Hi Christine! I'd use the Finder to move the catalog folders from your iMac onto one of the external drives, and open them with the Lightroom app that is installed on the laptop. The file paths should all be correct that way, and whatever version of Lightroom is on the machine you're using will always open the same catalog properly.
Tip on presets and such: If you have a lot of presets and such other things you use, and presuming that you have Lightroom set to use them from a central storage point for all catalogs (they'll be in ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom and its subdirectories), you can use the Lightroom Preferences to set LR to store the presets in a subfolder in the catalog folder. Once you do that, restore the defaults for all the different presets types to create a fully populated "Lightroom Settings" folder in the catalog folder. Then quit Lightroom, go into the Finder, and drag copies of all the presets you use that are stored in the default central location to the new catalog folder's Lightroom Settings directory. When you re-start Lightroom with that catalog, it will then initialize the new 'locally stored' presets so everything you were using will be there for you on the laptop. I would recommend having a separate backup drive to which you can store the catalog backups if you use this strategy. G — No matter where you go, there you are. > On Jun 4, 2018, at 6:19 PM, Christine Aguila <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi All: > Hope this post finds everyone well! > > Here’s my situation: > 1) On my old iMac (2011), I have the stand alone Lightroom version, which has > 2 or 3 catalogues. > 2) The RAW files for these catalogues are on two external hard drives > connected to my iMac. > > Here’s my goal: > 1) Bring the catalogues from the iMac into my Lightroom Classic Creative > Cloud version on my laptop. In doing this, I would, of course, then hook up > my external hard drives to the laptop via the two USB drives. > > Reasons for setting this goal: > 1) For reasons I won’t go into, I’m going to loose free, easy, and daily > access to my iMac. > 2) The iMac is getting old. > 3) I want all my photos in one place. > 4) I want to be more mobile; during lazy evenings when Darrel and I are in > the living room with the tv on, I want to be with him, and I want to work on > my photos. > > Here’s my query: > 1) To achieve my goal, is it just a matter of just exporting the catalogues > on my desktop to, say, a flash drive, then import these catalogues into > Lightroom on my laptop? Then, of course, plug in my external drives? > > 2) I back up my catalogues to my external drives. Would it be easier to just > import the back-ups into Lightroom on my laptop? > > 3) Any other suggestions or tips I should consider? > > Cheers, Christine -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
