Upgrading from Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3
So, you’ve heard that Lightroom 3 is out. You’ve read about some of the new features for professional photographers. You’re sold. Now it’s time to upgrade.
Adobe has made the process of upgrading from Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3 relatively painless in most cases. I’ve upgraded many Lightroom 2 catalogs for use in Lightroom 3 while testing the product and have yet to encounter any serious errors. Let’s do it!
[A quick side note. Step 1 is written specifically for US customers. Our international readers may have a different experience or be required to pay different prices. Let us know about your experiences in the comments section and skip ahead to step 2.]
Step 1: Obtain the Software
If you haven’t yet done so, you’ll need to go ahead and obtain a copy of Lightroom 3. In his post called “Advice on Buying Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3,” David Marx talks about his favorite places to get software. Amazon.com. Well, that’s my favorite, as well. The problem is, we don’t want to wait (not even until tomorrow) to get started using Lightroom 3. That’s ok. We’re still going to end up buying the upgrade from Amazon…we’ll just use the 30-day trial from Adobe until our serial number arrives.
Here’s an important point which some people don’t realize: The downloadable 30-day trial, the downloadable full install or upgrade and the physical CD-in-a-box copy (full install or upgrade) are the exact same thing. In other words, we can download the 30-day trial today, install it, upgrade our Lightroom 2 catalog(s) and begin basking in the Lightroom 3 goodness (for up to 30 days) while we wait for our serial number to arrive in the mail from Amazon (or whatever retailer you purchased your copy of the software from). When the hard copy arrives, simply enter the serial number from the boxed package and your once-trial version is now a fully registered copy. You don’t even need to take the physical disk out of the box.
Here’s the link for the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Upgrade from Amazon.com.
Download the 30-day trial of Lightroom 3 from Adobe here.
Step 2: Backup your Data
Though a Lightroom upgrade doesn’t really mess with any of your computer’s core data, it’s always a good idea to make sure you have a complete and recent backup of your computer’s internal hard drive as well as any external drives containing your images or catalog(s).
Click here for some articles about backing up your computer and its drives.
Step 3: Install the Software
Once you’ve downloaded the software (or received the CD, if you went that route), double-click on “Install Lightroom 3″ on a Windows machine or “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.pkg” on a Mac to begin the installation process. Follow the instructions in the dialog boxes.
For the timid or the curious, here are the steps on a Mac (click on the images for larger versions):
Double-click on 'Adobe Lightroom 3.pkg' to begin the installation process.
If you receive a security warning dialog, click 'Continue.'
Click 'Continue.'
Read the license agreement and click 'Continue.'
Click 'Agree' to continue with the installation.
Click 'Install' to start the installation process.
Enter your Mac password to allow the installer to continue.
The installer will display the progress as the installation continues.
Click 'Close' once the installation completes.
Close the Finder window that opened when you first downloaded the installer or inserted the CD.
Eject the CD or installer disk image (.dmg).
If you installed from a downloaded disk image, you may delete the .dmg file from your Downloads folder.
Step 4: Upgrade your Catalog(s)
When you launch Lightroom 3, it should ask you if you’d like to upgrade your existing Lightroom 2 Catalog. It’s safe to go ahead and begin this upgrade process as Lightroom makes a duplicate copy of the Lightroom 2 Catalog before upgrading. If you have multiple catalogs, you’ll have to choose the catalog(s) you wish to upgrade one at a time.
Once the upgrade is complete and you’re happy with the results in Lightroom 2, you may delete your old Lightroom 2 Catalog. It may be a good idea, however, to hang onto a copy of it as a backup, just in case.
Step 5: Enter your License Key
If you’re using the 30-day trial version, you’ll be reminded each time you open Lightroom that your copy is unregistered. When you receive your full copy in the mail (if you ordered the CD), simply enter the serial number from that CD sleeve or product box in your already-installed copy of Lightroom 3. No need to insert the CD or try to re-install.
Step 6: Remove Older Versions of Lightroom
Once you’re happy with the upgrade, you’ve tested your new catalog(s), and you’re sure you haven’t lost anything important, you can go ahead and remove Lightroom 2 (and Lightroom 1, if you still have it) from your computer.
Removing Lightroom: Mac
Easy! Just navigate to your Applications folder in the Finder and drag “Adobe Lightroom 2.app” to the trash can. Then just empty the trash. That’s it. All of your images, presets, etc should remain intact.
To remove Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 from your Mac, simply drag the file 'Adobe Lightroom 2.app' to the Trash.
Removing Lightroom: Windows
Use the Add/Remove Programs feature in Windows to uninstall Lightroom 2. It should leave your existing catalogs intact.
Step 7: Enjoy
That’s it. Have fun with your new software. Take lots of pictures. Be creative. Make mistakes. Use Lightroom’s unlimited history to undo those mistakes.
Be sure and keep checking out our articles tagged with “Lightroom 3″ for the latest tips, news and tutorials on Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. In fact, you can subscribe to an RSS feed for those articles with this link, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Tell us about your upgrade experiences in the comments section, ok?
Filed Under: (01) Getting Started • (04) Computer Hardware Advice • (12) FAQ • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tutorials
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 
After upgrading will I still be able to use my backup files from LR2?
Looks like Amazon’s the way to go for me for purchase. Thanks for the article.
Only started using LR2 last year and still figuring my way around it and getting comfortable with it. 1) If I do upgrade or try LR3, does that overwrite LR2 or I would still be able to use LR2…just in case I get cold feet learning LR3. 2) I don’t think I don’t have much catalogs, do I need to do anything with my files before adding (or would they transfer w/ LR3?
Dear Sha,
Lightroom 2 and Lightroom 3 are separate programs. Adobe has carefully designed them so that nothing gets overwritten. They are separate applications and they maintain separate catalogs just in case you want to use both version. If you choose to upgrade your old catalog from Lightroom 2 and use it in Lightroom 3 then you don’t have to do anything to your files. If, on the other hand, you decide to start with a new catalog for Lightroom 3 then you will need to re-import everything. If you go this route be sure to save all of your work down to the file level using Lightroom 2 before importing files into Lightroom 3.
–
David
I’ve the same question. If I upgrade to LR3 and my friends still use LR2, is it possible to exchange the catalogs between this versions?
Dear Thomas,
So far as I know there is no way to make a Lightroom v3 catalog backwards compatible with Lightroom v2. So far as I know, there is also no way to make a Lightroom 2 catalog backwards compatible with Lightroom v1. That said, I don’t see why this would be a major problem. Your photos themselves are compatible with any version of Lightroom and how often were you sharing catalogs with other people? I can see sending a friend a bunch of images, maybe even a web gallery, but I have yet to encounter a situation where sending them my index of 40,000 photos (mostly lousy photos :>) made sense. Please tell us how / why you need to send a copy of your catalog to others and maybe we can think up a more elegant solution.
–
David
I’m teaching Lightroom 2. Unfortunately the school cannot upgrade at this time. Some students have Lightroom 3. Is there any way to make Lightroom 3 catalogs compatible with Lightroom 2?
Hi all,
I have a catalogue in LR2 containing 1100 images and many of which suffer from noise due to having used a high ISO setting during the shoot. I want this specific catalogues photos to benefit from the new noise reduction features offered in LR3.But having read some of the entries in this forum seems to suggest that once I upgrade to LR3 it is only future imported photos that will benefit from noise reduction? If so, it is going to be painful to re-import the photos as I have already performed alot of other editing features on them that I can’t lose. Can I manually ‘impose’ the new LR3 noise reduction settings upon the images once I upgrade the catalogue without needing to re-import?
Suggestions much appreciated!
My apologies for coming to the party so late, but I just received my LR3 upgrade disc and installed same.
I was confused to find LR2 still on my machine. Is there a reason why the installation of LR3 doesn’t upgrade/update LR2 to LR3 and instead loads a completely new version? It doesn’t even tell us it’s doing that and offer directions on how to remove LR2 or any other helpful hints about the migration to LR3.
Dear Forkboy1965,
In the Adobe world each product is separate from its predecessor. Installing Lightroom 3 does not disable or remove Lightroom 2. Likewise, installing Adobe Photoshop CS5 will not disable or remove an older version of Photoshop. Adobe does this on purpose so that you can continue to use the older version if you want. Especially in the Photoshop world there are often features in one version that people like better then the features in another.
For directions on how to uninstall Lightroom 2 see http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/401/kb401119.html
–
David
Just upgraged from LR2 to LR3 did not know I need to remove LR2. Thanks for informing me.
I am running windows vista. I recently upgraded to lightroom 3 and PSCS5.
Generally it works fine but.. when I process a photo in lr then send it to ps for further processing, when I return it to LR with save function, the resulting image in LR is more exposed than the image in PS. I have tried converting the colour space to many different things and the best that works is srgb. Is this not an inferior colour space? And when I print to my epson 2880 which uses RGB will I get good results with the print?
Dear Mike,
For the closest visual match between Lightroom and Photoshop try this:
1. Shoot raw files.
2. Set your Lightroom Preview Quality to High. (This preference switch lives in the Previews tab inside the Catalogs Settings Menu.)
3. In the Lightroom Preferences External Editing tab select the colorspace that you want to use. I like to work with 16-bit ProPhoto .PSD files but this just personal preference.
3. Set your Photoshop Color Settings preferences so that Photoshop will automatically preserve and use the embedded color profile.
Now your colors should stay consistent from program to program.
–
David
Thanks Scott! =)
Lightroom 3 will install separately from Lightroom 2. You can go back to using Lightroom 2, if you choose, after installing Lightroom 3.
Keep in mind, however, that Lightroom 3 Catalogs are not backwards-compatible (with Lightroom 1 or 2). Therefore, any work that you do in a Lightroom 3 Catalog won’t be automatically importable back into Lightroom 2.
-Scott
If I have Lightroom 2 installed on my XP computer and have that Lightroom 3 30day trial installed would it overwrite my Lightroom 2 installation?! I might not find Lightroom 3 easy and I want it to function separately from my Lightroom 2 so if trouble arises I can always go back to that.
Tried several times to print a file loaded into and prepared for Print in LR3 and when I attempted to print the file, I got a black screen and a “unecpectently quit” message.
Next morning I exported the LR3 file into LR2 and printed the file the file to my Epson 3800 printer as I had done many times before. Worked just fine!
How do I get LR3 in my iMac to print?
Thanks, Tony
Dear Tony C,
Sorry to hear about your print troubles but let me assure you that Lightroom 3 can print. I ran an entire gallery show for a workshop last weekend (80 16×20 prints) using Lightroom 3 on a MacBook Pro and a Mac Pro tower. I suspect that missed one of the little buttons either in the Mac’s Printer setup area (System Preferences > Printers and Fax) or in the Page Setup area. That your print worked with Lightroom 2 is all the more reason why it should work from Lightroom 3.
best of luck,
David
You’re very welcome. Glad we could help.
-Scott
Thanks a bunch Scott! I’ve got an Intel-based laptop, so I’ll start there. Your quick, clear, concise answers & all the great info here at LL are always much appreciated… hmm, perhaps a donation is in order.
Karen,
You’ll want to upgrade to the most recent version of the Mac OS (currently 10.6). The upgrade process is not difficult, but you must have a capable machine (an Intel chip is required).
If you have an Intel-based Mac, you’ll need the Mac Box Set to upgrade from 10.4 to 10.6. If you are upgrading both your laptop and desktop, you can get the Family Pack which will allow you to upgrade up to five machines in your household.
-Scott
I think I just screwed up by getting the LR3 & CS5 upgrades without paying attention to the system requirements. I only have Mac OS X 10.4.11 and now I see that I need at least OS X 10.5. From what I’ve searched online, it doesn’t seem like there is an easy way to upgrade from 10.4.11 to 10.5? I’ve been considering upgrading my laptop & desktop… that would do the trick, but I was hoping to wait a while before making that big spend. Do you have a recommendation on how to get what I need to run the new Adobe software pre-new-computer-purchase?
Scott,
All your answers make sense.
Many thanks again.
David
David,
1) I’m not sure what’s causing that issue. If there are no illegal characters and the folders aren’t named the same as another folder, it could be a bug. If you have a second, submit a Bug Report to Adobe.
2) To my knowledge, you should be fine just leaving them as Leica DNGs.
3) In my experience, I’ve found that you can safely rename the Catalog and its corresponding Previews file. This can lead to some confusion, however. The catalog and the previews files need to be named correctly. You may also have to redefine your backups path settings if you rename the parent folder of the catalog. My advice to most people is to just leave it named the way it is.
4) You can easily sort groups of images by capture time which should put duplicates next to each other. There’s not an easy way to have Lightroom remove duplicates which already exist in a catalog. That’s one of the reasons I choose to not rename my files (each file from the camera automatically has a unique name).
-Scott
Thank you very much Scott,
You guys do very good work here on this site, I am a new fan
Clay,
If you’re using Apple’s Migration Assistant to move to your new computer, all of your internal files will move automatically (including your Lightroom Catalog). You can then follow the procedures in this post to upgrade that catalog.
If you’re moving files manually, then just install Lightroom 3 on your new computer. Then copy the Lightroom 2 Catalog over to the new computer (using a thumb drive, home network, Target Disk Mode, or some other method) and open it into Lightroom 3. It will be upgraded.
No need to install Lightroom 2 on the new computer first.
-Scott
I am following up with a few more questions:
1) When renaming folder names, I had no problem with scores of them. However, 2 or 3 were refused by LR3 as being illegal. That despite the changes desired being just a single letter to correct a misspelling, not the use of any illegal characters. What gives?
2) I shoot with a Leica that delivers DNG files. What’s the story with ingesting them as DNGs into LR3? Should I just copy them in as is, or is there any advantage to converting by LR3 version into its version of a DNG?
3) Referring to my question of a few days ago, it’s a bit confusing to have my LR3 catalog named LR2-2. Can I rename the catalog “LR3″ with no problem?
4) I have a fair number of duplicates–but by now with different names corresponding to the different folders they are in. Can LR3, even so, collect them so that I can get rid of the duplicates?
Hello I am new here, I wanted to know if I could get some suggestions on how to solve my problem…here goes:
Currently I am running LR2 on my powerbook g4 system. I just bought an intel mac to be able to use LR3, how exactly do I upgrade myself to LR3, my catalog resides on the internal drive and my actual images are on external fw800 drive…
Do I copy the folder that holds the catalog over to external drive and then just import that into my LR3 or do I put LR2 on the new system, and then install LR3 so that the catalog can get upgraded appropriately…
I just want to make sure that I don’t mess anything up
If anyone could help I would appreciate it greatly
Thanks
Clay
Thanks. That makes sense.
Dear David Charney,
Your Lightroom 2 Catalog-2.lrcat is the new Lightroom 3 catalog file. It is named that way because it was not created from scratch. Brand new catalogs, unless told otherwise, take on the name Lightroom 3 Catalog.lrcat. Lightroom automatically preserved your old catalog’s name just in case you had more then one catalog and the old catalog name was important.
–
David Marx
I upgraded to LR 3. While it seems to be working fine, I can find no catalog file that is named Lightroom 3. There ARE files labelled Lightroom 2 Catalog-2.lrcat. I assume that when I upgraded my Lightroom 2 catalog, it kept a copy of my old catalog, as you mentioned somewhere in your replies. But I also expected that the upgraded catalog would be named Lightroom 3, not Lightroom 2-2. Any comments?
David:
I just upgraded to LR 3 and it seems all our valuable user presets, preferences and plug-ins went away. Is that supposed to happen? Is there an easy way to restore them?
Many Thanks,
David
P.S. You’re still the best instructor I ever had!
Dear David Cahn,
Thanks for the compliment. I sure appreciate it. Each version of Lightroom has its own preferences so that is nothing to worry about. See Getting Started Right: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Preference Menus for a new tutorial on these switches. The plug-ins too are catalog, and often version specific, so you will need reload those using the Plug-Ins Manager. You might need to update them too for Lightroom 3 but that’s super easy.
The user presets are the slightly more complicated. First, you need to set the preferences in Lightroom 3 so that we know where your user presets should live. I am a big fan of the “Store Presets with Catalog” option. Once you have turned this one on Lightroom will create a Lightroom Settings folder inside of the folder that holds your new catalog. Once this folder, and all of its sub-folders, exists quit Lightroom and find the Lightroom Settings folder from your old Lightroom 2 catalog. Open both Settings folders up in separate windows and move your presets from the old to the new.
The process is not hard– just drag and drop from folder to folder–but with the improvements in Lightroom 3 some of our old presets seem antiquated. For example, there are a host of new metadata fields in the IPTC Extension section that are very useful for professional photographers. Likewise in Lightroom 3, there is now a great way to simplify importing by creating an Import Preset.
Hope this helps,
David
Thanks so much for the information.
Does the new process version change anything in the camera specific profiles (Nikon Standard etc) and should I use them or will there be new ones for LR3?
Thanks!
Dear Lyn,
As far as I can tell the new process versions do not change anything in the camera specific raw profiles. As I understand it, the new code only changes the Fill Light, Sharpening, and Noise Reduction controls in the develop module. I would not expect to see new camera raw profiles in Lightroom 3 since as far as I know this feature has not changed.
–
David
Chris,
If you follow the procedure I’ve outlined to upgrade your Lightroom 2 Catalog for use in Lightroom 3, all of you catalog-specific features (such as Collections, Flags, presets, templates and more) will remain in your new Lightroom 3 Catalog.
-Scott
Hello Scott.
Thanks for an excellent article, which answers all my concerns about upgrading to LR3, except one: will all my Collections still be available after I’ve upgraded and, if so, do I need to do anything to copy them into LR3?
Thanks,
Chris
Suzanne,
To answer your first question, yes. Lightroom 3 keeps all the edits you’ve made in Lightroom 2 when you upgrade said Lightroom 2 Catalog. I’m not sure what you mean by “make it an archive.” Lightroom 3 will make a copy of your Lightroom 2 Catalog for use in Lightroom 3 allowing you to “archive” your Lightroom 2 Catalog somewhere if you’d like. Remember, though, that the Catalog is just the catalog. There are no images there. So, maintaining an old “archived” version of your Lightroom 2 Catalog is of little interest to most people.
You are also correct that the Lightroom 3 beta did not upgrade Lightroom 2 Catalogs. That was a stated intentional feature of the beta release to help users protect themselves from inadvertent data loss.
-Scott
Joseph,
Just locate those files on your computer and move them into Lightroom 3′s settings folder. To find them, open Lightroom 2 and choose Preferences. Click on the Presets tab and click the “Show Lightroom Presets Folder” button. This will show you (in the Finder on a Mac or Windows Explorer on a PC) the location of the presets you were using in that Lightroom 2 catalog.
Then open Lightroom 3 and repeat the process to locate the Presets folder for Lightroom 3.
Copy the presets that you want from the Lightroom 2 location to their respective locations in the Lightroom 3 presets folder.
There ya go!
-Scott
Scott,
Lightroom may not recognize the previously-used catalog since it’s not stored in the default location. You can ensure that Lightroom 3 opens the desired catalog by simply navigating to the catalog file on your computer, right clicking and choosing “Open in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.” Lightroom 3 will then ask if you’d like to upgrade the catalog. All of your image paths should remain intact.
-(other) Scott
Jim,
I don’t know the definitive answer to that question. There doesn’t seem to be any answers on the Adobe Upgrade web page, but my guess is that the upgrade version would work just fine.
You might contact Adobe to be sure, though.
-Scott
I purchased an academic version of LR2 last year. I am no longer in school. Can I upgrade my version to LR3 or do I have to buy the full version?
Scott,
About to upgrade from LR2 to 3. Have not installed LR 3 on my MBP yet. I am currently using David’s external drive set up for both pics and catalog on the external. When I install LR 3 will my path settings to the external for my catalog location come over to LR3 automatically? Step 4 above about upgrading the catalog made me think of this. Do I need to start the program the first time while holding the ‘alt’ key to tell LR where to look? Should I have the external attached while doing the LR 3 install. Sorry for the complicated question. Not a computer whiz plus new to Mac. Just setting up David’s 2 drive system was a big step for me. Doing this upgrade has me a bit concerned that my catalog will end invisible to LR and I will have those dang question marks in all my folders!!
The preset exposure adjustments and camera profile’s haven’t moved over to lightroom 3 – is there a way to import them?
I have a question–if I upgrade my LR2 catalog, will it keep all the edits I’ve made? And can I upgrade it so I can use it in LR3 but make it an archive?
The beta didn’t offer to upgrade my catalog, and I’ve actually created an LR3 catalog with the beta that I may as well keep as my active catalog–it’s got the edits of the most recent images and older ones I’ve re-processed with the new noise reduction of LR3.
[...] your existing catalog. Total upgrading time on my Mac Pro was 10 minutes. (Earlier today, I got a little confused and thought that it was going to need to duplicate all of my 25000+ raw photo files as well, but it [...]
Scott,
You’re absolutely right! Sorry, just wasn’t thinking clearly this morning. Completed the migration to LR3 with no problems whatsoever. Thanks!
Kenneth,
I doubt that the Catalog file itself takes up 50% of your drive’s space. You’re probably referring to your original images, known as “negative files” in Lightroom. Those will not be duplicated.
For more information, you can review the article Reader Question: Catalogs vs. Libraries vs. Folders in Lightroom. It should help you understand the differences between the Catalog file itself and your actual photos.
-Scott
Thanks for the review! Glad to hear going from LR2 to LR3 is pretty painless. I’m a bit concerned though that my LR2 catalog is already more than 50% of my external hard drive. Do I need to move it to a larger hard drive before beginning the migration if it’s going to make a “duplicate” catalog?
Tony,
Glad you figured out your first issue. To edit a Metadata Preset in Lightroom 3, simply choose Edit Metadata Presets… from the Metadata menu while in the Library Module. (That’s the same process as Lightroom 2.)
-Scott
Figured it out. I had to choose the path in LR3 and change my date format. Then save it as a an import preset. I thought all my import settings would carry over from LR2. Now how do I edit a metadata preset I made in LR3?
OK so I’ve upgraded from LR2 to LR3 I’m having some problems importing to the correct path. Example: images are/were stored in Pictures>Lightroom>2010>xMonth. But now when I import an image it wants to create a second 2010 folder within the Pictures folder. Like this Pictures>2010>xMonth. Is this making sense? What am I missing as an import option that will put the image in the existing 2010 folder without creating a new one.
David: Fabrizio is correct. Your images won’t receive any additional changes when your catalog is converted for use in Lightroom 3.
Ellis: You can upgrade from either Lightroom 1 or Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3 for the $99 upgrade price. For more information, you may consult the Lightroom Upgrade page at Adobe.com.
Henry: I’m sorry to hear that you’re having trouble. Make sure that you’ve fully removed any partially installed copies of Lightroom 3, then attempt the install again. This may be a good question to ask at the official Adobe Lightroom support forums.
Best of luck to you all,
Scott
Lightroom 3 won’t install. I have an Alienware Aurora quad-core with 6gb RAM. Version 2.7 runs perfectly. I have purchased & downloaded the upgrade, tried to run it, but it fails to complete the installation (multiple shut-downs & reopen of computer yield same result)
Hello
I’m currently using lightroom 1.4, can I purchase the upgrade or do I need to buy the full version of lightroom 3?
Thanks
Hi Scott,
although I want to thank you really much for this useful article, I believe that the upgrade of tje catalogue is a truly painless and straightforward procedure.
David, I will reply to you, if I may. Don’t worry: ALL your photograph will stay exactly the same! This is true unless you explicitly select them and perform a manual update to the current process (2010).
Only the newly imported pictures will take advantage by default of the new rendering engine and the new features.
I hope that answers your question.
Regards
Fabrizio
Scott,
Thanks for detailing the process.
Once my Lightroom 2 catalogs are imported to lightroom 3, does LR3 automatically change any of my LR2 catalogs pictures? For example, will an imported LR2 catalog picture with noise reduction applied, look the same in LR3 assuming I do not make any noise reduction changes? (given the new noise reduction algorithm?)
Does my question make sense?
Thanks,
–David