Moving Lightroom Classic to a new PC - query about copying settings

DB_SamX · 25 Nov 2023 at 15:37

I will be rebuilding my PC soon, and with that reinstall Creative Cloud and Lightroom to a brand new hard drive.

I have just been preparing for that, doing some reading about transferring over the catalog, downloaded presets, and catalog backups. What I am struggling to confirm is whether that is all that's required to be copied across?

Are my general settings (quick develop settings, keywords, etc) automatically included in the catalog folder/files, are are there separate folders buried in the Lighroom Program Files?

Anything else worth keeping in mind?

DB_SamX · 1 Dec 2023 at 09:31

Anyone?

ethan · 5 Dec 2023 at 23:46

I believe you can set your prefferences. That being said, if you've not already done that you will have to add/ reinstall your presets and filters one at a time.

mrk · 9 Dec 2023 at 17:12

You can manually export your user presets by right clicking user presets then export group.

But, literally everything is stored under your Catalog folder, so for example all my stuff (except the RAW file imports which are on another NVMe which I point the library module to) is as so:

I sync this folder to my backups drive once a month so everything is backed up. But essentially if you copy over this parent folder then on the new PC install LRC, just point to this parent folder as your catalog location and everything comes back.

Also, you'd be much better off having your catalog and RAWs on an SSD, even a SATA SSD is faster/lower latency than a HDD.

DB_SamX · 27 Jan 2024 at 17:21

mrk said:
You can manually export your user presets by right clicking user presets then export group.

But, literally everything is stored under your Catalog folder, so for example all my stuff (except the RAW file imports which are on another NVMe which I point the library module to) is as so:

I sync this folder to my backups drive once a month so everything is backed up. But essentially if you copy over this parent folder then on the new PC install LRC, just point to this parent folder as your catalog location and everything comes back.

Also, you'd be much better off having your catalog and RAWs on an SSD, even a SATA SSD is faster/lower latency than a HDD.

Ta, I did move all my RAWs onto a SSD, and found the catalog files as above. I also found on the Adobe site, some guidance on other Lightroom properties and preferences. I copied them over the new installation files to be sure, and so far so good. Nothing seems amiss.

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/lightroom-classic/kb/preference-file-file-locations-lightroom.html