Reader Question: Moving Images From One Computer To Another
Reader Martin asks, “How can I transfer the photos in Lightroom on my Apple laptop to Lightroom on my Apple tower?“
This is a great question, Martin, and one that is deserving of a number of articles. I’ll try to describe the process briefly here, however, so you don’t have to wait for me to get all the other articles written!
Many photographers work with more than one machine, and being able to move images from one to another is a vital skill. There are two basic approaches to this problem:
- You can have one Lightroom Catalog file and collection of images that you move back and forth from one machine to another (typically on an external drive). Or…
- You can export a group of images out of one catalog and import them into a different catalog.
Using One Lightroom Catalog
Let’s look at this approach first, as it is probably the simplest. A little background information first.
You need to understand what the Lightroom Catalog is (and what it isn’t). The Lightroom Catalog is simply the database file that the Lightroom program uses to store information about your photographs. The catalog contains information such as the image preview, when it was taken, where it was taken, labels, keywords, collections it may be in, develop history, and on, and on, and on… David describes the catalog a bit in a video in his recent post.
The Lightroom Catalog does not contain your original image files, referred to by Lightroom as Negative Files. These are stored wherever you told Lightroom to store them when you imported your images. We typically store them in our computer’s Pictures folder.
So, where is this “Lightroom Catalog?” The Lightroom Catalog is, by default stored in your Pictures or My Pictures folder in a folder called Lightroom. Go look now. You should see that folder there. In the Lightroom folder, there should be a file called Lightroom 2 Catalog.lrcat. That file is your Lightroom Catalog. If you upgraded from Lightroom 1, there may be a file called Lightroom Catalog.lrcat, as well. That is your old Lightroom 1 catalog and can be safely removed. (You might want to keep it somewhere as a last ditch backup, but chances are, you already have more recent backups.)
Typical Location of the Lightroom Catalog
There may be a few other files or folders in there. The Lightroom Settings folder contains any custom metadata templates, printing presets, file naming templates, etc. that you may have created, depending on how you have your preferences set. (Check out the Setting Preferences in Lightroom 2 article for more on that.) There may also be a Lightroom Previews file and a temporary file or two. Just leave those there.
If you are going to move back and forth from a laptop to a desktop computer, it may be easiest to just keep one main Lightroom Catalog (I, of course, am referring to a Lightroom 2 Catalog, although the same rules apply if you’re still using Lightroom 1) and its associated image files. (Always keep backups of all of these on a separate drive, just in case, of course.) If you keep the Lightroom Catalog and the images on a portable external hard drive, you can just move that drive from your laptop to your desktop and back, always seeing the same Lightroom Catalog with the same images and settings. (For a few suggested external hard drives, click on the “External Hard Drives” link on the Store page.)
To put this in practice, just move (or copy) the folder containing your images and your Lightroom Folder (with the Lightroom Catalog inside) to your external hard drive. To make sure you’re always working with this catalog in Lightroom, simply locate your Lightroom 2 Catalog.lrcat file on the external hard drive and double-click to open it in Lightroom. The workflow is pictured below. (Click on the image to view it full size.)
Option 1 - Store all your images and your Lightroom Catalog on one portable drive.
Exporting Images From One Catalog To Another
A more common (and possibly more useful) method is to export groups of images from one catalog and import them into another. Adobe has built in a useful method for us to use so that we can maintain as much information as possible with our images while moving them. This is the Export as a Catalog command.
In this scenario, we will assume that you have Lightroom installed on your desktop (tower). Therefore, you have a Lightroom Catalog on your desktop, and since I assume that’s where you’ll probably want to be doing the majority of your image editing, we’ll call that Catalog Catalog A. You also have Lightroom on your laptop with a Lightroom Catalog file. We’ll call this Catalog B.
We’re going to take a group of images out of Catalog B on your laptop and add them (with all of their corresponding metadata) to Catalog A on your desktop. To do this:
- On your laptop (Catalog B), select all of the images you’d like to move to your desktop in the Grid View of the Library Module.
- Choose File->Export as Catalog… This is going to create a new catalog (Catalog C) from the selected images which we will soon add to our desktop catalog (Catalog A).
- Name your temporary catalog and choose a location in which to save it. Saving it on an external drive is easiest, unless your laptop and desktop are networked. You’ll need some way to move this new catalog.
- As you can see from the image below, Lightroom has created a folder with this new catalog (both named whatever you specified) along with a Previews file and a copy of the original files (negative files). Connect the drive with this catalog to your desktop computer and open Lightroom. You should now be in Catalog A.
- Choose File->Import from Catalog…
- Choose your temporary catalog (Catalog C) and click Choose.
- An Import dialog will appear. Make sure you change the New Photos: File Handling drop down to “Copy new photos to a new location and import” and choose the location on your desktop where you’re storing your photos. Then click the Import button.
- These photos, and all of their metadata, develop history, etc., have been copied to your new catalog (Catalog A). If you’re satisfied that the transfer took place successfully, you can delete the temporary catalog folder (Catalog C), and you can delete the photos that you no longer want in Catalog B.
Select the images you'd like to export.
Choose File->Export as Catalog
Name your temporary catalog, choose a location, and click Export Catalog.
Contents of Catalog C
Choose File->Import from Catalog
Choose your temporary catalog and click Choose.
Import from Catalog dialog box
Option 2 - Move images from source catalog to destination catalog using an interim temporary catalog.
Of course, if you just want all of you images on your laptop (Catalog B) to be moved to your desktop (Catalog A), you can skip the creation of the temporary catalog (Catalog C) and just import Catalog B into Catalog A.
I promise it’s not as complicated as it sounds. Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
Anyone else have any other suggestions or comments? Feel free to let us know below, or on the Contact Us page.
Filed Under: FAQ
About the Author: Scott Rouse is an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE), photographer, teacher, and graphic- and web-designer in Missoula, MT. His photography focuses on wildlife and adventure sports and can be viewed at 
I recently sent a question to either you or Dave about converting from Windows based computers to Mac. I am leaning strongly to convert. Feel free to give me a nudge. To follow up on your discussion above. Would the procedure be any different for transferring an entire Lightroom catalog on a windows based laptop or PC to a Mac system? Thanks, Henry
Well, Henry, it’s no secret that I’m a huge Mac fan.
-When you compare them component for component, they are competitively priced (although typically on the higher end of the spectrum).
-They are much less susceptible to viruses and other mal-ware.
-The same company makes the operating system, a great majority of the software, and assembles the components, thus virtually eliminating the ever-present Windows nightmare of third-party drivers and conflicts.
-They are intuitively designed and seem to just work, whereas I find myself struggling with the design and manufacturing shortcomings of the plethora of different PC manufacturers out there.
-Any software you need for your computer, you can usually find it (or a better alternative) for Mac. If you really need a Windows-based program, a new Mac will run Windows better than almost any off-the-shelf PC out there.
My favorite pick (for a laptop) is spelled out in my recent post, New Apple Laptops – Finding the Ideal Photographer’s Laptop or you can
check out the Apple Online Store.
As far as transferring an entire catalog from a PC to a Mac, the process is quite simple. A Lightroom Catalog (and its accompanying images) read the same whether Mac or PC. Just use an external hard drive, network, or other physical connection between the machines to move both the Lightroom folder (with the catalog inside) and all of the images (negative files) to the new machine.
Usually this is as easy as copying everything from your My Pictures folder on a PC to the Pictures folder on a Mac.
Let me know if you need some more help with this.
-Scott
Thank you for your reply, Scott. You will be happy to know that I have made the decision to convert to Mac. I made a reservation at my local Apple store to attend a ‘Getting Started’ workshop this Sunday. I will reread your article and David’s as well on suggestions for an optimal Mac laptop and desktop computer setup. With respect to a Mac Pro tower, would you guys recommend a Raided dual drive setup for automatic internal backups?
Thanks, Henry
That’s great news, Henry. Those workshops are the Apple Store (if you’re lucky enough to live near one) are great for those converting or new to Mac.
A Mac Pro is definitely the way to get the most performance out of a machine. They make feature-length movies using those machines!
As you mentioned, they do offer a RAID card ($800) and some very fast (15,000 RPM) SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drives ($500-$650 each) to rack up the storage in the machine. Typically, high-end video/animation/motion graphics users (think Pixar) would pony up for these super-fast drives in a RAID 0 configuration for speed and performance. This would, however, greatly increase the likelihood of a complete data loss.
My recommendation would be to save the money on the RAID card and spend it on additional, external disks for backup. The Drobo is one option to consider.
Keep the questions coming…we’re happy to help where we can.
-Scott
Does it make a noticeable difference to store the catalog on the internal drive if the images are on an external? My Lightroom 2 is giving me the spinning beachball all the time regardless of which drive my catalog or images are on.
I would recommend storing primary catalog on your internal (fastest) drive. Having your images on an external is fine…even recommended.
A few things I’d check with spinning beach ball of doom woes:
-I recommend keeping around 1/3 of your hard drive space (particularly on your primary internal drive) free. That’s a hard goal for many people to meet.
-Under your Lightroom Catalog Settings (Lightroom menu on a Mac, Edit menu on a PC), click the Relaunch and Optimize button.
-I’m sometimes guilty of trying the old Repair Permissions trick on the Mac (Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility), but that probably wouldn’t help slowness. On a PC, you can run Disk Defragmenter.
Good luck,
Scott
I’m new to Lightroom (2), and have this question about backup. I store my image files on an external drive (1), and to back them up I copy the whole folder to a second external drive (2) weekly. I now have my Lightroom library file on drive 1.
If I copy the Lightroom library file to disk 2, will it be looking for the files on disk 1? How can I make the Lightroom library file on disk 2 look for (all the same) image files on disk 2? Of course, I want to preserve all the tags and other metadata I’ve added to the library on disk 1.
Thanks!
Will
I can now answer the question I posed, having experimented with Lightroom catalogs and image files. A copy of the catalog and the image file folder structure onto another drive works well. When I open the catalog on the backup drive, Lightroom recognizes all the files and their metadata on the backup drive.
Sorry I missed your question, William. I’ve been out of touch for a few days. Glad you were able to figure it out. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Hi William, My brother in law lent me a Mac G5 to use for school, and has since given it to me. My problem is this – since it was a loaner at first, I used it under his previous employees name (not wanting to mess with his system) – now I’m trying to get rid of “mark” and migrate all to my user name “mary” . I have managed to move the folders from his name to mine, but cannot seem to find the collections … can you help me to find them and move them to my user name?
ps. I am using lightroom 2
Mary,
The “folders” are just that: physical folders on the computer. “Collections” only exist in a Lightroom catalog. You’d need to move the catalog file itself over to the new user. It’s typically stored in the Pictures folder in a folder called “Lightroom Catalog.”
Check out this article for some information on moving a catalog from one hard drive to another. It should be helpful.
-Scott
Hi Scott
If i understand this correctly the meaning of using a catalog between a laptop and a home computer as most of us do. U can simply move the catalog files between the computers or store it on a removable usb harddisk and connect it to the computer youre currently working on.
However, if so.. can it work if i export my entire catalog to and network disk avaible to both computer over LAN and simply let them connect to the same database. Im on to the fact that you can not work on the same time from both computers, but if i work on the laptop and shoot my pictures directly to lightroom and import them when the shoot is over… then i can close down the laptop and take the home computer into use when editing the images with the import metadata and changes saved to the images ?
Dear Kenneth,
Your question about putting the catalog on a network disk is a good one and an excellent idea. Sadly, though neither Lightroom nor your network is ready for this option. Maybe someday….
David