LR4 Beta to LR3

I have bought LR3 @ £95 on Amazon but I have LR4 Beta installed at the moment with my photo's in its catalogue. What I would like to know is when I install LR3 will it automatically pick up my LR4B catalogue or not?

Would I be better off uninstalling LR4B and starting from scratch by installing LR3 and my photo's again (100GB worth)?

If I do this will the uninstall automatically delete the LR pictures from "my pictures"?

Just starting with all this "Lightroom stuff" so would like to get it right from the off!!

Help!!!

I'm not sure! Good questions. Maybe someone else knows for sure? Anyone?

Uninstalling will not delete any photos.

As to opening an LR4 catalog in LR3, I don't know if LR3 will even try. It's not advised to use LR4 for "productive" work, since it's only a beta. And we know that there are LR4 features that aren't in LR3, so LR3 won't be compatible with all the LR4 settings.

OK, so just so that I know that I'm thinking about this correctly......

I have my photos on an external hard drive that I have imported into Lightroom which then stores these as a catalogue in "My Pictures". This allows me to look through the catalogue without the EHD attached but does not allow me to process etc.

So it seems if I uninstall LR4B then the catalogue will still be in my pictures?? Will LR3 find this or will it not know where to look? Will I have to use "missing file" or would I be better of just deleting the catalogue from "my pictures" and starting again.

Have been caught out too many times when installing/reinstallin​g things that then get duplicated and take up memory or cause problems!!!!

Thanks for your patience with a computer numpty!!

LR 4 catalogs and xmp side car files are not backwards compatible with LR 3.

LR 3 will not be able to use your LR 4 catalog or properly read LR 4 xmp files.

LR3 will not recognize the LR4 catalog. Even if you instruct LR3 to open the LR4 catalog, with File/Open Catalog, it will give you a notice saying that it can't do it. The first time you launch LR3 it will create its own catalog in My Pictures and will always use that one unless you tell it to create another catalog and to use the new one. You can import the same photo into both catalogs, LR3 and LR4, without problem because there is, at this point, essentially no communication between them. Just as you can't open an LR4 catalog in LR3, you also can't open an LR3 catalog in the Beta. Later, when LR4.0 is released it will be possible to open LR3 catalogs in it or to import them and merge them into the LR4 master catalog.

pturton wrote in post #13796164
LR 4 catalogs and xmp side car files are not backwards compatible with LR 3.

LR 3 will not be able to use your LR 4 catalog or properly read LR 4 xmp files.

Side cars?? They are attached to motorbikes!! xmp.....

So uninstall and delete everything and start from scratch?

Yeah, just start over with the LR3 catalog!

Now, I don't know all the technical "stuff" involved -- for example, what would happen if you set LR4 to use the 2010 "Process"...would LR3 be able to do anything with an XMP file? I dunno...

banksie wrote in post #13796263
Side cars?? They are attached to motorbikes!! xmp.....

So uninstall and delete everything and start from scratch?

A good source of Lightroom info is the ebook, Adobe Lightroom 3 – The Missing FAQ http://www.lightroomqu​een.com …-lightroom-3-missing-faq/

banksie wrote in post #13796263
Side cars?? They are attached to motorbikes!! xmp.....

So uninstall and delete everything and start from scratch?

Seriously, I doubt you need to uninstall the LR4 Beta. It is designed to "ignore" LR3. LR3 should install in its own Program directory and do its own thing.

The sidecar/xmp files would be an interesting question if you generated them in LR4. xmp files from other apps cause a little "notice"/warning to pop up with your thumbnails. They do no harm from what I can see, but still...I'm not in the habit of writing these files without a dang good reason.