Transferring LR catalogue from PC laptop to Mac Desktop

[Photofan]

Hello

I have recently been on a Birdwatching holiday and I took an external drive to store my images and build the LR catalogue from my laptop which has LR6

I created a NEW catalogue saved it in the same folder on the external drive and did a number of hours work on editing and keywording the images on my laptop. My problem now is that the version of LR I use on the MAC computer I have at home is an older version than the windows version on my laptop and my Mac wont open the catalogue (or let it be imported into my main catalogue on the Mac) because it has been created on a newer version.

Is there a way around this without losing all the edits and keywords. I work with RAW images so there are xmp files associated with the edited images.

Thanks
Photofan

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Those XMP files aren't available automatically, unless you've set that in the Lightroom preferences. It is the solution however. Use the Lightroom version on your laptop, select all the images and choose 'Metadata - Write Metadata to Files'. That will save an XMP file with each image. On the Macintosh you can now import the images in the normal way, so you don't have to use that catalog for it. Lightroom on the Macintosh will read the edits and keywords from the XMP files (except of course the edits that are new in Lightroom 6).

 

[clee01l]

My problem now is that the version of LR I use on the MAC computer I have at home is an older version than the windows version on my laptop and my Mac wont open the catalogue ...Is there a way around this without losing all the edits and keywords.

You can install LR6 on both computers. Your license allows this. Once LR6 is on the Mac LR will convert the LR5 master catalog to the LR6 structure and then you can import your Laptop catalog. You will not lose anything.

 

[Jim Wilde]

But if Photofan's profile is correct, the Mac OS would need to be upgraded in order to run LR6.....a minimum of 10.9 is needed.

 

[clee01l]

But if Photofan's profile is correct, the Mac OS would need to be upgraded in order to run LR6.....a minimum of 10.9 is needed.

Yes, you are correct. Upgrading to OS X 10.11 is free and I find it difficult to understand why people don't take advantage of the free upgrade. 64 bit hardware and OS is required to run LR5.