Moving Catalog in PSE8

I want to move my PSE8 catalog. My current catalog is in a custom location. I want to move it to a new custom location. When I do File > Catalog, highlight the catalog to move there is no Browse button on the Custom Location line for me to select the new location. The only thing the program allows me to do is to click on Catalogs Accessible to All Users or Current Users. How do I move the catalog to a different custom location?

plastydoc5: I tried what you tried before I even posted this question on the forum. When I did that copy like you described, when I opened the catalog I got an error message that the catalog was corrupted. A Repair didn't help.
In your case are your image files in the same directory structure as your catalog? I have my catalog files stored on my local hard drive and my images are stored on an external hard drive.
But I ended up taking a current backup of the catalog (I actually have 3 catalogs) and restoring it into the new location. That worked ... kind of ... and that will be the topic of another posting here shortly.
Thanks for your input.

Similar Messages

Moved catalog and now LR won't open it by default. Help?

I'm running LR2 (I know, first step, UPGRADE!), but in the meantime, I had to move my catalog because my drive got full. Under the Backup dialog box I chose the new location. But when I just click on the LR icon to open the program it opens with the default C: drive catalog location that it first installed with. Then I open the specific catalog from in the program and relaunch it. I have LR set to bring the dialog box everytime I start LR since I don't use it everyday. So I back it up when the dialog comes up and when it's done it goes right back to the default catalog with none of my library in there. Why do I have to keep opening the catalog manually?? It's driving me insane at this point. Can someone provide some tips please?? Thanks.

Double-click the moved catalog and Lr will open with it.
But in fact, you did not move the catalog at all. you made a backup of your catalog, and that is what you should do.
But making a backup catalog does not mean that Lr now opens with the backup catalog.
Having a backup means that there are now 2 catalogs: the "working" catalog and the backup catalog. If you had only one (1) catalog, you wouldn't have a backup.
Lr still opens and works with your "working" catalog. That is normal and expected.
If you want to move your "working" catalog do this:
Close Lr. In your OS (Mac Finder / Win Explorer) move (not copy!) the catalog to a different location. Then double-click the moved catalog and Lr will open with it and will use the new location as "working" catalog. But I recommend that you do not put your "working" catalog on the same drive as the "backup" catalog. If that drive fails, you have neither a "working" nor a "backup" catalog. Not good!
But I wonder why you would say your drive got full. Usually the catalog doesn't fill a drive, but your photos are.
Moving the catalog doesn't move your photos.
What you don't know, maybe, is that the catalog and the photos don't have to be on the same drive. So you can leave your catalog on the C-drive and have your photos somewhere else.
If you want to move your photos, you best do this in Lr. If you do it in your OS, you will have to re-link the photos and image folders.
See here on how to do the re-linking:
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/creative-suite-podcast-photographers/lightroom-dude-where-are-my -photos/
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm

Struggling moving catalog + pictures

Last weekend I've bought a Macbook pro retina and installed LR4.3 on it.
My desktop pc is windows and my current pictures and catalog are on that machine.
Due to the retina screen, i want to continue editing my pictures on the Mac but I have problems moving the pictures and my previous work to the mac.
I've read a post about just copying the pictures and the catalog to the other pc, open the catalog en just fix the filelocations but that doesn't work. I can select the correct pictures but it seems not to work. LR still reports a missing picture.
Then I've tried the export as catalog option with a portable harddrive. When I connect that to my macbook, I can read the files but LR4 reports that I can't open/edit a catalog from a network location. My idea is to buy a fast USB3 or thunderbolt solution and edit the pictures direcly on it but does that work?? It only seems to work when I copy the exported catalog and picures directly to the macbook en don't run it directly from the external storage.
When I'm doing editing the pictures, I want to copy them back to the desktop machine due to the online backupservice it's running.
So what am I doing wrong? It can't be that hard.
What the best practice in this situation?

A few simple steps:
1) On the computer you want to move away from (I call it old computer from now on): Open Lr. In the Library Module / Folders panel create a new folder. Then drag-and-drop all your image folders on top of that new folder. After that this is the parent-folder for all your image folders.
If you have a single parent folder already you can skip this step.
2) Backup your catalog. Just for safety.
3) Close Lr. With Win Explorer / Mac Finder move or copy (whichever applies for you) your newly created parent folder (together with all its image sub-folders) to the new computer (or an external hard drive).
This is important!: At this point do NOT change the names of the folders or their structure.
4) Copy the Lr catalog, i.e. the file with the extension < .lrcat> to the new computer. You can also copy/move the previews folder, i.e. the folder with the extension < .lrdat> to the new computer, although this is not strictly necessary. If Lr doesn't find previews it will create new ones. Double-click the catalog-file to open Lr with the moved catalog. Naturally this requires that Lr is installed on your new computer.
5) In Library Module / Folders panel right-click the parent folder for all image folders (it should show a question mark) and select <Find Missing folder> or <Update folder loacation>.
Navigate to the location of the parent folder and select it. Lr will find all the subfolders on its own.

Moving Catalog PSE8

I am going to move my catalog (15K) from one internal drive to another on my PC. I recently moved from PSE6 to 8 and my question is, after I convert my catalog from 6 to 8 do I simply do a full back up and restore it to the new drive? If that is the right way then, do I go back and delete my catalog on the old drive once the new one is verified? I read a couple of old threads but I wasn't completely clear on the correct procedure. Also, when the procedures are complete, will my catalogs still be intact?
Thanks,
Tim

I have just gone through this but have also moved photos to a network drive. I also upgraded from PSE6 in the process. This is what worked for me:
1) Perform a full backup of the system.
2) Open PSE6 and verified all photos are linked in the catalog (the coversion to PSE8 will loose these links). Correct or remove the missing links as required.
3) Exit PSE6
4) Install PSE8
5) Load PSE8 and convert the catalog from version 6. This will keep the old PSE6 catalog and create a new converted PSE8 catalog.
6) Use the instructions given above (in a previous post) with the folder view to move the photo folders. Drag and drop folders to the new location. If you have many folders, I would recommend moving a parent folder so you don't have to do each folder individually.
7) The PSE6 catalog will now be unusable as the images have been moved to a different location.
Moving this to a Samba server caused some complications but I eventually got it to work. Moving these to an internal drive should be a piece of cake. Please not of the following issues that I ran into:
a) Some photos were copied instead of moved from the original location. I verified everything was in place after moving the photos with the help of the folder view. I simply removed the original photos and had no issues. I'm not sure if this was because the photos were being moved to a network drive.
b) Some slideshows are missing photos if the slideshow is edited in PSE8. I think this is because the photos were removed from the PSE6 catalog at some point. You can look at the PSE8 project files now to identify the missing photos. The file name and path is listed in the project file if you desire to fix this up.
c) You can't drag and drop to a new location if the new location does not contain a cataloged photo. This is because you cannot navigate through directories with the organizer's folder view if there are no images in these directories. Simply copy some image to the location where you desire to move the photos to. Now use the organizer "Get Photos" to populate the catalog with this image. This will allow you to navigate to the new location such that you can drag and drop directories as required.
There might be another simpler way (I have not tried this so please be warned):
a) Install the drive and assign a drive letter to it.
b) Move (or copy) the photos to the new drive using the same file hierarchy (i.e. C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\My Documents\My Pictures\camera\photos\... --> X:\camera\photos\...
c) Mount the new drive to an empty NTFS folder such that the path remains the same as before (i.e. mount the drive to C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\My Documents\My Pictures\ with the above example). You will need to make sure "My Pictures" is empty before the drive is mounted.
e) In theory this should work for PSE6 or PSE8 so it shouldn't really matter when you do the upgrade. Just make sure that PSE8 sees the logical mapping instead of a physical mapping through the organizers folder view.

Problems converting catalog from PSE8 to PSE 12

I've upgraded from PSE8 to PSE12. I've just tried converting one of my 10 or so catalogs - all are stored in custom locations on an external drive, since the total file size for all my images is larger than my C: drive's capacity - with awful results:
a.     there is now a copy of my folder structure and all files from the catalog in a folder C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Elements Organizer\Catalogs. Not at all what I want, and if I convert the rest of my catalogs it will fail when C: drive becomes full.
b.     my converted catalog has no ratings on any images.
c.     my tags and tag heirarchy have disappeared.
Each of these issues is completely unacceptable. There are literally thousand of hours of work in all my catalogs, which I cannot repeat. How can I convert my previous catalogs to PSE12 versions, retaining all ratings, tags and tag structure, and without duplicating every image file?
Rob

I had already tried optimizing the catalog, repariing the catalog, re-indexing visual simularity data and making sure there were no missing files. Basically everything I found at: http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/kb/common-catalog-issues-upgrade-elements.html
I also used the Mac OS X Disk Utility to make sure there were no disk errors.
I have Parallels Desktop running on my Mac so I installed the Windows version of PSE12 and used it to convert the catalog of 63,000 pictures in under an hour. That put the catalog in a new location so I just moved the catalog from the Windows location to the Mac location. Now PSE12 on the Mac can access the new catalog and is working as expected.

Moving Catalogs from XP Pro to Win 7 on a new pc

Here's what I wish to do. [ I apologize for all of the detail that follows, but I am trying to be careful with this.]
I want to move my PSE 8 catalog, and all of my pictures, from my old to my new pc. The old pc has XP Pro, the new one uses Windows 7. PSE 8 is on both machines.
Here's what I've done. Using the Easy Transfer s/w I've moved all of my Documents files from one pc to the other. This included the My Pictures folder, so now all of my photos (some 28,000), and some videos are on the new pc. I installed PSE 8 on the new pc with the orginal disk. It seems to be working fine. I copied the catalog files on the old pc onto a thumb drive and installed that on the new pc. That did not enable me to restore the catalog, however. I now realize that I should have used the Backup Catalog command to backup the existing catalogs on my old pc and move that. I have done that by backing up to an external hard drive.
Before I move the hard drive to my new pc and click on the Restore Catalog button, I thought I'd ask: should I delete the photo files that I have already transferred to the Pictures file on my new pc? When I use the Restore Catalog function on the new machine, does it also transfer all of my photos? I can't seem to find a clear statement of that anywhere. If it does, then it seems obvious that I will need to delete all of the recently moved photos before I do the Restore catalog routine on my new pc. Otherwise I would wind up with two of everything.
Thanks to any and everyone who helps me through what seems like a big problem, but probably isn't (I hope).

That was good advice, thank you dj. However, and it always seems that there is a however, I was really trying to move 2 catalogs that I had on my old pc in PSE 8..
I backed them both up to an external hard drive, deleted all of the files from my new pc, and then went to the external hard drive and hit the Restore Catalog button. I also established a new Catalog for the second catalog that I was attemting to restore. One loaded nicely and then the other, BUT, the second RESTORE apparently deleted the first! I've done this twice now, with the same results, even switching which one loaded first. What am I doing wrong?
Also, when it does load into the PICTURES library on Win 7 it loads a staggering number of folders and files on top on the final folder where the actual pictures are stored. What a pain to drill down to the actual folders where the pictures are. Anyone know of any harm in moving them up several layers in the folder structure? I even used the Restore option New Location/Restore Original Folder Structure option. It apparently has kept the original structures but it did load a whole pile of folders on top of the pictures.
Many thanks once again for your guidance and support.

Moving catalog to a new computer

I recently purchased a new computer, and I need to transfer my existing Lightroom (3.6) catalog to the new machine. I have installed Lightroom on the new machine, and have updated it to the same version as on the old machine. All my images are on an external drive that I can move to the new computer.
Can I simply export the existing catalog, move the hard drive, and import the catalog into the new instance of Lightroom on the new computer? Obviously, I want to retain al the keywords, develop adjustments, etc., that I had in the original catalog.
Thanks. Feel free to point me to an FAQ or other resource.
Thanks,
Dave

The link provided basically says the same thing, but if the images already exist on the external hard drive and the catalog on the internal hard drive then you can simply copy of their catalog without need of exporting. Exporting will work but your basically wanting to just recreate a copy of the existing catalog so it's easier just to copy it (assuming you have everything together (the catalog, the preview file and any catalog backups).
I can say from experience, I have seen people moving the catalog to a new computer who have had issues when they have tried to do it by exporting the catalog because they skip a step or forget setting or certain images. Spare yourself the trouble.
After you copy it back to the new computer you just need to relink the image folder to the external hard drive.

Moving catalog and photos with external drive, Elements can't see catalog database

Tried searching, but couldn't find my situation.
I have an old computer with a second hard drive (1.5 TB). I pulled it from my old computer and put it in the new computer.
I also copied my "My Catalog" folder which contains the catalog database file (catalog with a type "PSE8DB").
Got the second drive installed fine in my new computer.
Reinstalled Elements 8.
But the File / Catalog dialog box can't seen the existing catalog database. I can browse to the folder, but it doesn't show up.
Old computer was Windows XP. New computer is Windows 7.
Both are using Photoshop Elements 8.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
John

solodarwest wrote:
Tried searching, but couldn't find my situation.
I have an old computer with a second hard drive (1.5 TB). I pulled it from my old computer and put it in the new computer.
I also copied my "My Catalog" folder which contains the catalog database file (catalog with a type "PSE8DB").
Got the second drive installed fine in my new computer.
Reinstalled Elements 8.
But the File / Catalog dialog box can't seen the existing catalog database. I can browse to the folder, but it doesn't show up.
Old computer was Windows XP. New computer is Windows 7.
Both are using Photoshop Elements 8.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
John
John,
1 - Where are your photo files located ? What is the drive letter assignment of this second drive ?
My suspicion is that the photos (and perhaps also video files) reside on that second hard drive which you physically moved and installed in the new computer.
2 - Where is the PSE Catalog file (both on the old XP system and on the new W 7 system) ? Is that folder containing the PSE Catalog on the C drive or on that second hard drive which is now installed on the new W 7 system ?
3 - FYI - I agree with the DJ Paige recommendation to "In Windows, double-click on the *.pse8db file" as a means of starting the Organizer with the Catalog that you previously had under XP . This generally works on most versions of PSE although I did have an experience with PSE 8 where it did not work initially.
4 - FYI - If your photo files were stored under My Pictures under XP, then I think that the other suggestions about PSE not being able to find photosand needing to do a PSE Backup are relevant -
"You catalog will be holding the absolute location of the files in the catalog. These will no longer be valid when porting to Win7 from XP"
However, if your photo files are stored on that second hard drive, I am skeptical about that conclusion.
5 - FYI - I have seen a report of successfully moving a physical second internal drive from old XP PC to new Windows 7 PC with PSE 10. I think that you should be able to do the same with PSE 8.

Error converting Photoshop Starter Edition Catalog to PSE8

I have followed instructions on the forum to convert by using the utility within PSE8. I received an error and opened up starter edition and reconnected or deleted files from the catalog. I attempted to convert again and I get a Conversion failed error. The exact text of the error is "The conversion operation failed. Try repairing the catalog with the software that created it and retry conversion." Started Edition 3 does not have a tool to repair. I have verified that Starter Edition 3 does not recognize any photos as not connected. I ran the tool from www.johnrellis.com and here is the response - psedbtool version 1.08
Opening catalog C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Elements Organizer\Catalogs\My Catalog\catalog.pse8db
Photoshop Elements version:      8
Total files               :     13
Total files missing       :      0
Total files offline       :      0
Total files wrong volume :      0
PSE Volume Table
Path used by PSE        : C:
Type                    : builtin_drive
Status                  : online
Total files             : 13
Total files missing     : 0
Total files wrong volume: 0
Description             : HP_PAVILION
Serial                  : 0056-27B3
Drive_path_if_builtin   : C:
Id                      : 173
Path used by PSE        : C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Elements Organizer\Catalogs\My Catalog
Type                    : database_relative_drive
Status                  : online
Total files             : 0
Total files missing     : 0
Total files wrong volume: 0
Description             : database relative
Serial                  : amoc:database_relative_volume
Drive_path_if_builtin   :
Id                      : 2
Windows Drives
Drive Type             Serial     Path
C:     builtin_drive    0056-27B3
D:     builtin_drive    1BB6-6D06
E:     readonly_drive   0000-0000
F:     readonly_drive   E1C6-579C
H:     removable_drive 0000-0000
I:     removable_drive 0000-0000
J:     removable_drive 0000-0000
L:     removable_drive 0000-0000
I do have a new computer running Windows 7 64bit operating system. I have installed the trial version of PSE8 hoping it would help. It isn't. Any suggestions?
Thanks

This has been reported by many users. So as a workaround try converting the catalog to PSE5 and then to PSE8You can try downloading the trial version of PSE5.

Trouble After Moving Catalog in LR 3

Well I moved several catalogs to a folder in an attempt to get organized and now they won't open. I get the message that the folder can't be found. I tried moving the folders back to where they were originally but the link is broken. I followed the instructions on how to re-establish the folder link but the problem is it wants me to point to a folder of images and I did not save the raw files to the hard drive in the first place. All I have is the Lightroom files but no images. Any way to get this resolved?

jsmith044,
are you saying that you imported the RAW files from memory card into LR using the <Add> function in the Import Dialog? Only then would the RAW-files not on the hard drive.
If you were importing using the <Move> function then your imaages are somewhere on your hard drive.
Please understand that imported images are not in LR in the sense that the images themselves are in LR. LR stores all the changes in the catalog and it references this data in the catalog to the image files (RAW-files, Tiffs, whatever). So in order to safeguard your work you always need both: The LR catalog and the image files.
If you cannot find your images on the hard drive - and do not look for them in LR - look for them with your OS (Mac Finder / Win Explorer and including the Trash / Recycle Bin)) then your images are gone.
You can't bring them back as such but you can recover them from the previews in the catalog (if you have that catalog!). For this you need a program like "Preview Exporter" by Rob Cole. You'll find it on the LR Exchange website.
WW

Problems creating and moving catalogs

I'd like to keep photos, together with their catalog, on an external drive. After I move photos to the drive, I use Catalog Manager to create a new catalog on the drive, and import the photos. All goes well until I switch to another catalog on my main drive. The custom location for the newly created catalog on the external drive appears in Catalog Manager, but no catalogs appear. There is no way to switch back to the catalog I just created. I can see the catalog in the Finder, but I can't find a way to switch to it in Photoshop Elements 10. It just doesn't appear in the Custom Location list in Catalog Manager. (I've verified that there are no permissions issues with the external drive.)
I thought I might try creating the catalog in the default location and then moving it (via Catalog Manager) to the external drive, but the Move option is grayed out for all my catalogs—current or not current. I can click on any catalog in Catalog Manager and the Move button never becomes enabled.
I've tried repairing the catalog, but Catalog Manager reports no errors.
What could be going on?

Yes, the catalog opens when I double-click the file in the OS X Finder. However, the catalog still does not show in Catalog Manager.
Given that Adobe provides the Catalog Manager functionality with the option of creating more than one catalog and switching between them, I think I shouldn't have to defend my desire to use the feature as intended. I suppose you could also say that many people recommend you use another program than Photoshop Elements to manage your photo library, so that there's never an issue of having problems with Photoshop Elements. But I want to use Elements, and I want to use the features it provides.
Does anybody know why the catalog does not appear in Catalog Manager, and why the Move button is not enabled for any of my catalogs?

Moving catalog

Hi guys, I ran out of space on the hard drive and want to move LR catalog to the external drive and work with it from there - could you pls tell me how to do it right, what files to move etc? Thanks a lot! (I am using a Mac)

Jane,
As far as other options, I would purchase an additional, internal hard drive for your system and just move the images over there (they take up most of the space). With the images separate from the catalog and preview you should get better performance. Hard drives are cheap as well and newer drives fairly easy to install.
As far as moving images ... when moving them using the operating system, LR will not be able to find them but should ask you to locate them once you restart LR after the move. Do not move them while LR is running unless you are moving them within LR itself. I personally would add the new hard drive (either external or new internal), put one image on that hard drive, start LR and and import that image into LR, then FROM WITHIN LR move the images to the new drive by dragging the uppermost directory. It will take quite a while but it will insure that LR always has a connection with your images. Leave the catalog and previews on the existing drive regardless of where you move the images unless you need to take the external hard drive to other computers to work on the catalog from there.
Hope this helps. Move slowly in all cases
Jeff

Moving catalog from Lr 3.6 to Lr 5.6

Hi all. This is my first post here, after joining Creative Cloud and start using Lr 5.6.
My catalog is about 1Tb and right now is in an external RAID system (WD) and I'm working with a MacBookPro and a NEC Spectraview Reference 2690.
I started using Lr 5.6 with some test catalogs and everything seems to be OK.
My question is : Should I take any specific action before moving my catalog from 3.6 to 5.6??
I remember when I moved from Lr2 to Lr3 that i did some optimization and other actions before importing the catalog to Lr3, but right now I'm not able to remember.........
Any advice from you before such a huge amount of photos will be really appreciated.
Best,

When you open a lower version catalog in a newer version of Lightroom it will covert the catalog and preserve the older version.
There are no special steps to take.
A catalog can be optimized at any time upon shutdown or launch.

Moving catalogs from pc to Mac

I recently converted to Mac from pc, and upgraded from LR 3.6 to LR 4 at the same time.
Apple transferred all of my pc files transferred to the Mac, and then I downloaded the LR upgrade. That may have been a mistake, as all of the 3.6 catalogs remained on the PC. How do I get the 3.6 PC catalogs into the new version on the Mac? I'm thinking that perhaps I should uninstall LR, have Apple repeat the data migration, and then reinstall the LR 4? Or, is there another way?

Just copy the catalogs and associated preview (Lrcat and lrdata) files to he appropriate location (normally the Pictures folder) on the Mac then double click one of the lrcat files to launch Lightroom. Since the catalogs were created in Lr3.x they'll be upgraded to Lr4 when the application launches. You can upgrade all of your Lr3.6 catalogs using the same method.
Note that if your catalogs contain many images it might be best to leave the previews behind as they'll be rebuilt on the Mac in any case.

PC - Moving catalog and directory structure to a new HD

Having filled my internal HD with images, I went out and purchased a new and bigger external hard drive. I want to move my images to the new drive while preserving both my directory structure and catalog information. From what I can see of the "move" command in PS Elements, it moves selected images to a new directory, but that's not what I want to do. I probably have a hundred named folders and I would like to keep the images in folders of the same name on the new drive. I don't want to have to move one directory at a time. Copying through the file manager can obviously do this, but I don't know if it will preserve my tags, etc.
Is there a straightforward way to move files from one drive to another that preserves both directory structure and catalog information?
Thanks in advance.
Artie

Humm, this is strange-Version 4 is supposed to move entire folders; Version 3 did not do this.
Okay, Plan B.
Open Elements and do a Full Backup and point to your external hard drive.
When this has finished running, do a Restore. You should get a pop up asking if you want to use the existing folder structure. Answer Yes and point to your External HardDrive (EHD). This should copy your photos and the Organizer file over to your (EHD).
Now look in Preferences under Files (I think, don't have program open) and you will see one value for where to store photos and one for Organizer location. Change these to your EHD so future photos and tags/collections are written to the EHD.
Verify all your tags and collections came over correctly.
If you are satisfied the transfer went correctly, you can erase your photos from your hard drive to free up space. You can also delete the Organizer file if you want.
Option 2-Use Windows Explorer and move all the files from your hard drive to your EHD. This will keep your folder structure, but will cause havoc with Organizer.
Open Organizer and do File>Reconnect All Missing. It will be all of them. You should have an option to change the drive to your EHD. It may take quite a while to reconnect all of them, but since all the folders/files are the same name it should find them all.
If you wish, you can change the drive location manually. However, I've found many users 1) do not have MS Access on their machine and 2) are not experienced in using the program. If you are comfortable with the program, let me know and we'll get some directions.
Finally, I see a copy of the post in the Technical side. Since most forum users read both sides of this forum, I'm going to reference this thread in that post so anyone can see what we have tried so far.

Moving Catalog in PSE8

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for