Tim Grey Guest Post - Lightroom Backwards Compatibility
| Today's Question: Can I open a Lightroom 4 catalog in Lightroom 3? Or is there some way to convert the Lightroom 4 catalog into one compatible with Lightroom 3? On my current travels in Israel and Palestine I used an office computer with Lightroom 4 installed while my laptop was being repaired. The laptop apparently won't support Lightroom 4. |
Tim's Answer: No, you can't open a Lightroom 4 catalog with Lightroom 3. However, you can still work around this issue, with some limitations.
The key is to write metadata out to your images so that it can be imported into Lightroom 3. You can turn on the option to automatically write metadata out to XMP sidecar files for your RAW captures in the Catalog Settings in Lightroom, or you can write metadata out manually. To write the metadata manually, select all of the images you need to write the metadata for in the Library module and then choose Metadata > Save Metadata to File from the menu.
The images can then be copied (with the XMP sidecar files) to your primary computer. You can then import those images into your Lightroom 3 catalog, and most of the information you added in Lightroom 4 will be there. The exception is history information, membership in collections, and adjustments that are specific to Lightroom 4. However, the key organizational data found in metadata will be included.
Lightroom 4 does introduce some more demanding system requirements, including a 64-bit operating system on both platforms and relatively recent versions of the operating system. That can create a challenge as you try to stay current with the latest updates. However, in Adobe's defense, computers that aren't able to support Lightroom 4 are, for the most part, relatively old computers that are probably not ideally suited to a digital photography workflow in the first place.
Tim Grey Photoshop CS6 Training and Discount Coupon
In case you missed the news, Adobe has announced Photoshop CS6 To help you make the most of this latest update to Photoshop, Tim has created a series of video training courses. You can get a 20% discount off these courses for a limited time by entering TIMCS6 in the Coupon Code field during checkout. Get started through Tim's video2brain online store here
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