Today’s Question: I just bought a more powerful computer. Do I need to buy a new Lightroom Classic subscription for the new computer? Is there a way to migrate from the old computer to the new one?
Tim’s Quick Answer: No, you do not need a separate license for the new computer. Migrating from the old computer to the new one can be as simple as copying the folder containing all catalog files to the new computer, depending on your overall configuration.
More Detail: When you get a new computer, you don’t need a new license for Lightroom Classic. You can use your existing license for an Adobe Creative Cloud plan for Lightroom Classic on the new computer. In fact, with Creative Cloud plans you can have Adobe applications activated on up to two computers at a time, though you can only use each application on one computer at a time.
As for migrating the catalog and photos, that can be quite simple depending on your configuration. If you have your photos on an external hard drive, for example, you can simply copy the folder containing your catalog files to the new computer, and make sure that the external hard drive has the same drive letter (Windows) or volume label (Macintosh) on the new computer.
To locate the folder that contains your catalog files, you can use the Catalog Settings dialog in Lightroom Classic. This can be found on the Edit menu on Windows or the Lightroom Classic menu on Macintosh. On the General tab click the Show button to bring up a window in your operating system showing where the catalog folder is located. That folder will be highlighted.
You can then copy the entire folder containing the catalog files to the new computer. You could, for example, copy the folder to an external hard drive, and then copy it into the Pictures folder on the internal hard drive of the new computer.
Once the folder containing the catalog files is copied to the new computer, as long as you’ve already installed Lightroom Classic you can simply double click the primary catalog file (it has a filename extension of .lrcat) to launch Lightroom Classic with that catalog. As long as the photos are still in the same location where they are expected, you can then use Lightroom Classic on the new computer just as you had been on the old computer.
Keep in mind that it is important to only use the “current” version of your catalog, not an older copy. For example, after copying the catalog to your new computer you would not want to work with the older catalog on the old computer, instead treating that copy as a backup that could eventually be discarded once you have confirmed Lightroom Classic is working properly on the new computer and you have backed up the catalog.
