Moving from PC to Mac AND switching to Lightroom CC going forward

Report · Nov 14, 2018

Any advice or thoughts?

I'm currently on a Windows computer but I just sold it. I backed up all my photos (actually I have like 3 back-ups) and also backed up the Lightroom folder (with the catalog, previews, backups, etc).

I'm getting a Mac Mini next week and I'm wondering on how to transition my catalog over to the Mac AND transition to using Lightroom CC.

I think my plan, if possible, is to add all 2018 photos + everything going forward to Lightroom CC. Photos from 2017 and older can live in Lightroom Classic (I'll probably barely touch these going forward, but it will be nice to have them there with all my edits and flags).

what is the best process to do this? Should I initially install Lightroom Classic on my new Mac, transition my old library/catalog over, make sure everything is set-up and working properly, and then at that point install Lightroom CC? How do I tell Lightroom CC to only sync the 2018 photos (plus anything going forward) to the cloud?

Report · Nov 14, 2018

It depends whether you want everything on the new Mac Mini or perhaps keep the Windows PC as an archive.

You could perhaps export all the 2018 folders and digital negatives as a catalog and import it into a new blank catalog in LR Classic on the new computer. You would need an external hard drive that is formatted for MacOS to write to if that is to be the permanent local storage home for the files. Then use the migration tool to send that smaller catalog to LRCC. You could do some preparatory work before migration e.g. making a collection for every folder as the LR Classic folder structure is not maintained in LRCC.

See this link for further information.

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/how-to/feature-differences.html

Report · Nov 14, 2018

The Windows computer is sold so that's not in the equation anymore.

The Mac Mini has a 128 GB SSD that will just be used for OS + apps + temporary storage. I bought a 1 TB external SSD that will be my main day to day work drive for photos and some video work.

I would like to keep EVERYTHING on the external SSD, sure, but judging by the past few years, I'm pretty low on storage near the end of the year so I typically move all the previous year's photos to a backup drive right after the new year. So on January 1st I would move the 2018 photos to a backup drive so the only immediately accessible photos I have would be the new year's photos and if I want to edit something from a previous year, it's in the Lightroom catalog but I have to plug in the external backup at that point.

Maybe I don't understand Lightroom CC, but I thought I could pretty much continue with that process but I would still be able to access this older photos now because they are all backed up on Adobe's servers.

Report · Nov 14, 2018

Sorry I thought you wanted only 2018 photos in the cloud. If you want everything in the cloud then it would be best to set up your last catalog in its entirety on the Mac Mini. Then migrate the whole catalog to LRCC. Going forward import all photo shoots into LRCC which automatically sends the originals to the cloud. This is different to LR Classic. If collections are marked for sync, only smart previews are added to the cloud and originals remain in your folder structure. I assume you have not been using sync in LR Classic or LR Mobile.