Skip to main content
S
Seaquence
Known Participant
July 30, 2022
Question

migrating a catalog into main catalog

  • July 30, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 314 views

Hi,

Im an older professional photographer who's not technical brilliant with computer programs. I recently bought a new M1 Macbook Pro to travel with, using LRCC 11.4. Im still using my old 2017 iMac at home with my main 2015.14 LRCC catalog and these are the decisions I need to make now;

 

1. Do I just migrate this new travel catalog (107mb) into my old, huge main catalog (6g) and are there any issues with migrating new LR files to old?

 

2. If so, is this something that would be more easily done by tethering the two computers? Should I buy a USB3 to Firewire (or USB2) cable to do that, or just dump the cat onto a drive and migrate it that way? And do the same with the RAW files, putting them onto the Ext HDD and then just point LR at them?

 

3. Or would it be better to make a new main catalog on my new Macbook Pro, add my recent travel cat to it and then import my main older catalog from my old iMac to that as well? Then get a new monitor and work just off my new Macbook Pro as a desk top, with the newer LR version, while working at home?

 

I store all my raw files on external HDD's and just run with my main (huge) LR Catalog on my iMac internal drive.

 

Any recommendations or ideas would be highly appreciated.

 

Thank you

Bill

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

J
Community Expert
Jao vdLCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 30, 2022

This post is in the wrong forum (this is for the cloud version of Lightroom) but will answer anyway:

 

1. No this won't work. The older version of Lightroom Classic on your iMac will not read the catalog from your macbook which is running at a much newer version. Make sure you upgrade the Classic version on your iMac to the current version of Classic 11.4.1. Then ou will be able to simply import the catalog from the MacBook Pro. This would simply merge the catalogs together.

 

2. Many ways to accomplish this. Fastest is to just use an external disk (good idea to use a fast ssd) and put the catalog and raw files on that. You can run that from either machine then. You can also do this through ethernet but you'll need some networking knowledge to do this right. Wifi will probably be too slow. A single cable will only work if you have usb-c on both machines which your old iMac doesn't have.

 

3.  That's probably what I would do. The M1 is probably so much faster than the iMac that going forward working on the iMac is going to be very frustrating.

S
SeaquenceAuthor
Known Participant
July 31, 2022

Jao, thanks so much for you're reply. I actually have LR Classic CC,  so my apologies for that typo. I'm glad now that I didnt just go ahead and try to import to my old LR catalog. I'm guessing there's no problem going the other direction, ie; migrating my large old iMac catalog into the newer version of LR Classic on my Macbook?

PS; I also didnt know USB C won't transfer to older connections on older Mac's, so that's good to know as well.

Thank you

Bill

J
Community Expert
Jao vdLCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 31, 2022

Older to newer catalog should indeed work. It might takes some time to convert everything. You should also be able to open it on the newer machine. Have Lightroom Classic convert it to the newer format which will create a new copy of the catalog and then import the other catalog.

Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices