Today’s Question: I have Lightroom Classic version 14.1.1 but my catalog name still references version 13.3. Is this normal or should a 14.1 catalog have been created? If so, what should I do?
Tim’s Quick Answer: This is the new normal, in that Lightroom Classic will no longer rename your catalog when it is updated for a new version of the software. As a result, a high percentage of photographers have a catalog filename referencing version 13.3 even though they’ve updated to Lightroom Classic version 14 or higher.
More Detail: When there is a major update to Lightroom Classic, the catalog often needs to be updated to reflect some of the changes for the new version. Over the years there have been a couple of ways the update catalog filename was changed. In early versions a “-2” would be appended to the new catalog name, which unfortunately led to many photographers having catalog filenames along the lines of “Lightroom Catalog-2-2-2”.
More recently, the filename would be update to reflect the version number of Lightroom Classic, such as to add “-v13” for Lightroom Classic version 13. But this could result in a filename such as “Lightroom Catalog-v12-v13-3”, for example. Or if you had used the same catalog for a while, you might end up with something like “Lightroom Catalog-2-2-2-v13-3”.
Thankfully, Adobe recently updated Lightroom Classic to no longer rename your catalog during an upgrade. This will streamline things moving forward, but it does mean that many of us might have a catalog filename along the lines of “Lightroom Catalog-v13-3” even though we’ve updated to Lightroom Classic version 14.
So, nothing needs to be done. However, you might want to rename the catalog to something more generic, so the filename will make sense for the long term. To do so, in Lightroom Classic go to the menu and choose File > Rename Catalog. Update the catalog name to your liking in the New Name field. I recommend keeping the “Rename parent folder” checkbox turned off. Then click the Rename button and your catalog will be updated with the name you designated. Note, by the way, that this Rename Catalog command is also new.
Based on the latest update, your updated catalog will remain for the long term, because Lightroom Classic no longer renames the catalog when an update requires an upgrade to the catalog itself.
