Topic: LR3 Catalogue Problem (Read 4731 times)

cabasner · « **on:** July 30, 2010, 10:48:30 pm »

Hi All,

I just got my copy of Lightroom 3. I've already been watching the new LR 3 tutorials from Michael and Jeff, and thought I would do the Catalogue conversion precisely as Jeff stated we 'should', meaning, exporting my current catalogue from LR2, then importing that catalogue in LR3. I did it exactly as the video tutorial says, however, what I get appears to be a new catalogue, with all the images (7203 images, only, thank goodness!) with the images indicating the proper size, names, etc, BUT...NO IMAGES! It appears as if the catalogue captured all the metadata, but not the actual images. The LR2 catalogue was 119.5MB in size, the new LR3 catalogue is only 84.3MB. Is this my first clue of what's wrong? All the individual images, and all the file folders, have question marks associated with them, as if the program thinks the images and folders are off line. But, this does not appear to be the case. As I said before, the catalogue appears to be there, just significantly smaller than the original LR2 catalogue. What did I do wrong? Oh, one thing of note, I anticipated that even the 7K images would have taken an hour or more to 'convert'. But, the process only appeared to take 2-3 minutes. Does this mean something in the conversion process didn't 'take'? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

One more thing. After this problem occurred, I tried an alternate method. The Mike/Jeff video method said to use the 'File>Import from Catalogue' command to convert the LR2 catalogue. This is what appeared to not work. Alternately, I just used the 'Import' button on the Library page, and selected the exported LR2 catalogue (the same one I used for the process suggested by the video), and LR3 seemed to import all (well, most, anyway) of the images just fine. I don't understand the difference between the 2 processes, but Mike and Jeff seemed to indicate that there was some advantage in doing it their way. But...as I wrote above, their way has given me problems. I'd still like to get my new LR3 catalogue off to the best possible start, so I want to know what went wrong with the way I did it. HELP!!!

If it matters, I'm doing this on a MacBook, running Snow Leopard.

Schewe · « **Reply #1 on:** July 30, 2010, 11:00:05 pm »

Somewhere, somehow, you are not doing something correct...if you correctly export te catalog from LR 2.x (or beta 3 of LR 3) and then do an import from catalog in LR 3 and you have question marks and no image previews then either in the export from 2.x or the import in 3, you've chosen the wrong options.

I strongly suggest NOT trying to use LR 2.x previews in LR 3. The entire Preview generation and use implementation has been changed. I think it's better to basically start over with fresh LR 3 generated previews...

If you had question marks in LR 3 after doing the import from a catalog, that is telling you that LR 3 doesn't know where the files are...where, EXACTLY are the files? Does LR 2.x know? In LR 3 can you select a folder of images and using a context menu use the option for find missing folders?

Separately, catalogs whose image previews are not showing (or showing as gray squares) indicates a faulty display profile...how exactly are you profiling your display? You might want to try re-profiling your display...

jarnold439 · « **Reply #2 on:** July 31, 2010, 11:56:24 am »

Quote from: Schewe

Somewhere, somehow, you are not doing something correct...if you correctly export te catalog from LR 2.x (or beta 3 of LR 3) and then do an import from catalog in LR 3 and you have question marks and no image previews then either in the export from 2.x or the import in 3, you've chosen the wrong options.

I strongly suggest NOT trying to use LR 2.x previews in LR 3. The entire Preview generation and use implementation has been changed. I think it's better to basically start over with fresh LR 3 generated previews...

I just roughly the same topic without realizing that this post was similar. So please disregard my post that follows this one. I too am a little confused by the video tutorial and want to make sure I am doing this right. Initially, I just installed LR3 and pointed it to my LR2 catalog and imported the catalog. Worked fine. Then I watched the video and realized I should probably do it over. What I am confused by is that Jeff in the video had a single folder of photos that he was upgrading and importing into LR3. In my case I want to upgrade and import my entire LR2 catalog without the previews and negatives being exported. I am a PC user and have all my pictures saved in "My Pictures". So do I just export all photos and subfolders in the My Pictures folder as a catalog and then point LR3 at that? Not sure whether or not I have to create an empty LR3 catalog first to import into. Also, will this process also import all my collections, presets, etc.?

John

Schewe · « **Reply #3 on:** July 31, 2010, 01:30:02 pm »

Quote from: jarnold439

What I am confused by is that Jeff in the video had a single folder of photos that he was upgrading and importing into LR3. In my case I want to upgrade and import my entire LR2 catalog without the previews and negatives being exported.

Whether yo have 1 or a hundred folders, it makes no difference at all. If you select the main Lightroom Catalog panel and click on All Photos and then export as catalog, you will export your entire image catalog, not just a folder...the take the resulting exported catalog and import (and upgrade) that catalog into LR 3. But if you've already upgraded your old catalog with no particular set of issues, I would guess redoing it this way would really be more of a technical exercise. Yes, you will clean out the cruft...which is useful, but you may never see any difference.

jarnold439 · « **Reply #4 on:** July 31, 2010, 03:09:36 pm »

Quote from: Schewe

...the take the resulting exported catalog and import (and upgrade) that catalog into LR 3. But if you've already upgraded your old catalog with no particular set of issues, I would guess redoing it this way would really be more of a technical exercise. Yes, you will clean out the cruft...which is useful, but you may never see any difference.

Thank you Jeff. I think I will go ahead and go through the exercise of doing it optimally since it does clean out the cruft and you also mentioned that its not a bad idea to have LR3 generate new previews. Since I originally created a new LR3 catalog by just pointing LR3 at my old LR2 catalog, do I now need to trash the old catalog or should I create a new empty catalog before doing the import? I presume that if I have the LR3 catalog open that I already created that it will just tell me that all the photos already exist and won't let me proceed. So what would you suggest is the best path to follow at this juncture.

Also, I have imported about 250 photos into the new LR3 catalog after I created it. But I am guessing that I can just go ahead and re-import them in their existing folders once I have created the new upgraded LR3 catalog that was created from the LR2 catalog that I exported. Does that make sense.

John

Schewe · « **Reply #5 on:** July 31, 2010, 09:16:49 pm »

You'll need to start with a new, empty LR 3 catalog...if you already imported new images in your previous LR 3 catalog made from an upgrade, save out the XMP to those images and re-import after creating the new empty catalog and importing the old LR 2.7 catalog...

jarnold439 · « **Reply #6 on:** July 31, 2010, 09:40:09 pm »

Quote from: Schewe

You'll need to start with a new, empty LR 3 catalog...if you already imported new images in your previous LR 3 catalog made from an upgrade, save out the XMP to those images and re-import after creating the new empty catalog and importing the old LR 2.7 catalog...

I think I got it. Thank you Jeff!

jarnold439 · « **Reply #7 on:** August 01, 2010, 10:06:28 am »

Quote from: Schewe

Whether yo have 1 or a hundred folders, it makes no difference at all. If you select the main Lightroom Catalog panel and click on All Photos and then export as catalog, you will export your entire image catalog, not just a folder...the take the resulting exported catalog and import (and upgrade) that catalog into LR 3. But if you've already upgraded your old catalog with no particular set of issues, I would guess redoing it this way would really be more of a technical exercise. Yes, you will clean out the cruft...which is useful, but you may never see any difference.

Jeff,

For some reason this method of upgrading to LR3 isn't going as smoothly as what I originally did when I just pointed LR3 at the LR2 catalog and imported. But as I mentioned, I had hoped to repeat the process the way you described with the intent of optimizing the database by eliminating cruft and generating new thumbnails. If I continue to have problems with this method, is there anyway that I can eliminate the cruft and accomplish the same thing in the LR3 catalog that I have already successfully created from LR2? Does optimizing the LR3 catalog accomplish the same thing or is this cruft-clearing process specific to the procedure that you have identified? Also, assuming that optimizing the LR3 catalog would accomplish the same thing, can I create new thumbnails even though I have already imported the old LR2 thumbnails into LR3? I recently upgraded to a 24" monitor and so thought that might be advisable?

Thank you again.

John

Schewe · « **Reply #8 on:** August 01, 2010, 02:30:54 pm »

Quote from: jarnold439

Does optimizing the LR3 catalog accomplish the same thing or is this cruft-clearing process specific to the procedure that you have identified?

To the best of my knowledge, a simple catalog optimization is not quite the same as an Export as a Catalog. Close, but Exporting as a Catalog essentially does an optimization first, and then write ONLY the specific data fields needed to contain the then current catalog state. So, it's a higher level method of optimization from what I have been told by the engineers.

Is it mission critical? No...I don't think so.

jarnold439 · « **Reply #9 on:** August 01, 2010, 03:11:17 pm »

Quote from: Schewe

To the best of my knowledge, a simple catalog optimization is not quite the same as an Export as a Catalog. Close, but Exporting as a Catalog essentially does an optimization first, and then write ONLY the specific data fields needed to contain the then current catalog state. So, it's a higher level method of optimization from what I have been told by the engineers.

Is it mission critical? No...I don't think so.

Thank you

cabasner · « **Reply #10 on:** August 02, 2010, 07:28:44 pm »

Jeff,

I think I'm going to have to go the cheap route. As much as I appreciate what you have offered in terms of getting the cleanest LR 3 catalogue, but try as I may, I'm still unable to get a full catalogue in LR3. I've tried about 10 times now. It appears that I had to try to do some fiddling, but even then, I can only get about 430 of my 7300 images to appear in the LR3 catalogue, even though the metadata (file names, sizes, etc.) all appears there. Now, at least 430 images actually show up, but the remaining 6000+ do not. It sounds like John (the other poster in this thread) is having some kind of (unstated) problem, too, so I'm wondering if we have encountered some kind of bug that you may not be aware of. Since you certainly don't have the time to troubleshoot our individual problems, would you suggest a call to Adobe to see if they can help?

Author Topic: LR3 Catalogue Problem (Read 4731 times)