Migration of Lightroom Cloud Catalogue from Windows to Mac

[Bastian332882862pjw]

Hi everyone,

i tried to find something similar but all i found was for Lightroom Classic.

I have been using LR CC on my Windows Laptop for quite some time. Now I moved to a MacBook Pro.

I have been using a SSD for my Lightroom Catalogue and my originals are saved there. 

When I log into LR CC on my MacBook i can see the whole folder/album structure but almost all of the pictures are gone/albums are empty, as my 20GB Cloud is already full. I can see the folder structure on the SSD on my MacBook by using Finder, but I dont know how to import the pictures back into the albums and folders in Lightroom on my MacBook.

Is there any way to just copy the whole catalogue from my WIN to my MacOS laptop or do I have to do it manually?

Thank you very much!

[JohanElzenga]

I'm not sure if you are talking about Lightroom (the name 'Lightroom CC' has not been used anymore for several years) or Lightroom Classic. Lightroom does not use a local catalog. The local library is just a cache to speed things up, the catalog is in the cloud. Normally, all you'd have to do is login on the Macintosh. All your cloud photos should then be there.

Perhaps you are talking about Lightroom Classic however. The fact that you talk about a catalog on an external SSD makes me believe you do,  because you cannot store the Lightroom Library on an external disk. The Photography Plan (the plan with only 20GB cloud space) includes both versions. If you are indeed talking about Lightroom Classic, then you will need to use the Lightroom Classic catalog from the external SSD. Do note that MacOS can read, but cannot write to a NTFS formatted drive however. If that SSD is formatted in NTFS, then you'll have to copy the catalog to the internal drive of the Mac before Lightroom Classic can use it, because it needs to be able to write to it.

[Bastian332882862pjw]

Dear Johan,

Thank you for your fast reply. Sorry for being unclear; I am using Lightroom, not Lightroom Classic.

I used my External SSD to store the Copy of the Originals.

As you write, I did expect to just login on the Mac and see my Photos (or at least previews) there. Since I have more than 20GB of photos, I was well aware, that not all originals are stored in the cloud. I was expecting the previews and that I would have to reassign the correct path to the originals which are still on the SSD.

I hope that I can specify the problem again: 

If I open Lightroom on my Mac, I can see my folders and albums, but most of them are empty. Only about 1500 of my >9000 pictures are there (presumably because they add up to 20GB). I added two screenshots of the album structure view, one with empty albums and another one with an album that was transferred correctly.

If I manually import the corresponding pictures to the folders/albums on my Mac, I could refill the folders and albums (in a long time), but all the edits are gone.

I tried to chat with adobe support, but they couldnt help me - there seems to be only one way: I have to upgrade my suscription to the 1TB plan, which I would gladly do (and of course pay a reasonable amount for the upgrade).

There is, however, one big problem with this: As I use a voucher to pay for my suscription and I just bought another year of the plan I am using right now during Amazon Prime Days, I would have to pay the full, undiscounted amount for the new 1TB suscription, making me effectively have two seperate actove suscriptions of the same software on the same device! If I would have bought it with Adobe directly I would have gotten a refund, but since I used a code I can not in any way pay for an upgrade (e.g. half the price in addition to what I already paid!).

Adobe Support kindly offered to cancel my current plan on the terms that I would not get a single cent worth of refund for my plan which is current for another 13 months. So: They would make me pay the full price twice for a single product and even take away my current plan. As you can imagine, I kindly declined their "generous" offer.

If no one knows another way than to pay twice I will use the rest of my prepaid suscription and then move on to another software, as I feel like they really just wanted to make me pay fully again for something I already paid. And frankly, I dont see why. 

I am still hopeful that someone can help me in any way.

Thank you again!

[JohanElzenga]

I see. If the pictures (and so the edits) have not been uploaded to the cloud because the cloud storage is full, then the edits are (only) inside the Lightroom Library.lrlibrary folder, which is inside your Pictures folder on the PC. Did you try copying that to the Pictures folder on the Mac? It must be in the Pictures folder, it can't be anywhere else. As I said, it's not really your catalog, just a cache, but because the uploads were not complete, maybe Lightroom will read them from this cache.