail so that you can follow along..
To like a video, hit the like button under the video . To dislike a video, use Thumbns down button.
The Autoplay feature on UA-cam makes it easier to choose what to enjoy next. After you enjoy a UA-cam video, it will instantly play another related video based on your viewing history.
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I hope you enjoyed my "move lightroom catalog to new computer" video clip.
Thank you for the video Dan! After trying several other methods, spending hours linking missing folders, this method worked first time!
Hey Shana, I'm glad it was helpful. Keep shooting! Dan
It may have been a little bit different back hen you made this video but at least by today I hope you, and thousands of other 'photographers', LEARN . . .
"Lightroom" doesn't have a 'catalog''.
That beast belongs to LIGHTROOM CLASSIC!
Good point! Thanks for pointing that out Jim. Yeah, this video was a while back. Perhaps it's time to make an updated version. Cheers. Dan
Very timely video! I had to move some images from a little Macbook to a more powerful Windows 10 machine.
Hi Robert, I'm glad it was helpful. Enjoy the new machine! Dan
Don't keep your photos on a local drive and you won't need to go through this lengthy procedure. I've long ago moved all my pictures to a NAS drive. All you need to do when getting a new computer is mount a network drive and importing a catalog. Done.
You are spot on! I use a Sinology NAS and it helps me sleep better at night knowing I have some redundancy and I can access my files remotely.
Thank you for this video, helped me save so much time!
Hi Erin, I'm glad you found it helpful. Dan
Hi Dan. Thanks for the informative tutorial. I remember you mentioning that you backed up your photos drive. Could you tell me what program you use as a backup utility? I use Acronis, however find it somewhat tedious.
Hi Gordon, for my backups I use Chronosync. it's really easy to use and just works! :-)
Super helpful. Thank you
You're welcome!
This is great - thanks
Cheers Alex.
Thanks, nice job.
:-)
Hi Dan, thanks for your video. Unfortunately I still don't understand how that would work for me.
My situation is as follows:
I currently run Lightroom on my Windows pc
The photos and catalog are all stored on an internal SSD (second drive)
Now I (finally) bought myself a MacBook Pro, but it only has 512 Gb of internal storage.
I want to move Lightroom to my new Mac, but since internal storage is rather low, I bought an external SSD of 2T to store the photos and the catalog.
Since I will not be using the Windows pc a lot, I decided to format the external SSD in the Mac format. I installed Lightroom on my new Mac.
Now my question is, how do I transfer the catalog and photos from my Windows PC to the Mac. I cannot use the new SSD as it is formatted for Mac. I do have other external SSD's but I am looking to transfer without breaking anything, any suggestions ?
I’m on the same situation! Any tips?
Great video! One question after you’ve downloaded your catalog from your old computer into a drive and getting ready to download it into my new computer what file in my new computer do I download it to? Thank you! 😎
Hey Anthony, if I understand the question correctly, you have 2 choices. You can leave the catalogue file on the external drive and have everything in one location or just create a folder anywhere on your new computer and copy all files except for the actual images. I hope that helps but if you have any other questions let me know. Dan
2024 question. I have my old laptop with all my raws and edits stored on an external drive. 20,000 photos to be exact. But I'm trying to move my catalog to my brand new computer. Can I just move the catalog over without having to copy all 20k photos?
Hey! Sorry for the late reply. Since making this video, this process has been made easier. Perhaps it's time for an updated video! The answer is yes you can just copy the catalog to your external drive and just unplug from your old computer and plug into the new computer and you should be good to go. Just make sure to not rename the drive or any other change like that. Hope this helps. Dan
@@DanCantero thank you. I'll make a backup, just in case.
Hi Dan
I currently use a laptop and i have the main catalogue, and backups, and images on the external SSD.
I'm soon getting a desktop PC which i want to use most of the time, and sometimes use the laptop with the same catalogue
What i want to do though is transfer the main catalogue from the external SSD to the new desktop PC for better performance, while keeping the images on the external SSD, along with the backups of the catalogue, but also occasionally use the external SSD on the laptop.
Is this possible to do or even beneficial?
I prefer not to store the images on the desktop nor the laptop
You actually have the ideal setup. I also keep all my catalogs and images on an external drive and I back them up to my local drive on the computer. If you can have the catalog and images on external drives it's going to give you the best performance. Actually.... having the catalog on an external drive and the images on a different external drive will give you the best performance but it's not really practical and the speed difference is minimal. If you move it to your pc drive it may actually go a bit slower because Lightroom will be competing with all the other window file operations. Hope that makes sense.
@@DanCantero thanks for that👍
Great video Dan, very easy to follow, liked & subscribed Just a couple of quick questions (please bear with me I'm a bit of a dinosaur/technophobe) Following this procedure does this copy the files to the EHD/new computer leaving a copy on the old computer or does it move files from the old to the new. Only ask because I have just bought a new set up & want to move everything over but would like the security of knowing I still have it on the old computer just in case I make an error :-) Secondly I am still using the old standalone Lightroom 6, does this procedure still work with the old LR ? Many thanks
Hey Lenny, welcome to the channel. This is a good question. The process in this video won't delete the original files. It makes a copy of the files for your new location so it means that you'll still have the photos on the old computer. Something to keep in mind is that any new edits made on the new computer not be applied to the old computer and vice-versa. Still this is a good way to have a backup just in case something happens to the new one. I hope that makes sense.
Does this mean that you now have two catalogs, and each time you do this you add a catalog?
My situation is a new computer, where I am moving some hundreds of folders and thousands of photos (everything) from the old machine to a new machine.
Hi Michael, the number of catalogs stays the same as in the old computer. The idea is that once you migrate everything from your old computer to the new one it would look just like the old one. It would also mean that you would stop using the old computer from that point. I hope that helps.
Great video! Buy a question....I have all my raw pictures on an external hard drive. My catalogue is on the actual computer. I intend to put the catalogue on the same hard drive for the purpose of a new computer.
When I do your method for a new computer will it automatically save all the RAW images again like it did with your 'Tethered Test' folder or will it know they are already on the external hard drive? Thanks!
Hey Joe, your situation is probably the best case scenario. I would simply make a copy of the catalog files and store them in a folder on the external drive. The catalogue already contains the location of the raw files so it should just work. Think of the catalogue as a directory that contains the location of your raw files. The location of the files must exist in the directory but the files won't care about the location of the directory. Hope that makes sense. If it doesn't please let me know.
@@DanCantero thanks for the reply. We'll soon find out!
@@joennick1 hey joe! Did this work for you? I currently have the same thing where my current catalog is in my desktop but all my RAWs on an external hard drive. I want to move the catalog to the external hard drive so I can have the catalog on the go if I want to work on my laptop. If it’s gonna make a folder with all the raws again, I won’t have enough space. Let me know please!
Hi Dan, I really need help..... Just moved from PC to MAC. I have installed Lightroom on the new computer and then copied the catalog folder into the new computer. I have all my photos on an external hard disk which I've connected. Doubled clicked the catalog and lounged Lightroom. Since all files had a question mark I right clicked to "find missing folder" and directed to the correct folder. after pressing choose nothing happens, it just goes back to Lightroom, and when I try to do the same on a different file I get a message saying: "The selected folder or one of its subfolders is already in Lightroom" . I have tried to uninstall Lightroom and then install again, after watching several videos, thinking that maybe something in my process was wrong but still nothing helps.... I don't know what else to do.....
I hope that i managed to explain myself and describe the problem and that you can really help me.
Thanks in advance 🙏
Hi, sounds like a weird problem! The first thing that comes to mind is the disk format. Can you check that on your external hard drive, it is not formatted as NTFS. Only windows can read NTFS so this could be the reason. Be careful with this though. If you change the format of your drive, it will wipe it! If this is the case, you will need to copy the files to a newly formed drive (use Expat format) and copy the photos to it and then attach this to your Mac. When you copied the catalog over, did you just do a straight copy/paste? If so, try doing it again except use the export catalog functions. Inside of Lightroom, go to the file menu and you should see the export catalog option. I hope this makes sense. Let me know how you go. Dan
@@DanCantero wow thanks Dan for the detailed answer. I really appreciate it! 🙏
I will try to do what you said, wishing that this is really the problem.
Will update you.
Thanks so much🙏
I am migrating from a self built desktop PC with LR 6.14 to a latop that will have LR subscription. The internal HDD (not main boot drive) that holds my 200,000+ photos works fine. Could I just place the internal drive into an external case and call it a day? Thanks for any feedback.
Hey Johnathan. Yep, that will work fine. I do this quite often. As long as it is not a boot up drive it will work fine. Let me know how you go.
I'm not sure if you can help me but I got a new much faster laptop. I'm stuck on the exporting catalog step with my old computer, which is very old and slow. I have about 135,000 photos (mostly raw). After 24 hours, the progress bar only moved a little. At this rate, I'm estimating it might take a week or 10 days. Is there anything I can do to make this faster? There are three things I wanted to export in the catalog: a) my edits to all old pictures, b) the star ratings I gave each picture (5 star, 4 star, etc.), and c) the color label (green, blue, etc.). The stars and colors are how I know which pictures are most important. If it would make this much faster, I'd be willing to sacrifice A (the edits) as long as I had the stars and color labeling. I could click "reset" for the 135K pictures and I believe it would keep the star and color info. Would that help? Or, is there any other way to do this? I appreciate your help!
Hey Lee sorry for the late response. Are your photos in an external drive? If so you can simply copy the catalogue files only to your new computer and just plug the external drive to the new computer. As long as you don’t rename the external drive it should just work. Hope that helps. Dan
Can I duplicate the catalog and remove all the folders except the ones I want to keep and move that catalog to a new computer? The relevant photos are on an external hard drive.
Hi Kathy, yes that should work fine and it's a lot quicker. Let me know how you go.
@@DanCantero that was definitely the ticket! Worked very well. Thank you for your guidance. Kathy
I didnt get a tethered test when I followed the steps, also it says Ircat-data (and not Ircat alone) and when I click on it it opens to a "design Icon" so something went wrong if you have some insightr on the problem and would share that would be awesome, Thanks!
Hey Moshe, that is really strange are you trying to do a tethered session or move the catalog to a new computer?
Hey Dan, I have one question. All my images are on an external drive. So when I bring up the Export as Catalog dialog do I still need to check the "Export negative files box"?
Hey Mike. No you are in luck. If your image files are on an external drive, all you have to do is copy the catalogue file to your new computer and attach the drive and your computer should see everything.
@@DanCantero Thanks Dan!
Please help.
1. I am using a 10 year old laptop with lightroom 5
2. I want to export all my catalog (probably 5 to 7 thousand pictures) to my 2tb external harddrive
3. I am getting a new computer and will get the latest lightroom (yearly subscription)
4. I want the new computer and the new lightroom to recognise my catalog, however, I want the photos to stay on that external harddrive. Basically I want that harddrive to always be plugged in to the computer and store all present/future photos only on this 2tb harddrive not on the computer itself.
Hi, you will need to export the catalogue to the external drive directly. You will also need to make sure you select the option to export the images as well. You can then connect the external drive to the new computer and simply double click on the Lightroom catalogue in the external drive. This should launch lightroom and you will see all your images on the external drive. From this point onwards, if you want to use the hard drive only as your destination for images, you will need to do the following. When you do a photoshoot, manually copy the files to the nard drive in whatever folder you decide to store them in and then when you import into lightroom make sure you select the ADD function at the top of the screen and not the COPY. By selecting the ADD function, lightroom will simply add it to the catalogue and leave the images where you copied them to. I hope this makes sense. Good luck.
Hi! At 6:04 I get a triangle with an exclamation mark in it, and I cannot proceed further. Lightroom will not open the catalog. Any advice? Going from macbook pro 2016 to external hard drive to macbook pro 2019 model.
Hey Chase, can you check the format of your external drive? A while back apple changed one of the drive formats and it is not readable on the newer macs. I've had this happen with one of my drives. Try doing this and see if it works. On your old computer create a new catalogue on a thumb drive. Format the thumb drive to something universal like ExFAT. Drop insert a few images on the catalog and the try to move that one and see how you go. If this works, it might mean that your old mac has the drive formatted to an old format that the next MacBook can't read. If that is the case, get a brand new drive, format it to exfat and then copy the catalog to it so you can bring it across. But make sure you use a new drive to do this. Don't try to update the format of your existing drive or you may lose all your data. Hope that makes sense. Let me know how you go. Dan
@@DanCantero Hello, I think the issue was that there was more than one .lrcat file saved on my external drive. I believe what I did was retry one by one each .lrcat file to the new Lightroom, and eventually I found the one that worked. Thanks for your help!
@@fate508 Hey Chase, I'm glad you worked it out! Cheers. Dan
Hi, Dan,
I have about 160,000 images on my old iMac 27" (El Capitan) with Lightroom 6.14. I have bought a new iMac 24" and have installed the latest version of Lightroom Classic. I want to move my image archive (in which the images have their metadata from LR) to an external hard drive AND I want to have my Lightroom catalog on my new computer. (Is it a good idea, i.e. does it work faster, to separate the catalog from the images or should I have both the catalog and the images on the external drive?).
What is the best way to do that, considering that the image archive is very large? My images are sorted by year-month-date.
Hi there. Thanks for checking out the video. Personally, what I would do is export the whole thing to the new external drive. This way it is all organised and in one place which makes it easier to backup. Having the catalogue on the same drive as your images is not going to make a massive difference given the speed of drives these days. Still... if you wanted to make it as efficient as possible having the catalog on your computer and the images on your external drive would be the fastest way to configure it.
It sounds like you have a specific file structure format that I'm assuming you want to keep. If so, just plug the new drive into your OLD computer and move the folders to the new drive from inside lightroom. If you don't do this from inside lightroom it loses the references and won't be able to find the photos. Let me know if that doesn't make sense. Good luck and let me know how it goes. Dan
@@DanCantero Thanks, Dan. What you suggest is one of the methods I have read about. The other is to move the image archive to an external drive and to move the LR catalog either to the same drive or to the main computer. My question is, would LR recognize the image folders in that case?
@@DanCantero Dear Dan, This little piece of advice has rescued me from 2 days of Angst after a disk failure. New machine, new LR download, locate backups of all the catalog files, etc. etc. The secret step was: put the catalog files and the photo files on the same drive (I use an external drive for photos themselves). Finally, LR could connect when nothing else I did would work. Thank you!!!!!!!
Thanks for this video Dan. I have a questions. I have been using about 5 different external harddrives that store my raw files and copies of the them to DNG. I wish i had a better system when i started but i ended up grabbing whatever hardrive was availavle at the time when importing my pictures. My LRCAT is stored on my internal harddrive with the previews. When i open LR now on my old laptop i can see the all the External Hardrives. When i export my catalog following your video and bring to my new laptop all the old external harddrives disappear and they are all lumped into one Folder / Drive. Now that i type this out it makes sense that it is happenign this way considering what LR is doing but is there a way to keep the old system? Thanks
Hey Tod. Good question. If I understand this correctly, and you want to keep the existing file structure, you should be able to just physically connect the old drives to the new computer and it should just work. The LRCAT file has the location of the files as part of it's database so if you connect the existing drives to the new computer and then just double click on the LRCAT file it should open up and see everything because you haven't changed the drive structure. Let me know if this doesn't make sense. Dan
@@DanCantero I have the same type of setup and also have a question regarding this, do we need to have all the drives connected at once or can we do them one at a time? I only have two USB ports which is why I'm asking! Thank you so much for this video btw!
@@tristenwilliams6226 Hey Tristen, you can move them one at a time but you will only be able to see the photos on the connected drives. Any photos on drives that are not connected will show up as a missing files error. Something you could do is to consider a cheap USB hub so that you can move them all at the same time. Hope that works. Let me know how you go. Dan
@@DanCantero ok!! Thank you so much for this, and for such a fast reply I really appreciate it!! 😄
Does this work with presets too?
Hi Zach. No the process for exporting the presets is different. To do this, simply open up an image and go to the develop module. On the left side of the screen you should see all your presets. To export any of them, simply right mouse click on the preset you want to export and a menu will show up. Select Export and you will be able to save a copy that you can then import into your new computer. You can't select multiple presets using this method. If you want to do multiple presets you will need to find where they are stored and copy the files from there. I hope this helps. Dan
my meta data did not transfer over...