Migrating from LRC to LR version 7 local file options

Do I need to export all the edited photos from Classic or build XMP files for all of my photos?  Not sure how this works?

 

By @paulfree17

You could do either, though writing metadata to all the files in LrClassic should be the quickest method, and wouldn't use up very much disk space. Once you have saved metadata to XMP in LrC, the edits should then be visible in Lightroom's Local mode as you browse through the image library.

That's probably the way I would do it.

If you edit a photo in 'Local' mode- XMP edit metadata is written either into the file (for RGB files- JPG, TIF, PSD, etc), or saved as an .XMP sidecar file for raw file-types.

Your edits, however, are only visible in Adobe software (Lightroom, Bridge, ACR) and not in an OS file browser (Mac Finder, or Windows File Explorer). To see your edits 'burnt into' an image you still need to Export (Share) a derivative image from Lightroom.

My NEF image: Edited in Lightroom, and exported as a JPG: (File Explorer view)