Work with Lightroom Classic

If you’re coming from a history of using Lightroom, think hard about whether you want to migrate your existing catalog(s). If you want to continue to take advantage of Classic features, such as merging images to create HDR or panorama photos, printing, identifying people by facial recognition, uploading to social services other than Facebook, creating books or web galleries, organizing by colors, or using Smart Albums, then my advice for now is to not migrate.

Primarily, this is because the new Lightroom CC is still a young program that doesn’t have all of the same features as Classic. If you use a lot of those Classic features, take this opportunity to kick the tires on Lightroom CC on the side. Migrating your existing Classic library to it is an extreme measure.

On the other hand, I know people who have relatively small Classic libraries who use only a fraction of the application’s features. For them, and perhaps you, moving to Lightroom CC is the right course.

Migrate a Classic Catalog

Before you migrate a Classic Catalog, keep these important things in mind:

• You must have enough free disk space to store an entire copy of the catalog you’re migrating. Lightroom CC makes a copy of every image during migration, so if your catalog is 2 TB in size, you need at least another 2 TB free. However, that space can be on a separate drive; in Lightroom CC’s preferences, specify the destination for your originals to be stored. But using a separate drive doesn’t let you completely off the hook. Lightroom CC also stores a copy of the catalog file and Smart Previews of the photos on the startup disk, which could take up 20% of your startup disk during migration. Make sure you have room there, too.
• A catalog can be migrated only once.
• Lightroom CC uses only one library; you can’t have several catalogs, as in Lightroom Classic. However, you can migrate multiple catalogs to be included in your Lightroom CC library.
• Collections become albums.
• Smart Collections are ignored entirely.
• Star ratings, flags, and keywords are retained during a migration, but color labels are converted to keywords (Label_yellow, Label_red, Label_blue, and so on).
• Custom presets don’t migrate, but you can copy them from Classic to Lightroom CC. See Apply Presets.
• After migration, all of the images sync to Creative Cloud—it could be a while before it’s all transferred and available in Lightroom Mobile and Lightroom CC on other machines.

Prepare the Lightroom Classic Catalog

Taking a few steps prior to migrating a catalog helps ensure you’re bringing clean data into Lightroom CC.

Optimize the Catalog

In Lightroom Classic, choose File > Optimize Catalog to have the application examine the data structure of the catalog file. Click the Optimize button to confirm the action. Depending on the size of the catalog, you may not be able to use Lightroom for several minutes while it’s working.

Fix Metadata Conflicts

Sometimes, a file’s metadata changes outside Lightroom, such as if you’ve used another image editor to adjust a photo on disk. If that data doesn’t match up with what Lightroom has stored in its catalog, you’ll see a metadata warning badge (Figure 103).

The easiest way to find them is to create a Smart Collection:

1. Choose Library > New Smart Collection.
2. Give the collection a name, such as Metadata Conflicts.
3. Set the criteria to [Metadata Status] [is] [Conflict Detected].
4. Click Save to create the Smart Collection, which will display conflicted images.

To fix a conflict, click the metadata badge. In the dialog that appears, choose Import Settings from Disk or Overwrite Settings (i.e., use the data in Lightroom’s catalog) (Figure 104).

The answer depends on what you know about the image, and could require you to go image by image. To process conflicts in bulk, select several files and click just one badge, then choose which version’s metadata to keep.

Reconnect Missing Photos

One of the inviolable laws of Lightroom Classic photo management is to never move files outside of Lightroom. If you transfer an image to an external hard disk, for instance, do it within Lightroom’s Folders panel. Otherwise, Lightroom loses track of the image, leading to problems if you need to open or edit the photo again.

But it happens. Which is why there’s a command for locating missing photos and a way to reunite them with Lightroom. Missing images won’t prevent a migration to Lightroom CC, but since you’re prepping your catalog anyway, you may as well take care of them now:

1. In Lightroom Classic, choose Library > Find All Missing Photos. A new category in the Catalog panel called Missing Photographs is created and selected.
2. Click the Photo Is Missing button. Lightroom tells you where it expects to find the file (Figure 105).

   

3. Click Locate to open a dialog that lets you specify the file’s new location. Use the Search field in the dialog, or switch to the Finder or Windows Explorer, to locate the file.
4. Repeat as needed to find the other photos. It can be a bit of a spelunking trip into your hard disks, but for some people, resolving the missing photos can be satisfying.

Occasionally, you may run into a situation where the file is associated with another photo in the catalog. If that’s the case, verify that the other photo is intact and then delete the one that’s missing.

Dumb Down Smart Collections for Migration

Since Smart Collections don’t transfer to Lightroom CC, you need to decide if you want to convert their contents to normal collections (which become albums in Lightroom CC). Doing this defeats the purpose of a Smart Collection, since the application isn’t adding new or edited photos to the collection, but I can see the desire to freeze a collection in time. Perhaps you have a Smart Collection that gathers all four-star photos shot during your summer vacation, for example.

Here’s how to create a normal collection from the contents of a Smart Collection:

1. In Lightroom Classic, select a Smart Collection.
2. Choose Edit > Select All.
3. Choose Library > New Collection; or, click the + button at the top of the Collections panel and select Create Collection.
4. In the Create Collection dialog, type a title in the Name field (it can’t be the same name). Also, make sure the Include Selected Photos option is checked.
5. Click Create.

Migrate the Classic Catalog

When you’re ready to perform the migration (and you have a backup of your data just in case), do the following:

1. Choose File > Migrate Lightroom Catalog.
2. Click Continue on the first explanation screen.
3. Read the Before You Begin warnings and click Continue.
4. Choose the catalog you want to migrate (Figure 106). If you don’t see it listed, click Browse Computer and locate the catalog’s .lrcat file. Click Start Scan.

   

   Lightroom CC analyzes the catalog to make sure there are no missing original files or metadata conflicts.

5. If the scan runs into errors, you’ll be notified (Figure 107). Click the Open Log File button to view a text file with more information, such as where an original file was expected to be found. Click Cancel and go fix the issue if you can, or click Start Migration.

   

   If the scan checks out okay, click Start Migration.

6. When the migration is finished—which could take a while, depending on the size of the catalog—click Done. Lightroom then synchronizes the files with Creative Cloud.

The Two-Lightroom Strategy

Lightroom CC is the flashy new kid in school, but Lightroom Classic isn’t going anywhere. If your photo library is currently in Classic, you don’t have to migrate to Lightroom CC—in fact, as I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, I recommend you hold off for now if there are Classic features you don’t want to lose.

So what’s the best way to make the two applications work well together? The glue—surprise!—is Creative Cloud. Syncing photos between both flavors of Lightroom lets you take advantage of the features in each program, although doing so isn’t always seamless.

As we covered earlier in Sync Photos, syncing between Lightroom Classic and Creative Cloud involves a few important considerations:

• Only photos in synced Lightroom Classic collections appear in Lightroom CC (and Lightroom Mobile). Classic isn’t designed to host your entire library there; that’s what Lightroom CC is for. In theory, you could add all your photos to a collection, but the next consideration makes that a bad idea.
• Images synced from Lightroom Classic are uploaded to Creative Cloud as Smart Previews, not originals. So, when you import photos from your camera or memory card into Classic, only compressed versions of the files are available for use in Lightroom CC. See When Working with Smart Previews Is a Bad Idea. Here’s the diagram from earlier that shows which files are sent from which devices (Figure 108).

  

• Keywords do not sync between Classic and Creative Cloud. Any keywords you add in Lightroom CC or Lightroom for Web won’t show up in Classic at all.

With those caveats in mind, here are my suggestions for making the two applications play nice with your photo library.

Import New Images into Lightroom CC

This option assumes you want your library to live in the cloud going forward and be available on all your devices. It ensures that you’re working with originals as often as possible, and that the originals are available to both Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic.

Choose Where Classic Stores Lightroom CC Files

One important thing to keep in mind is that you’re going to end up with two copies of each image file—one for Lightroom CC and one for Lightroom Classic—so make sure you have plenty of available storage on your computer.

By default, photos synced from the cloud to Classic are stored in a special folder called Mobile Downloads.lrdata. If you have an external disk, that would be a great place to store the image files. (If you don’t have an external disk, but lots of storage on your computer’s internal disk, you might want to use this option for your own organizational purposes.) To pick a new location in Classic:

1. Open Classic’s preferences and click the Lightroom CC heading.
2. Under Location, click Specify Location for Lightroom CC Ecosystem’s Images (Figure 109).

   

3. Click the Choose button and specify a location on disk.
4. Optionally, turn on Use Subfolders Formatted by Capture Date and pick a naming format from the pop-up menu.
5. Close the preferences window.

Deal with Keywords

Regarding keywords, find your inner zen calm and accept that they won’t transfer between applications. I know that’s not the best advice, but perhaps Adobe will come up with a fix.

Until then, if you want a really ugly workaround, you could do this:

1. In Lightroom Classic, open the Keywording panel.
2. Select all of the keywords there, and choose Edit > Copy.
3. Paste that text into the Caption field, which does sync between applications.
4. In Lightroom CC, view the Info panel.
5. Copy the keywords from the Caption field.
6. Paste the text into the field in the Keywords panel.

That really only works on an image-by-image basis, so you’d probably want to use it only for a few select photos. (Told you it was ugly.)

Create HDR and Panorama Photos

Two of my favorite Lightroom Classic features are building HDR (High Dynamic Range) and panorama composites from multiple images. Adobe has said it’s working on those for Lightroom CC, but in the meantime, here’s a workaround to create them:

1. Import the images into Lightroom CC.
2. After they sync to Lightroom Classic, use the Photo Merge tools to create the HDR or panorama.

   Since the source files are in a synced collection, the image that’s created also appears in that collection and is synced to Lightroom CC. However, because the new file originates in Classic, the version synced is a Smart Preview.

3. In Lightroom Classic, select the HDR or panorama and export it using File > Export, making sure to save it at its full size.
4. In Lightroom CC, import the file you just created and add it to the album that contains the source images.
5. Delete the Smart Preview version in Lightroom CC, which in turn deletes it from every device connected to Creative Cloud, including Lightroom Classic.

Another option is to use Photoshop’s tools for creating HDR or panorama photos. In Lightroom Classic, you can select multiple images and send them all to Photoshop’s HDR Pro component, but that’s not available in Lightroom CC. Instead, export the images to files using the Original + Settings option (see When Working with Smart Previews Is a Bad Idea), then open them separately in Photoshop to process them.