Import LR5 develop work stripped during import from external drive

[cruxrush]

Lightroom Version

Classic 9.3

Operating System

1. macOS 10.15 Catalina

Did "Add w/o moving" expecting develop work to show but develop history shows "import" only, starting from square one. I assume the LR5 work is still there on the external drive--can I get it to show up in LR Classic?

 

[Replytoken]

If you want to use a LR5 catalog in LR Classic, you need to open Classic, and then have Classic open the LR5 catalog. Classic will then create a copy of that catalog and convert it to that version of LR. It will not actually alter your LR5 catalog, and the new Classic catalog it creates will not be backward compatible with LR5. Add w/o moving is used to import images into LR that are not already in the catalog.

Good luck,

--Ken

 

[cruxrush]

Thanks! If Classic copies and converts the LR5 catalog, will that transform the already imported photos and give back their history? I would hate to wind up with two copies of each photo, one with and one without... Just want to check before I make a bigger mess!

 

[Replytoken]

Thanks! If Classic copies and converts the LR5 catalog, will that transform the already imported photos and give back their history? I would hate to wind up with two copies of each photo, one with and one without... Just want to check before I make a bigger mess!

No. The newly created catalog will be identical to the old LR5 catalog with all of its edits, adjustments and history. The ones that you "added" to a Classic catalog, that I am assuming you created from scratch, will be in a separate catalog from the converted one and it (the one created from scratch) can eventually be deleted (assuming they are all the same images in your LR5 catalog). If this is confusing, let me know and I will give names to each of the catalogs and restate this post.

--Ken

 

[clee01l]

Did "Add w/o moving" expecting develop work to show but develop history shows "import" only, starting from square one. I assume the LR5 work is still there on the external drive--can I get it to show up in LR Classic?

All of the develop history is in the catalog file. Importing with those expectations is never going to grab the develop history. Using the "Import from another catalog" in you Classic catalog will merge the data from the LR5 catalog into the Lightroom Classic catalog.

 

[cruxrush]

Thanks for reminding me. I should have remembered that. But now I have another problem: the "preparing to import from catalog" gets stuck, always at the same place (and Lightroom freezes). I tried force quitting Lightroom, I tried restarting the MacBook, but it just does the same thing. What should I try now?

 

[cruxrush]

(By the way, Ken, I just have one catalog.)