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Author Topic: Any helpful hints, tips, reminders for a LR migration?  (Read 2048 times)

Philmar

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Any helpful hints, tips, reminders for a LR migration?
« on: May 24, 2013, 11:58:52 am »

I currently have LR3 on an aging PC. I will build a new PC this weekend and plan to upgrade to LR4 next week once the new shiny toy is up and running.

I currently have my LR3 on the OS disk, my RAW and DNG files and LR catalog on separate data disks. My L3R and PS/ACR cache are on a 4th disk. I won't be using any of these disks in my new build. I have external storage devices that I will use to migrate files.

I'd like the migration to be as quick and painless as possible. Any helpful hints, tips or potential pitfalls to avoid? Any files I should copy beforehand?

I don't think I have a LR installation disk - I think I downloaded the .exe file from Adobe and will have to look for it. I believe I can find the serial/registration code from the program (I am at work right now).

I have tons of presets that I imagine I'll need to save in order to migrate.

Are there any ADOBE instructions online I can reference for the migration to a new PC as well as an upgrade to LR4?

Or should I hold out on the upgrade and wait for LR5? I am a photo enthusiast/hobbyist not using the program for commercial purposes.

« Last Edit: May 24, 2013, 12:24:00 pm by Philmar »
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gerryrobinson

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Re: Any helpful hints, tips, reminders for a LR migration?
« Reply #1 on: May 24, 2013, 01:52:56 pm »

Hi
Had to build a new PC to replace an 11 year old HP, and was surprised that LR4 let me import all of my LR3 images without doing an Export as Catalog,from LR3,
which is how I upgraded my catalog from LR2 To LR3.
One of Jeff's tips, I took to heart, after upgrading to LR4 was to create a snapshot of an image,in develop,before clicking the upgrade to PV2012. That way you can preserve the older settings better, if you want.
Basically don't blindly update all of your older images at once, especially your finished images.
The other thing I did was to go through my file structure,from LR, and cleaned it up the way I wanted.I waited to do this on my new PC, only because an 8 core processor with 32 gigs of ram and Win 7 64 really trumps a 2gig Pentium 4 XP machine.But I currently only have a C: drive for now and wanted to reorganize my catalog and file structure to migrate to a drive dedicated to my photos.
Seems to me we are getting really close to the launch of LR5, you might just want to wait rather than upgrade now to LR4.
As for all my LR settings all I had to do was copy the LR settings folder from LR3 and replaced the LR4 folder with it.
The only things I had to redo were 2 publish to Hard Drive folders that didn't carry over, not real sure why that happened but it wasn't much to set them up again, and export my keyword list from LR3 so I could import the list into LR4.
Hope this helps
Best of Luck
Gerry
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Any helpful hints, tips, reminders for a LR migration?
« Reply #2 on: May 24, 2013, 03:14:57 pm »

I just did this a month ago and it's pretty simple if you have an external drive to copy things to.  I just used Windows Explorer to move the LR folders onto the external drive and then onto the HD in the new computer.  If you did your download of LR from Adobe, you just delete the copy of LR from the old computer so that the you clear the license for that computer and download from Adobe to the new computer.  You just need the serial number to activate it.  If you want you don't need to install LR3 but can go directly to LR4 (I think this is right but could be wrong).  You will need the LR3 serial number to get the discounted price for the upgrade.  The only tricky thing for me was that my new PC has the OS and LR programs on a SSD with all the data files on a HD.  This is a different directory system from my old set up where everything was on a HD.  I just had to point things to the new E: drive and everything was recognized.  Some of the LR files (as well as for other Windows programs) that you need are in the 'Roaming' folder which is at "users\your_name\AppData\Roaming"  I copied this entire director to the external drive and when I reinstalled my programs I overwrote the respective 'Roaming' files that were created on installation with the 'Roaming' files from the old computer.

I hope this all makes sense.  The only thing I ended up losing were my Epson printer templates but that wasn't a big deal since I only had about 5 of them and had recorded the settings.  That was a slip up on my part but be aware that if you have some printer driver settings they are not stored with LR.
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Philmar

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Re: Any helpful hints, tips, reminders for a LR migration?
« Reply #3 on: May 24, 2013, 05:00:40 pm »

If you did your download of LR from Adobe, you just delete the copy of LR from the old computer so that the you clear the license for that computer and download from Adobe to the new computer.

Delete it? You mean uninstall, right? But there is no process of de-registering the product first? When I activate it on my new PC, how does Adobe know if it was deleted from the previous machine's hard drive?

gerryrobinson

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Re: Any helpful hints, tips, reminders for a LR migration?
« Reply #4 on: May 24, 2013, 06:45:18 pm »

I've noticed that LR doesn't seem to require the same activation and deactivation steps that Photoshop requires.
I believe you can install on several PCs as well as cross platform,you just need the Serial # to use the program.
Forgot to mention in my first response that I created a copy of my LR3 Catalog and Image files from the external drive
I had them on, to my new C: drive. Then installed LR3 and pointed it to my main catalog file on the new drive. After I upgraded from LR3 to LR4
I deleted the LR3 catalogs from my drive (not the image files),I found that they were not needed and just created clutter. 
I'm getting ready now, to install another internal drive , just for LR and images, so will just need to copy those files to the new drive point LR to the new
location then I can delete the files from my C: drive.
Gerry
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john beardsworth

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Re: Any helpful hints, tips, reminders for a LR migration?
« Reply #5 on: May 25, 2013, 02:28:49 am »

Focus on one change at a time:
  • Copy the existing folder structure exactly as it is now, and don't do any folder restructuring - if ever - until things have settled down
  • Get LR3 running on the new computer, copy over the catalogue, open it in LR3 and fix any missing folders.
  • Run Library > Find Missing Photos and ensure there are none.
  • If you need to use Import or Synchronize here, you're doing something wrong and should stop right there
  • Only then get LR4 running and convert the catalogue
  • Under Preferences, Presets, Location - go to the presets folder. This is all your presets, templates anything else that doesn't go in a catalogue
  • Under Preferences, Presets, Location - is Store Presets with this Catalog checked? If so, advice would be slightly more complicated

Also, don't look for too many complications such as "how does Adobe know if it was deleted from the previous machine's hard drive?" ;)

John
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Any helpful hints, tips, reminders for a LR migration?
« Reply #6 on: May 25, 2013, 08:14:58 am »

John's suggestions were what I was trying to say but much clearer!!!!
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Philmar

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Re: Any helpful hints, tips, reminders for a LR migration?
« Reply #7 on: May 26, 2013, 12:19:35 am »

ehackett

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Re: Any helpful hints, tips, reminders for a LR migration?
« Reply #8 on: May 26, 2013, 05:20:31 pm »

This has been very helpful to me, too, and thanks to all for the advice. May I ask how much more complicated it will be for me to got from LR 2.4 (laugh, if you like) to LR4 and from Dell to Mac in the bargain?  Is the 2-step LR leap doable?  I am also hoping to repair some rookie mistakes made in the underlying folder structure.  It seems I should make the changes through LR4 after the move because moving photos in Win before the move will mean having to re-catalog the photos in LR or re-establish lost links to photos. 

If anyone has made a similar transition I'd appreciate a little strategic advice or warnings.

Thanks and best wishes,

Ed
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john beardsworth

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Re: Any helpful hints, tips, reminders for a LR migration?
« Reply #9 on: May 27, 2013, 05:23:56 pm »

It's not really any different, Ed. But when you move to Mac, all your folders are going to have the question marks indicating they are missing, because the folder paths are different on Mac and PC.

One handy tip is to start off (on the PC) by right clicking folders and choosing Show Parent Folder (I think it was called something like Add Parent Folder) and repeat until the top level folder is shown.  This is helpful because you should then only need to fix the path once at the top level.

John
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