From Lightroom 3 beta to Lightroom 2

[Rogerious]

I'm in a predicament. A friend of mine told me about Lightroom - I had been using Picasa and GIMP - and told me I could download a beta version to try it out. So I did and have been using it for a couple of months and I really like it. But as I have read through the various forums, it soon became plain that I shouldn't have been using the beta version for anything I want to keep or I'd lose any changes/settings/keywords...

So I now have LR 2 and am not sure how to go about the installation. If I install LR 2 will it pick up the changes I've made in LR 3 beta, so that all I've worked on up to this point will be lost (other than exported pics obviously)?

What would be the best way to go about this, or do I have nothing to worry about?

Thanks.

Roger

 

[sizzlingbadger]

Welcome,

LR2 will install next to the Beta. You will have to create a new catalog and import your images. Presets etc should remain, as they are stored in folders that are shared with the Beta. If you write out all your changes to xmp (Ctrl S) LR2 should pick up most of your image information like ratings & keywords, but I'm not entirely sure what it will make of adjustments as they may not be backwardly compatible in all cases.

 

[Brad Snyder]

Roger, welcome to the forums.

Nik suggests a reasonable approach. LR2.x should gracefully ignore the non-backwardly compatible Lr3beta settings.

How much work have you invested in the Lr3beta? Is it your livelihood? How 'expensive' to potentially lose the work? IMHO, at this point, the risk issue is not so much about forward compatibility, but the potential fragility of the existing version.

According to the Release Notes, your work in the betas will migrate, in general.

• Lightroom 3 beta 2 will only upgrade previous Lightroom 3 beta catalogs and will not upgrade Lightroom 1.x or Lightroom 2.x catalogs. The beta is intended to be used for testing and feedback purposes only. Lightroom 1.x, 2.x and 3 beta libraries will be able to be migrated to the finished version of Lightroom 3.

However,

Develop settings applied in Lightroom 3 beta 2 are not guaranteed to transfer correctly to the final version of Lightroom 3 although the expectation is that any changes between Lightroom 3 beta 2 and Lightroom 3.' would be very subtle.

Tell us more about your needs and workflow, and we can home-in with more focused advice.

 

[Rogerious]

Since I started with LR 3 beta, I imported the thousands of photos I already had as well as those recent ones from my current shoots, into the (default) catalog. I go through my photos, removing bad from the good, tagging with attributes...keywording everything, as well as creating collections...Normal stuff.

And like I said, I've done some nice touch ups and modifications with several of my photos, but have exported most of them as JPEGs, although there are a couple I'm still working on.

 

[Brad Snyder]

Well, I have over 5'k images in beta1, and now the new beta2. I'm using 2.6 only for support issues here on the forums. All of my new work is in the betas, only. So, I'm fairly well committed. (Or, perhaps, should be 'committed*')

So take my thoughts with a grain of salt.


*committed, in the US, this has a secondary meaning of confined involuntarily in a mental health facility. Don't know if means the same other places around the world.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

[quote author=Brad Snyder link=topic=9424.msg63538#msg63538 date=1269547364]
*committed, in the US, this has a secondary meaning of confined involuntarily in a mental health facility. Don't know if means the same other places around the world.
[/quote]

I think we should all be committed for LR insanity!