Today’s Question: I have a new iMac, still in the box, and I’m wondering if you have instructions or tips for doing the set up and transferring Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and Topaz Photo AI along with my external drives from the old iMac to new.
Tim’s Quick Answer: The basic process of migrating Lightroom Classic to a new computer involves transferring the complete catalog folder and photos to the new computer, installing Lightroom Classic and any plug-ins, and transferring your preferences and settings as well.
More Detail: You can start by setting up the new computer and installing Lightroom Classic and any other Adobe Creative Cloud applications you’ll be using. You can get started by following the instructions on this page on the Adobe website:
Once you have Lightroom Classic up and running on the new computer, transfer your catalog and photos. For example, most photographers have their photos on one or more external hard drives. If the catalog is on the internal hard drive, you could copy the folder containing the catalog to one of your external hard drives, and then move that folder into the Pictures folder on the internal hard drive if you prefer. You can determine the existing location of your catalog on the old computer by going to the General tab of the Catalog Settings dialog and clicking the Show button. Be sure to quit Lightroom Classic before you start, and copy the entire folder that contains the catalog and related files.
The trickiest part of this process is transferring preferences and settings. This isn’t mandatory, but it will ensure that Lightroom Classic is configured the same way on your new computer as on your old. For presets, go to the Presets tab of the Preferences dialog. There you’ll find buttons for “Show Lightroom Develop Presets” and “Show All Other Lightroom Presets”. Clicking each will open a window in your operating system with the applicable folder selected. Copy the entire folder to the same location on the new computer.
To copy Camera Raw settings, transfer the files to the same location on the new computer. On Windows navigate to your username folder and then to AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw. On Macintosh from the Library folder go to Application Support/Adobe/Camera Raw. For Preferences copy the applicable file to the same location on the new computer. On Windows the file can be found by going to your username folder and then navigating to AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Preferences\Lightroom Classic CC 7 Preferences.agprefs”com.adobe.LightroomClassicCC7, and on Macintosh the file is in the Library folder under Preferences / com.adobe.LightroomClassicCC7.plist.
Make sure the photos are on a drive with the same drive letter (Windows) or volume label (Macintosh) as was assigned on the old computer. Then double-click the catalog file (it has a filename extension of .lrcat) in the folder you transferred to the new computer. This will launch Lightroom Classic with the catalog.
You can then install any plug-ins you want to use with Lightroom Classic and continue with your normal workflow.
