Lightroom classic has decided not to play with catalina any more, so it's roll back to Mojave

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Name
jo
Edit My Images
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Until this afternoon, Lightroom classic play nicely Catalina, had not issues.. But this afternoon it started to shut it self down, and everything I've tried hasn't resolved it at all!

So the only option is to roll my computer back to Mojave

But I don't want to lose my photographs or lightroom catalogs... So at present, I'm clearing one of my hard drives, which I intend to do a timemachine back up here, (I do have on on mycloud as well) to include all my photographs and documents... Then do a separate backup of Lightroom if I can keep it open long enough.

But how easy is it to roll back from catalina, and if I can't back up my lightroom catalog, will time machine find and save the photographs and catalogs of Lightroom Classic
 
Thank you, I will give it a go... As yep I don't really want to drastic if I can avoid it, I let you know how I got on
 
Yes I did that, also ensured that the graphics card is turned off, but no difference.

Strangely I've had lightroom sat open for 10 minutes or so, and it hasn't crashed it's only when I try to do something that after about a minute or so, it closes down.

I even checked my keyboard just in case one of the keys were stuck!
 
Yes I did that, also ensured that the graphics card is turned off, but no difference.

Strangely I've had lightroom sat open for 10 minutes or so, and it hasn't crashed it's only when I try to do something that after about a minute or so, it closes down.

I even checked my keyboard just in case one of the keys were stuck!

Not sure what else to try, I'm a windows tech but use a mac at home for LR etc.

Try googling your symptoms, check log files etc.
 
I've tried google search but brings up nothing.

Time machine is the pits really, it's not backing up because not enough room on hard-drive! But mycloud won't allow me to delete due to it's being used! So can't free up any space here.

When to delete files/folders from another external hard drive but it won't allow me to delete anything eh!

In for a long frustrating night me thinks
 
Time for a clean install of lightroom and it’s catalogues. I went back to Mojave on my iMac and MacBook. I hated Catalina. No issues here.
 
Time for a clean install of lightroom and it’s catalogues. I went back to Mojave on my iMac and MacBook. I hated Catalina. No issues here.

That's what I think I'm going to have to do, but it's doing it without losing my photographs ermm.

This part is proing my difficult...

My mycloud which has been filling up with timemachine backups, isn't deleting to free space, I need an hard drive to make a boot disk for mojave to go on, to reinstall it onto my mac. But I need to make room for an one a drive som where to do a back up

This is the time when I say, the earlier windows were a lot easier to fathom out your way forward.

But thanks all for trying to help
 
Persevere in resolving your issue.

It's not a widely reported problem so must be down to your individual installation / setup etc.

If your a paid up subscriber get on the phone to them, they'll tell you what log files etc to send them and you'll get a diagnosis hopefully.

Even google for the location of the LR logs, find yours and upload/pm them here. I'll have a look.

Dougie.
 
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You only need a usb stick for Mojave. That’s all I was using anyway. Just an 8gb or 16gb stick for it.
It was pretty simple once I got into it. Good luck.
 
The path of least risk is to buy another external hard drive and COPY all important data manually to that - don't rely on time machine. Then you can safely wipe and reinstall.

I learned the hard way once, when TM would not restore to the previous version of OSX.
 
The path of least risk is to buy another external hard drive and COPY all important data manually to that - don't rely on time machine. Then you can safely wipe and reinstall.

I learned the hard way once, when TM would not restore to the previous version of OSX.

A lot of my photographs have been imported into lightroom, it's rare after editing that I save them to another folder, so everything contained in the catalogs of light room really.

I've looked and can see a backup on the desktop, which I can use to with lightroom, but the hesitation here, is all the photographs imported into lightroom sat here, so if I copy this over to an external hard drive then once I reformatted and installed Mojave I will have all my photographs.. or because I've reformatted the hard drive, I will lose all the photographs and this Lrcat file becomes totally useless.

If so . is there a way of finding the photographs that lightroom has hidden on my hard drive somewhere....

Edit

A bit of a look around, and I managed to locate all photographs, so should be able to copy this to another hard drive, then reload once I've sorted out the mojave.

So now it's off to town to get a new hard drive or two (depending on price that is) . and start the ball rolling...

On the bright side, I so needed a fresh start on this computer, I've been lazy with dealing with my photographs, normally imported, and rarely delete any rubbish, so that will have to change, and also learning to load my photographs to external hard drives, and back up to cloud probably.

Don't have many other documents that are very important to backup, biggest problem is sorting out all the passwords I have, which isn't greatest of problems has I do have a window laptop, which excesses everywhere I go on the mac.
 
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A lot of my photographs have been imported into lightroom, it's rare after editing that I save them to another folder, so everything contained in the catalogs of light room really.
All your images are stored on your hard drive. All Lightroom does is create a link to those images.

Yes!! Alarm bell!! Do be clear about this!! Your images are not in the catalogue!! They are in the folder(s) that you got LR to import them from / to (dependant on your workflow). You must back them up quite separately to backing up the catalogue.

The catalogue just contains a record of where your images are (or where it still 'thinks' they are, in the case that you've moved them without telling it), along with an archive of all adjustments that have been made to those images in LR, etc. But not the images themselves.

This means that if you reinstate the catalogue for a new clean start, normally you would also replicate your previous folder structure / content so that the two things join up again.

It is a bit of a can of worms. Take it slowly.
 
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@ droj

That's the bit that was confusing me, where did lightroom copy the original files to! Couldn't seem to pin this information down on the internet, even though it's a pretty 'Doh' moment when you find them, good news is that any of the photographs that have been edited has the xmp sidecar file with it phew. (I shot in RAW) .

Couple of decision to be made

Do I delete the rubbish photograph prior to copying over to the external hard drive (this would save space and transfer time)
Wait until I've got lightroom reinstalled under mojave, but this means I still have to clear everything afterwards anyway

Or do I just keep everything from pervious years on the external hard drive, and start afresh with lightroom with any photographs I've taken in 2020 so far. Which to me, would mean I can then store photographs by year/s on various external hard drives, and keep my main mac hard drive clutter free, which should speed things up, and if I have to reinstall the OS at some point in the future, I won't have the worry of trying to find out where any photographs are too!

But yes, I'm taking it slowly, working out and insuring that I know what the outcome is before I'm going to hit an delete or formatting buttons.
 
I would test creating a new catalog and housing it on a different volume.

There could be a host of unexpected causes, like failing hard drive, corrupted file or two, corrupted catalog, volume full. I would run disk scans, do catalog checks etc if the above works well.
 
Apple are complete b@st@rds with photos - they hide them away. It makes me very cross (as you can tell).

You need to copy all images in the folder structure PLUS the LR catalogue to the new drive. That will make it easier to put it all back like it was.
 
That's the bit that was confusing me, where did lightroom copy the original files to!
When you import to LR from an existing image folder, it registers where that folder is and what it's called, and the images normally remain in that place but are now referenced by the catalogue.

If you import to LR from a card out of the camera, you can tell it each time (dialogue on the right) where to put the actual image files - normally a folder on your hard drive. So in this case it's both moved the files AND referenced them in their new location.

Anytime you move files after that, do it from within LR otherwise it'll lose track of them. Though this is recoverable, but entails a search.

How to set up folder structure is well worth a thought. Think of how you work and how you look for things ... so yes ,you might prefer a clean start. It's personal.
 
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If truth was known, my work flow is chaotic at the best of times... hay ho

So in my mind eyes, backing them onto a seperate hard drive, and starting Lightroom a fresh, will give me time to sift through the repeat/rubbish photographs to delete, and slim it all down. At this point I can then bring them back into the catalog.

But transfer photographs to an external hard drive once I've finished the editing side of things, this will keep my mac free and it's speed up. then should be workable to keep a back up on cloud, without having to resort to an high monthly bill for mass storage.

But I've just nipped into town, picked up 2 new hard drives, hopefully means I don't get any surprises or glitches, when doing the formatting side of things.
 
If truth was known, my work flow is chaotic at the best of times...

If you start afresh with a new catalogue, you'll have lost all LR adjustments to any previous (raw) images ... if you've processed them, exported them as tifs or jpgs, and done with that business, then it shouldn't matter. Anything like keywords, etc, too.

But if you keep your raws & might want to revisit them from where you left off, then you'll need to reinstall your old LR catalogue and make it find the originals again.

I'm trying to be non-prescriptive, just offering some things to think about.
 
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But transfer photographs to an external hard drive once I've finished the editing side of things, this will keep my mac free and it's speed up. then should be workable to keep a back up on cloud, without having to resort to an high monthly bill for mass storage.

More or less data on a drive doesn't affect speed. :)

But I've just nipped into town, picked up 2 new hard drives, hopefully means I don't get any surprises or glitches, when doing the formatting side of thing

Sensible. (y)
 
@drol no need to apologise

It's all good seeing it from different possible problematic angles..

Would I have to reinstate the whole catalog, or could I not go down the import route, I could then tell lightroom, that all I want to import is the sub folder locate in this sub folder. As it stands at the moment, it's dated so you have a main folder with the year date, in their is sub folders, which is dated the day they were imported, my thinking would it take the date from the folder rather than the day I upload. I normally reformat the camera card after I've uploaded them into lightroom. But when I haven't been able to do this, such as when on holiday, then when I get home and import into lightroom, it separates all the photographs to days they were taken on. I'd assume it would do similar with importing a dated sub folder! or is my thinking wrong
 
If you can put the folder structure back exactly like it was and then import the catalogue (or even replace the catalogue created on install/first run) with the old catalogue then all your images, edits etc will be there just like before.

If you'd had a PC then I'd have suggested as well as reinstalling the OS, rather than wiping the drive instead replace it with a new one so that you had the old drive to recover from again if ever needed. But that's not so easy or impossible depending on the Mac you have, so you're better off this way. DO make sure your copied images are actually there on the copy drive and can be opened and viewed BEFORE nuking your system - plenty of people have *thought* they had functional copies and lost data.

In a situation like this it's hard to be paranoid enough. FWIW this encouraged me to make a backup of my files, which is something I've not done for 6 months or so. :)
 
More or less data on a drive doesn't affect speed. :)

On an old mechanic drive it can easily slow it down considerably.
To begin with data is written on the inner part of the plate which means heads need to move less and it is accessed quicker. When it gets full and likewise more fragmented the heads have to move up and down jumping back and forth. Difference is quite notable.

SSDs of course are very different and should at least in theory behave independently of data amount. Old HDDs should be history by now; yet still sold by apple in imacs!!!!
 
On an old mechanic drive it can easily slow it down considerably.
To begin with data is written on the inner part of the plate which means heads need to move less and it is accessed quicker. When it gets full and likewise more fragmented the heads have to move up and down jumping back and forth. Difference is quite notable.

SSDs of course are very different and should at least in theory behave independently of data amount. Old HDDs should be history by now; yet still sold by apple in imacs!!!!

True fragmentation causes problems, but once a file is loaded into memory it won't make the computer any slower to process it, which was the point I was trying to make.

HDDs could reasonably be treated like tape storage used to be - a slow, cheap place to put data you don't need to frequently access.
 
it a 2017 mac, with a SSD drive to it, and thankfully one of the last they released without a security chip, never known a boot drive to be so time consuming to make, how many times did I make a very subtle mistake, leaving a cap out, or a very slight misspelling, but in my defence I do have a royal stinker of a cold coming, ache all over!

So its a case of a final check to ensure that I've backed up everything I need, double check my mouse if charged and working, I don't use a mouse but a wacom tablet, which don't work until the mac is fully booted.

One of the hard drives has a usb-C connection, which means I can free up a USB port.
 
A update

well, a nasty human virus stopped play, (wasn't feeling well at all on Saturday, went to Sunday night, and that's basically where I've been until this morning)

So today even though I still feel dreadful, I have managed to kick catalina into touch, and reinstall Mojave yeah, But there is a but to this...

It logs straight to me, don't get give a choice at log in for me or a guest!
So under Users, there is nothing!
There is no Picture Folder, which I did used to have so goodness know where Lightroom will stash the photographs I upload.

I ponder whether I can instruct lightroom, to either go straight to the external drive, or could I actually when telling lightroom where I want my imports to land, is send it to library and create a new Picture Folder in there hrmm.
 
Sounds just like a configuration issue.
Add users in system preferences.
Turn on visible folders in finder options.
 
I ponder whether I can instruct lightroom, to either go straight to the external drive, or could I actually when telling lightroom where I want my imports to land, is send it to library and create a new Picture Folder in there hrmm.
When importing on the right side panel you can choose where they are stored and if you you want it to add using a specific folder structure. I’ve been storing RAWs on an external drive in an automatic year-month-day folder format since 2013. I don’t touch that external drive to create folders or more RAWs as everything is done by Lightroom for me.

As you have an iMac I’d recommend Carbon Copy Cloner as backup software. It’s a good program that lets you create backup tasks that run automatically.
 
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