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bec_7872
Participant
October 23, 2024
Question

Backward compatibility for Catalogs

  • October 23, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 536 views

Hi All

I'm a teacher and just wanting to get some get some validations on how INFURIATING it is that LrC catalog versions aren't backwards compatible at all (like even in the mini/intermittant updates between versions)--students are contantly having compatibility issues because the version that their personal computers can update to is different than what the institutional labs at school update to--they literally aren't on the same schedule--the students can get more updates on their personal computers. This results in the students working in their catalogs/images at home and not being able to keep working at school seamlessly.

I just want them to be able to easily store a catalog on their harddrive and open it to keep working on stuff at home/school. 

This annoying feature really puts a wrench in that. I understand why there has to be a backwards compatibility cutoff/limit, but it's suuuuper annoying how senstive/frequent it is.

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 25, 2024

Fortunately, being a teacher should make it easy for you to explain to your students why a database file that has gotten a new structure is not backwards compatible with a app version that knows nothing about that new structure. It should also be easy to explain how writing metadata to files in the newer version and reading metadata from files in the lower version can be used to overcome this problem to a large extent. By the way: Lightroom catalogs are normally backwards compatible with intermittant updates between versions. Lightroom Classic 13.3 was an exception to that rule.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
DdeGannes
Community Expert
DdeGannesCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 24, 2024

@bec_7872 , you stated "I'm a teacher and just wanting to get some get some validations on how INFURIATING it is that LrC catalog versions aren't backwards compatible at all (like even in the mini/intermittant updates between versions)"

 

Lightroom was released in Feb 2007 as version 1, version 14 was released on October 16 2024 an every version there was a new Catalog version that was not comparable with the previous version.
The exception to this was version 13 in Lightroom Classic when there was a Catalog upgrade in version 13.3 to accomadate the introduction of the sync processing engine v2.
That's the progress of technology what is available in 2024 was not available in 2007..

You need to schedule your classes for students using the same versions of Lightroom.

 

Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.3; PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.
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