LR5 catalog conflicts...

[Resoman]

I've downloaded the LR5 beta and haven't gotten it to recognize any of my catalogs. I did a spotlight search on "LRCAT" and was amazed to see all the catalogs that are lurking on my system. As far as I've been concerned, I work out of a single catalog, but apparently I've been kidding myself. I've got four different LR4 catalogs, as well as LRCATs for LR3 and LR2. Strangely, none of them seem to have a recent "last modified" date, although I've been using LR4 all along, most recently last week.
I definitely don't intentionally create new catalogs; I follow the advice of those who recommend using a single catalog.
Can anyone explain what's going on, and how I can point LR5 at the catalog I've been using?
Thanks,
Gary

 

[Mark Sirota]

LR5 Beta will not upgrade existing catalogs. As a beta, it is intended to be used for evaluation only, so catalog upgrades are not possible so that you can't screw up your existing work.

As for all the old .lrcat files -- some of them may be backups (check the name of the folder where you found them), and some may be from previous versions of Lightroom. With each major upgrade, LR makes a duplicate of the existing catalog before upgrading it, so those old ones may be the old version left behind.

 

[Brad Snyder]

edit: ooops, 3 minutes behind the times. I said basically the same things as Mark, with a substantial infusion of hot air.


1) There are several 'file open' options lurking in the Lr preferences. The most insidious of which is 'Open Last Used' (or similar verbiage, I don't have it in front of me.) If you've created a test catalog, or had a peek at a backup catalog, it's easy to get catalog mixups when using this particular open option. It's likely something like this has contributed to your catalog scramble. As you've noted, upgrades can confuse things as well, because when upgrading to a new version, the catalog is upgraded, but its name is not, so you end up with something like LR 2 Catalog -1 -1.lrcat, which would be an old Lr2 cat upgraded to Lr3, and then Lr4.

2) You can't read the old catalogs into Lr5Beta. This is a conscious design decision by the Lr team to assist you in not shooting yourself in the foot, by committing your current catalog (assign time/money value here) to a beta test product. This implies that they don't consider the database design finalized at this stage, and don't want to orphan any work you may be investing in, should they decide to change the design. There is a commitment that prior catalogs will be upgradeable/importable, when the product reaches the stability of a Release Candidate or GM freeze.