moving lightroom to a new computer

[briphoto]

Hi everyone,
I've purchased a mac computer, how do I move lightroom from my old mac to the new mac? I do have external drives to work with. So I install lightroom on the new mac and then what? Do I just copy the lightroom catalog.Ircat and the photos to an external hard drive and then over to the new mac? What else has to be moved?
Thanks,
Brian

[howardm]

migration assistant will really help you but in reality, all you need is the .lrcat and the preview subdirectory that hangs out with the catalog.

even if it's a differnt place, you can tell LR where the catalog is and then where the photo storage area is.

[garyfcampbell]

Either method will work, Migration Assistant in the Utility folder, or coping the catalog and photos.
Migration Assistant either needs a Firewire cable between the two machines or an external disk.  The newer Macs Power Books only have a Firewire 800 port and the older ones have a Firewire 400, so you need an adapter or use the external hard disk.

If you are migrating Photoshop, remember to Deactivate PS from the HELP menu before you decommission the old Mac, otherwise it eats up one of the two activations you are allowed.
LR does not use activation so that isn't a problem.

[wolfnowl]

Assuming you're moving the program and not just the catalogue, don't forget to also move any develop presets, print templates and other custom functions you've created.

Mike.

[Jeremy Roussak]

Assuming you're moving the program and not just the catalogue, don't forget to also move any develop presets, print templates and other custom functions you've created.

Mike.

Since they're stored in a subfolder of your home folder (actually, a sub-sub-sub-sub-folder), Migration Assistant will deal with that for you automatically.

Jeremy

[wolfnowl]

Since they're stored in a subfolder of your home folder (actually, a sub-sub-sub-sub-folder), Migration Assistant will deal with that for you automatically.

Jeremy

Thanks, I didn't know that.  I have all of my presets, etc. in a subfolder of where my catalogue is stored (My Documents/ My Pictures/ Lightroom/ Settings/ Develop Presets for example) but that shouldn't matter.  Lightroom knows where they are.

Mike.