Run LR Classic v10.4 and v11 on same Mac?

[Paul Takeuchi]

I have a few Macs, a Mac Pro running Mojave, and two MBPs, one I use at home (Mojave) and another I use to tether shoot in the studio (Big Sur). All are currently running LR Classic v10.4.  Right now my workflow when I shoot tethered is to capture on the MBP (Big Sur) with basic develop settings in LRC, then move that catalog to my Mac Pro for final processing. A couple of questions:

1) Can you have both versions of LR Classic, v 10.4 and v11 on the same Big Sur (or Monterey) machine? I assume so, but want to make sure.

2) Can v11 catalogs be read by v10.4 apps, just without some of the new functionality?

I'm trying to evaluate my options as I slowly upgrade my production Macs to Big Sur or possibly Monterey once I'm sure that my other software can run smoothly. Finally, an extra question would be:

Do Photoshop and LRC run sufficiently well in Monterey already, so if I'm going to upgrade my OS from Mojave, I might as well go all the way to Monterey and skip Big Sur all together?

[F. McLion]

You can have installed both.

However, the v10 catalog needs to be/will be copied and upgraded for v11. It can not be opened with v10 after that.

So no, you can not use the same catalog with both versions.

[Paul Takeuchi]

Thx for clarifying. I wanted to test our Monterey and the LRC V11 and have the option to keep using LRC v10.4 since I need that for compatibility with my older Mojave systems. I appreciate the quick reply.

[Paul Takeuchi]

Actually can you verify, that if I "update" to LRC v11, that it will leave the current v10.4 alone and I'll have the two versions installed which I can use at will? It seems like when I "updated" my Photoshop, now I have PS 2022 and PS 2021 is gone.

[dj_paige]

You have an option, when you install LrC 11.0, to keep or uninstall previous versions of LrC. It's up to you, select the option that meets your needs.

But until you are sure you are going to use LrC 11.0, all real work should be done in 10.4.

[Paul Takeuchi]

Thx for confirming. Just want to be able to use both while I test.

[Paul Takeuchi]

Just want to provide some information for those in a similar situation. I was hoping to have both versions of Lightroom Classic, the latest, v11, and the previous, v10.4, installed on my Macbook Pro running Big Sur 10.6.1. When I ran the Creative Cloud's Update for LRC, my old version was in fact REPLACED by the new version 11. Fortunately, I had compressed the previous version and when I uncompressed it and renamed its parent folder, I was able to have both the LRC v10.4 and v11 on my Mac and both seem to run fine.

Perhaps the posters who offered advice were thinking of Photoshop and other CC apps, which if you are using the Auto Update feature (I am not), you can specify in a preference if you want to keep the old version when you update. LRC had no such preference when I turned on Auto Update. And the manually run Update installer did not ask whether I wanted to keep my old version at any point during the update. So if you are interested in keeping both versions, you need to backup the old version first or else you will lose it.

[GoldingD]

In the Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop App, if you bring up preferences, you can alter if the old app will be removed for some of the apps.

see: https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/using/install-previous-version.html

[dj_paige]

Perhaps the posters who offered advice were thinking of Photoshop and other CC apps, 

Nope, the advice applies to LrC as well, as shown at the link from @GoldingD 

[Paul Takeuchi]

I actually used that link in my initial research, and when I followed directions, keeping the previous version of LRC was not an option, it was possible for PS and Illustrator though. I found it odd that LRC did not offer the option. Seems an oversight. 

[Paul Takeuchi]

Actually, my response is wrong, I thought the link was to the preferences for auto update. You are correct that I could have reinstalled my LR v10.4 after having updated to v11 which removed my original v10.4. My goal was to leave it intact, like you can with the other apps. 

[dj_paige]

Actually, my response is wrong, I thought the link was to the preferences for auto update. You are correct that I could have reinstalled my LR v10.4 after having updated to v11 which removed my original v10.4. My goal was to leave it intact, like you can with the other apps. 

By @Paul Takeuchi

Disagree. You don't have to reinstall LrC 10.4, you can indeed have the installer for LrC 11 leave 10.4 in place.