Welcome to Lightroom Forums!
Lets start with some big picture insights.
It is very helpful to view the Lightroom ecosystem as several parts:
* Lightroom is an application (a computer program).
* Behind the application is a database (in Lightroom vernacular this is called a catalog). Everything the application does results in changes to the database (there are exceptions - but this is a helpful initial generalisation).
* Lightroom also generates a previews folder. The previews folder actually contain all the previews of every image imported into Lightroom. Whenever one views an image within Lightroom whether it be a thumbnail or a fullscreen version this is a preview. One never directly views the original image in Lightroom. (There is also such a thing as smart previews, but for now I will ignore them.) By default all presets are stored separately from this folder but this can be changed via preferences. The keyword list, however, is a direct construct of the database.
* Finally we come to the image collection. A common error with newbies is to assume that, because Lightroom imports images, all imported images somehow exist within Lightroom. They do not! Images are stored on a hard drive (or multiple hard drives). The import process merely copies all the accessible metadata from an image to, and notes its location, on the hard drive. This means that subsequently moving images using the OS will result in Lightroom losing track of where they are located despite the fact that Lightroom will still display all the previews and thus fool the newbie into believing that all is well!
When one first installs Lightroom, a folder is created called "Lightroom" on the hard drive. Within this folder reside the executable for the Lightroom application, a .lrcat file which is the catalog or database, and a .lrdata file which contains the previews for any imported images. If one is not sure where this, in a Windows version of Lightroom, one can confirm its location thus: Edit>Catalog Settings>General tab. Clicking on "show" will open Explorer to the location of the Lightroom folder.
How does Lightroom do business?
The key to understanding is found in the buzzword "parametric".
What this means, simply, is data beside.
In a bit more detail the direct implication here is that no image is directly changed by Lightroom. All edits are stored in the database as instructions. All metadata added to images in Lightroom, like keywords for example, is also stored primarily in the database.
It is possible to secondarily save metadata back to file. In the case of raw image files metadata is actually saved back to an XMP sidecar file rather than the raw image file itself. In the case of other file types (JPEG, TIFF etc) metadata can be saved directly back into the parent file.
With this introduction out of the way - in answer to your question - it is simply yes!
However, it requires moving, intact, that "Lightroom" folder and your images collection (with the same folder structure as before) to your new computer.
The reason I gave you the introduction to Lightroom at least starts to give one an understanding of why things need to be done in certain ways when moving Lightroom from one computer to another.
It is also a good introduction to explaining how and why one goes about backing up Lightroom.
My suggestion for the details of the process are twofold: download the free Quick Start guide (see the link at the top of the page) and then I strongly suggest buying Victoria's FAQ book which outlines multiple possible strategies for migrating Lightroom between computers. I want to stress that this is not a commercial pitch - this book really is the current go-to for doing any in-depth processes involving Lightroom!
Tony Jay
