Comments on: Moving a Lightroom Catalog

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:08:28 +0000

Thanks for your clear direction, and I was able to do all that you said. But when I started using Lightroom again, importing new photos from my memory card, it started storing them on my computer again, creating a new “2012″ folder in “Pictures” rather than adding to the one I had moved onto the external drive. The external drive was plugged in and functioning. How can I get Lightroom to safe and back up new photos on the external drive??? HELP! Thanks!

By: Pavol Timko

Pavol Timko — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:35:29 +0000

I am reviving this old thread due to Lightroom 4 Beta. I am rather new Lightroom user and I wonder how to transfer catalog from older version to the new one? Is there any hint from experienced user in regard to something I better watch out? What is the usual procedure by Adobe upgrades? If I compare it with DxO I was rather surprised that DxO7 is completely new app and it left my DxO6 untouched so I can more or less scrap the old version from my computer.
What would be the workflow in the case of Lightroom upgrade? How to move catalog into new version (I understand that for a while it may be better to have parallel catalogs in LR3 and LR4 Beta.
Any ideas?

By: mike

mike — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:58:56 +0000

But what about future saves?

By: Erik

Erik — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 04:08:18 +0000

This is the correct solution for certain situations, because exporting as a catalogue and destroying the file structure is not an option for some people. In my case, where I needed to move just the catalogue and not the pictures themselves, this solution was the ticket. Minus the moving of the original pictures of course.

By: chris swaap

chris swaap — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 11:26:14 +0000

Hi a colleague has been having performance problems with Lightroom 3 and as a test decided to try ‘moving’ the Lightroom program files etc to the same drive as the catalogue and picture files (internal to internal). To his and my amazement this resulted in both the program still working, and a performance improvement of an order of magnitude.

I have sort of done the same on my system. I have just ‘copied’ the entire ‘Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.4? directory (found under program files/adobe) to the same disc (internal) as the catalogue and files etc. Amazingly Lightroom works when launching from this new location and although I don’t get an order of magnitude improvement there is definitely a margin improvement in performance.

Any ideas why this should a) work and b) why it should improve performance.

By: Charles

Charles — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 02:15:01 +0000

I don’t quite understand the necessity to perform a long list of steps instead of one, just exporting photos as “catalog. The specific of my work presumes that I often edit my shots on two or thre different computers where my flash drive mounts at different letters (at one of them I am not even an amin, so I can’t change the drive leter). All I do is create a catalog at one of them, then export is as catalog either directly to a flash-drive (it should be quite fast, to allow read speed comparable to Lightroom speed), or copy it there after export. Then I use the catalog fole (.lrcat) to open Lightroom, and that’s it. Even with the drive letter change Lightroom finds everything you need, save as for one issue of not finding the original in the beginning, but when you click on a next photo and then back, everything turns ok.

The same is with copying this catalog to the Desktop or whatever and editing it over there, but much slower. So, youo don’t need this boring stuff described above.”

- Well said uncle Sam. Im doing this right now.

By: Lilian

Lilian — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 16:43:37 +0000

To woots, Jane and Matt. I recommend this video tutorial that explains many aspect of catalog, exporting from laptop to Main computer and vice versa.
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/the-complete-picture-with-julieanne-kost/episode-12/

By: matt chiang

matt chiang — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 04:03:04 +0000

I moved all my photos to an external hard drive. I’ve recently upgraded to a Terabyte and want to move it back to the internal with all the edit info and everything. What do I do? I don’t know how to search for a question this specific.

By: jane

jane — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 23:03:11 +0000

How in the name of heavens do you drag and drop photos – I have tried your process and I am in more of mess than ever. Is there a tech support number for LIghtrooom.

By: woots

woots — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 19:18:20 +0000

I am not computer savvy enough to process all this “moving catalog” info. Can someone explain to me how to move all my LR files and catalog from a laptop to the main LR catalog on a desktop? Thanks