In a previous post, we considered the differences between Lightroom Classic and the cloud-based Lightroom ecosystem, and how to decide which version is right for you.
If you’ve decided that the cloud-based version of Lightroom is now the best choice for you, the migration tool can safely convert your existing Lightroom catalog to the cloud format and upload your photos.
One-Time Migration
A word of warning—the migration is a one-way process. Continuing to use and sync Lightroom Classic after migration is not recommended because it won’t let you migrate the same catalog again, and not all data syncs, so you’ll end up with new metadata or photos orphaned in the Lightroom Classic catalog. Be sure of your decision before migrating.
If you’re unsure whether the cloud-based version of Lightroom offers all of the functionality you require, don’t migrate until you’re certain. Instead, use Lightroom Classic to sync smart previews to the cloud so you can view/edit them in Lightroom. This will allow you to fully test the Lightroom ecosystem before committing to switching over completely. (See the Cloud Sync chapter of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ to avoid potential problems caused by using both together.)
Not everything migrates
Many Lightroom Classic features don’t exist in Lightroom. Some of the data gets transferred but remains hidden, and some information simply doesn’t transfer.
Data that doesn’t transfer to the Lightroom database includes:
- Folders and folder hierarchy (although you can convert to collections before migrating, which become albums in Lightroom).
- Develop History States (but the current Develop settings do transfer).
- Snapshots (however you could manually convert to virtual copies before migrating).
- Custom metadata from plug-ins.
- Creations (books, slideshows, prints and web galleries).
- Map module saved locations (but the GPS data itself does transfer).
- Smart collections.
- Shared web galleries will need to be shared again after migration, so the URL’s may change.
Some data gets converted to Lightroom’s format.
- Color labels become keywords.
- Virtual copies become real copies.
- Collection sets become album folders.
- Collections become albums.
What You’ll Need
To run the migration, you’ll need:
- Lightroom Classic, Lightroom CC 2015 or Lightroom 6. If you’re migrating from an earlier Lightroom version (1.0-5.7.1), you must first install a trial of Lightroom Classic and allow it to upgrade a copy of your catalog to Lightroom Classic format before running migration.
- On your boot drive (e.g., C:\ or Macintosh HD), you need space for the catalog and smart previews, which can be as much as 20% of the size of your Lightroom Classic catalog and original files.
- The migration process creates a copy of your images, so you’ll need free space for all of the originals, either on the boot drive or on another internal/external hard drive or NAS (network accessible storage). You can set the location of the originals in Preferences > Local Storage before opening the migration tool. This extra space is only needed temporarily, as the local cache can be cleared once the files have safely uploaded.
- Enough cloud storage space to hold all of your photos, otherwise Lightroom won’t be able to upload them. The Photography Plan includes 20GB or the Lightroom plan includes 1TB. If you have a larger library, you can add extra storage space on your account page on Adobe’s website.
- You can only migrate each catalog once, so make sure everything’s set up before moving forward.
Preparing your catalog in Lightroom Classic
Before you start the migration, there’s some prep work to do in Lightroom Classic.
- Go to File menu > Optimize Catalog.
- Go to Library menu > Find Missing Photos to check that all of the originals are available. If some photos are marked as missing, follow these instructions to locate the missing originals.
- Create a smart collection to search for metadata conflicts. (Criteria is Other Metadata > Metadata Status > is > Conflict Detected.)
- In the smart collection, click on the metadata icon in the corner of each thumbnail to fix the conflict. If you’re happy that the catalog’s metadata is correct (which is usually the case), click Overwrite Settings.
- If you organize your photos into named folders in Lightroom Classic and wish to retain that organization, create collections/collection sets to replicate your folder structure (up to 4 deep). The quickest way to do this is to right-click on the parent folder and select Create Collection Set “xxx”. and repeat until all of your chosen folders have been replicated in the Collections panel.
Transferring presets
Develop presets designed for Lightroom 4 or later will also work in Lightroom, so you may want to import your profiles and presets.
- Create a folder, perhaps on the desktop, to temporarily store the presets and profiles.
- Copy any DCP format profiles, XMP format profiles and XMP format presets by:
- On Windows, open the Start menu search box and type %appdata%\Adobe\ CameraRaw.
- On macOS, go to Finder > Go menu > Go to Finder and paste ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw.
- Copy the contents of the CameraProfiles and Settings folders to the folder you just created on the desktop.
- If you’re using Lightroom 6, Lightroom CC 2015, or Lightroom Classic 7.2 or earlier, also…
- On Windows, open the Start menu search box and type %appdata%\Adobe\Lightroom.
- On macOS, go to Finder > Go menu > Go to Finder and paste ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom.
- Copy the contents of the Develop Presets folder to the folder on the desktop.
- Check if there’s a Lightroom Settings folder next to your catalog, and if so, copy the contents of the Develop Presets and Settings folders to the temporary folder.
- In Lightroom, go to File menu > Import Profiles & Presets and navigate to the folder on the desktop, then press Import. A progress bar displays at the top of the Preset and Profile Browser panels while they’re importing.
Migrating a catalog
Now it’s time to start the migration itself…
- Quit Lightroom Classic / Lightroom CC 2015 / Lightroom 6 and open Lightroom.
- In Lightroom, select File menu > Migrate Lightroom Catalog.
- In the information dialog that appears, click Continue.
- Review the information in the Before You Begin dialog and click Continue.
- Select the catalog that you want to migrate, then click Start Scan.
- Lightroom scans the catalog and launches the migration tool, displaying a progress bar for you to monitor. This step may take some time to complete, depending on the size of your catalog.
- Review any exceptions that the migration tool reports, for example, if you don’t have enough cloud or local storage space available. If you’ve prepared your catalog in advance, there may not be any exceptions. Stop and fix the problems, then click Check Again, or ignore the exceptions by clicking Continue Anyway.
- Review the information in the Catalog Ready for Migration dialog. If necessary, click Open Log File to check the details of any errors. Then click Start Migration to begin the migration process.
- A progress bar is displayed during the migration process. Depending on the catalog size and your computer specifications, this step may take some time to complete (e.g., many hours, or even a few days if you have tens of thousands of photos), as it copies all of the photos into Lightroom’s own storage space, ready for upload to the cloud.
- When migration is complete, Lightroom displays a confirmation dialog. If there are exceptions, click Open Log File to review what went wrong. Otherwise, you’re all done, and ready to start using Lightroom. Photos may take hours, days or weeks to sync to the cloud, depending on the speed of your internet connection and the number and size of the photos.
- If you run into issues with the migration, the most frequent issues and their solutions are listed here.
- If you have more than one Lightroom Classic catalog, you can repeat the process. An album folder is created for each catalog, so you can identify the source of the photos.
- Once you’re happy that everything’s safely in Lightroom’s storage space and has finished uploading to the cloud, you may choose to delete the Lightroom Classic catalog and photos to free up hard drive space, or move them to a disconnected hard drive as an extra backup. You can also uninstall Lightroom Classic.
Download a copy of Adobe Lightroom – Edit Like a Pro, to learn all the tips and tricks, as many of Lightroom’s more advanced features are hidden by default.
What is the process for migrating back to Lightroom Classic from the cloud-based Lightroom?
That depends – how did you migrate to cloudy in the first time? Through the migration tool or just by importing? And do you still have your previous Classic catalog and all of its folder structure?
Migrating back from Cloudy to Classic isn’t as straightforward, which is why the article asks you to be sure it’s the right move for you before migration to Cloudy in the first place.
Thanks for the tutorial! Do you know where I can view the log file for things that didn’t get migrated? I accidentally closed the window before I clicked it.
I believe they’re buried inside the Lightroom Library.lrlibrary file. If you let me know which operating system, I can dig up the file path for you.
That would be awesome, thanks! I’m on a Mac running Mojave.
It looks like it’s / Users / [your username] / Pictures / Lightroom Library.lrlibrary / migration / lrcat
The Lightroom Library.lrlibrary file is a package, so you have to right-click > Show Package Contents to see inside.
Thank you for looking that up! I have Lightroom Catalog.lrcat, maybe they changed the terminology from “Library” to “Catalog”? Also, I don’t have a “Show Package Contents” option when I right click.
I might have to just open both programs and compare what’s in Classic with what’s in the new version.
Hi Laura
No, that’s your actual catalog file. The location Victoria mentioned is the correct one (running Mojave myself) – and it isn’t aa hidden file. Check again, or perhaps search in finder for Library.lrlibrary
Got it, thank you so much, Paul!
This may be a silly question but since both Lightroom classic and Lightroom cloudy are subscription based, do I have to have both subscriptions going to do the migration? Or is there a way to change subscriptions at the same time as the migration? In my case I have around 250gb of photos so it’s too many for the 20gb I currently get with cloudy.
Classic will go into a “read-only” mode when that subscription ends, so if you talk to customer services when you’re ready to migrate, they can move you over to the LR Cloudy+1TB plan. You’ll still be able to migrate with Classic in “read-only” mode.
Perfect. This is super helpful. Thank you so much Victoria!
I have just completed the migration from the classic software to the cloud-based version. Until now, I have had my “master images” organised in a folder structure on my hard drive. After the migration, do I technically not need that any more?
If I understand correctly, all of the original photos and the edited versions are now stored in the cloud and organised as albums. If I select the “local storage” preference for the originals, this is saved as a package file and not a folder-based list of all of the original image files. But I’m still inclined to keep the original files on my hard drive in this way.
Should I continue to save any new photos in my folder system, and then import these to Lightroom? There should be no need to use the local storage option then (I think) but note that all edits will only be saved in the cloud-based platform?
Yes. I’d wait until they’ve finished uploading before you delete the previous master images though.
By default, Cloudy’s originals are kept in the package file, but preferences, you can set another normal folder location and they’d then be stored in normal dated folders, so you don’t need to double handle new files.
After much deliberation and waiting, I finally made the switch to Cloudy. I followed the instructions to a T. However, now when I look in cloudy I don’t see any of the photos I supposedly migrated. I see an album called “Migrated Lightroom Catalog” but there is nothing inside. No photos or anything. I’m sure it is the right Lightroom Catalog that got migrated though. When I try to migrate again it says that it can’t be migrated twice. Has anyone else had this problem before? I haven’t deleted anything from my originals or lightroom classic yet.
Just to follow-up on this, I am still not sure why my overall catalog didn’t migrate properly. However, I went back into Lightroom Classic and selected a smaller number of folders (started with 5) and exported those as a Catalog. I then re-migrated that smaller catalog into Lightroom Cloudy and it worked perfectly. I did this a few more times with slightly larger exports each time until I now have all of my albums set up in Cloudy. Thank you again for all of your great articles and advice! Hopefully this helps someone else that may be struggling with the same issue I had above.
Thanks for the update and also the tip that may well help others. We’re pleased you’re all migrated!!!
Victoria, I really appreciate this essay. However, I didn’t stop and read the first step. You suggested:
“Lightroom Classic, Lightroom CC 2015 or Lightroom 6. If you’re migrating from an earlier Lightroom version (1.0-5.7.1), you must first install a trial of Lightroom Classic and allow it to upgrade a copy of your catalog to Lightroom Classic format before running migration.” I had Lightroom 4. I failed to do this first step, and I failed the step to migrate the updated LRCAT file to my external drive. I realized my error too late. Only after this began did I realize catalog was trying to import way too much data beyond my 20gb limit and that I should have directed the LRCAT to be on my external drive where I had my existing LRCAT file. I delete all files from my Adobe account and then uninstalled Lightroom/LRC/PhotoShop/Creative Cloud app that all come with this plan. When I reimported those apps and started over it remembered I had already done this “one-time” update effort and is preventing me from trying to do a fresh update (to update my LRCAT locally, not to the cloud). Is there any trick you know to “try again”? If not, I’m ditching Lightroom products forever. Life is too short. Thanks for your good work here.
Yeah, there’s ways to start over. I’m not sure I quite follow though… you want to use the cloud-based version of Lightroom with only 20GB of cloud storage?
Since you mention updating your LRCAT locally, I’m wondering if you’re actually wanting to use Lightroom Classic, which continues to store the photos on your hard drive like Lightroom 4 did. Blame Adobe’s naming for the confusion!
Hi Victoria. Yes, I want to use Lightroom Classic, which I hope means it can be updated and maintained on my local drive (external). However, after uninstalling all the Adobe apps of their $9.99/month photo plan, and trying to start fresh, Adobe doesn’t give me the series of choices to “migrate”/update like you describe above. I thought I could update and maintain the old lrcat file on my drive. That’s not happening now. I am unable to duplicate this “one-time” upgrade limit that Adobe has for updating old products like me. I don’t know what mistake I made, but it appeared that I directed the upgrade to move my content online in the update process. I didn’t want that, and I deleted everything that was temporarily moved to the cloud. I hope that might make sense. I welcome any know method to “start fresh” and try again. Thank you so much for your help.
Great, then you’re simply on the wrong page of instructions. Easily done, since Adobe’s naming is confusing. This is talking about migrating from a folder-based version of Lightroom (e.g. LR4) to the version that stores the photos in the cloud.
What you want to do is simply upgrade from an older Lightroom version (LR4) to the current Lightroom Classic.
All you need to do is open the LR4 catalog into Lightroom Classic and it’ll ask permission to upgrade the catalog. Photos stay exactly where they are at the moment. Here’s more detailed instructions: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-upgrade-catalog/
Once you’re done, you might want to empty the cloud of anything you already uploaded. To do so, go to https://lightroom.adobe.com, click your avatar top right > Account Info > Delete Lightroom Library. This just clears out the cloud, not the photos on your hard drive.
Hi Victoria,
Just thought I’d say thanks very much for this brilliant step-by-step (or idiots guide, as I prefer to call it) explanation.
I have the current version of LrC, but found the file storing simply too much for my little brain – even with only about 10,000 images.
So, after investigation, it was clear that Lr would suit me better – especially as I take most of my images on my Lr mobile camera app and also on my generic iPhone camera app (@bob___holman on Instagram if you’re at all interested in the black and white genre …..) and all the images would seamlessly sync. One of the problems that kept on happening was the sync to LrC from shots taken on the iPhone camera – all images would constantly ‘hang’ for ever, in the sync area. And I had to take time in sorting this out.
And, as my current (and very old MacBook Pro 2012) was slowing down to a snail’s pace, I invested in the new M2 chip in the latest MacBook Pro.
So, I followed your instructions to the letter on my old MacBook.
Did the migration to Lr on my old MacBook.
Opened Lr on my new MacBook.
Tada! – everything is as it should be in Lr on my new MacBook!
Thank you once again.
Best wishes,
Bob
Excellent news, thanks for sharing Bob!
I have just bought a subscription to the Cloud based version of Lightroom but can’t migrate my Lightroom 5 catalog because it’s too early a version. I chatted online with an Adobe rep who assured me that migration from LR5 was possible, however when I try to do thid I get a message that LR5 catalogues cannot be migrated, and when I try to get help about this on line I am just told that LR5 is no longer supported so no help can be provided. Have you any idea what can I do?
Yep, no issue. First thing to check is that the cloud version will do everything you need (search here Classic vs. Cloud if you’re unsure). And if it will, all you need is a trial version of Lightroom Classic. That’ll create an upgraded version of your LR5 catalog that the cloud can understand. It takes minutes, no big deal. On the other hand, if you were just looking for an updated version on LR5, then the Lightroom Classic subscription might be a good choice for you. Either way, there’s an easy way forward.
Thanks very much for your prompt reply and clear helpful instructions. I successfully created a new catalogue using a trial version of LR Classic – no problem at all. But when I tried to migrate this to the web version of LR that I have bought it failed. I spent about six hours with an Adobe agent controlling my computer and trying to solve the problem on Friday – until she suggested restarting the computer and then had gone home by the time I got to clicking the link she sent to reconnect. Today (Monday) I started the whole process over again with another Adobe agent who fared no better after a couple of hours. He suggested updating the MacOS from Ventura 13.0.1 to 13.1 which required a restart but then didn’t send me a link so I couldn’t re-establish connection with him. So I am facing having to start the whole process again, and am wondering about simply uploading all my photos individually, folder by folder, and with all my editing and ratings being lost. My computer, incidentally, is a brand new MacBook Pro 16 inch and I had looked forward to being able to run LR on it!
I don’t suppose you have any tips about how to address this problem, do you, or even some connections with influential people in Adobe who might get this sorted out?
Best wishes and thanks, Richard
Hi Richard, yeah we can help you troubleshoot. Probably easier do so on the forum, link is in the menubar. I’d break it down… first make sure the Classic catalog seems ok, then I’d want to know what happens when it fails.
Thanks so much! Was beginning to feel desperate about the whole situation. A problem is that my LRC trial runs out tomorrow (6th) so I’ll get right on to it.
As I understand it, once I migrate photos from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom, they get synced to the cloud and then back down to Lightroom Classic? This means I end up with 2 copies in Lightroom Classic — the originals that were migrated and then newly downloaded synced copies from the cloud?
In which case I end up with three copies locally — the originals and synced copies in Lightroom Classic, and the locally stored copy in Lightroom, and then a fourth copy in the cloud.
Am I supposed to delete the originals in Lightroom Classic once the cloud versions have been downloaded? If so, what happens if the original were synced with, say, Flickr, as deleting them breaks the link and future edits won’t be uploaded to Flickr.
Also, once I delete the original in Lightroom Classic, I’ll still have two version locally — one for Lightroom Classic and one for Lightroom?
Thanks.
Migration is designed as a one-way street, e.g. not continuing to use Lightroom Classic. That said, if you open in Classic the same catalog you just migrated, it’s usually smart enough to match them up with the existing files rather than downloading them again.
Are you still planning on using Classic alongside the cloud? Or what’s your intended workflow?
“Migrate catalog”? lcc 12.4 (Windows) and lcc9.4 (MacBook) no “migrate catalog” choice found.
Migrate catalog is found in the cloud-based Lightroom version rather than Lightroom Classic. What are you trying to accomplish?