Lightroom question: New Mac

Ok so my macbook pro is broken and I took the hdd out and bought a new mac today.

I have no idea what to do for getting my new mac to see the catalog and photos that are on the old hdd.

If anyone can give me a step by step that would be amazing.

Put the old hdd into an external enclosure. Locate your lightroom library and copy them to the new Mac. You'll also need to copy all the referenced pictures.

I would suggest you go to an Apple store and have them help you do this. They usually offer free setup on any new Mac that Includes getting your old data into your new Mac.

Do I have to copy the new info to the new mac. I bought the retina macbook pro and I dont want all those pics on this hdd. How do I get the lightroom on the new mac to see the catalog and photos on the old hdd while keeping them on the old hdd.

I have the old hdd in an enclosure already.

I imagine that you could just open up the .lrcat file which is on the old hard drive, then if there are any problems with "missing files," just point Lightroom to the folder in which they are located. Though I'm not sure

Ok Lightroom doesnt see the external drive when you go to open the .lrcat. So I copied the file to the new mac (which I now think was the wrong thing to do) and it shows all the pics but I cant tough them because it cant see the raw file.

It doesn't sound like you copied the raw files from the old hard drive onto the new one.

He shouldn't have to, right? I keep my catalog file on my main drive and my Raws on an external drive

Considering the original post says the he/she had both the catalog and photos on the old hard drive; then yes, both need to be copied to the new drive.

A common misconception is that the catalog contains the photos since they have to be "imported" into Lightroom but that's not true.

I would think that he would be able to simply select "Locate Files" and point Lightroom in the direction of the external drive, as long as he brought the necessary auxiliary files over to his internal dive as well.

I seriously hope I dont have to bring over the raw files to the new computer.

I just want Lightroom to see raws on the old drive. I copied the .lrcat and the preview version of the files to the lightroom file on the new computer. Now when I open lightroom it can see the previews of every picture I had in lightroom on the old computer but since it cant see the original raws I cant work on them.

Is there a way to point lightroom to see the original raw files on the external hdd?

I use Windows Vista but LR allows you to keep the catalog file on an external drive. It's a long time since I used a Mac (pre OS X), but as it now uses a unix type file system as long as you can mount the drive and see the files you should be able to use it.

Alan

You can keep your raw files on the external drive, but as the Lightroom catalog is now in a different place, Lightroom has lost the link so you need to direct it to the raw files manually. The only way I know, is to open the catalog, go to the folder's panel where you see your folders but greyed out and with question marks. Right click on a folder and choose the Find Missing Folder option and browse to that folder on the external drive. Click ok. That should do it.

I've never had to do an entire catalog and don't know exactly how many levels of folders with subfolders etc. it can do at once so you may end up doing this for every single folder in the catalog. I would start on top, with the main folder. If it works and LR recognises all the subfolders you'll be done in one go.

Thank You, I'm going to try that when I get home!

Levina de Ruijter wrote in post #14756806
You can keep your raw files on the external drive, but as the Lightroom catalog is now in a different place, Lightroom has lost the link so you need to direct it to the raw files manually. The only way I know, is to open the catalog, go to the folder's panel where you see your folders but greyed out and with question marks. Right click on a folder and choose the Find Missing Folder option and browse to that folder on the external drive. Click ok. That should do it.

I've never had to do an entire catalog and don't know exactly how many levels of folders with subfolders etc. it can do at once so you may up ending up doing this for every single folder in the catalog. I would start on top, with the main folder. If it works and LR recognises all the subfolders you'll be done in one go.

majin tcz wrote in post #14757491
Thank You, I'm going to try that when I get home!

Yes, Lightroom is quite "smart" about this. So pick a higher-level folder to tell LR to "Find Missing..." and typically LR will make a "full sweep" of the images in all the subfolders, but frequently it will also then check the rest of your "structure" if other folders are located in the same relative position.

Ok I havent updated this thread in a while but I tried the above method and lightroom doesnt even show my external in the list of drives to pick from. Actually when I go to Finder it doesnt list it but its displayed on my desktop and I can browse the drive. What am I doing wrong?

Ok so I figured out how to get the drive to show up but I still cant get it to find the pictures...... I dont get it.... I updated the folder location on the main folder and it pulls up a list of the months but not the years in which I shot them as sub folders when I normally have years for sub folders with the months inside them.

Im getting really annoyed with this lol.