Any tips, precautions, upgrading from Lightroom 3 to 4?

[RC]

My current situation is this:  I currently use LR3 with Windows XP (32 bit).  In order to upgrade to LR4, I need Windows 7.  Upgrading XP to 7 requires a clean install--not an upgrade (I'd do a clean install anyway).

So once I install Windows 7 (64 bit) and then install LR4, I'm looking for any tips or precautions to maintain all my LR settings, presets, keywords, etc.  Didn't find much info on the web, so I'm asking the CR community.

I'm assuming if I import my LR catalog (*.lrcat file), I should be good but I'm not 100% sure if that includes everything.   I also have the "Lightroom Settings" folder with its sub folders (presets, etc.) backed up in case I need them. 

Thanks in advance

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I usually buy a new hard drive for upgrades, they are cheap.  For the past couple of years, I've kept my OS files on a SSD, and data on a second hard drive.  You can move my documents, my pictures, my videos, my music, and so on to the second hard drive.

Then, when I do a upgrade, I only have to deal with the SSD and my images and lightroom catalog are safe.  Everything is backed up, in any event.

The advantage of a new hard drive is that, in the event something goes bad, you can always fire up the old one and start over.  After a year or so, I wipe the old one.

With Windows 8 coming out soon, it seems a shame to be forced to upgrade right now.  I don't expect windows 8 to be a huge improvement from what I've heard, so I may not upgrade even though I get the Microsoft Employee price from a relative.

As to upgrading LR 3, backups are critical.  The first time I imported my LR 3 catalog into LR 4, something glitched and I ended up with three copies of every image in my image files, and a 38 GB lightroom catalog.  I restored everything from a backup, and it was fine.

I do notice that LR4 runs about as fast as LR3, so I'm happy with it.  I'm using a trial copy while waiting on my upgrade order to arrive.

[RC]

Thanks Mt.  Spokane, I always appreciate your posts! 

I did not know that Windows 8 was that close on the horizon.  I have already ordered my Win 7 upgrade and its in the mail.   Maybe Windows 8 will be another Vista and I'll be glad I didn't wait.

I just got done building me a new PC (I do this about every 3 to 4 years) and I have 4 physical drives totaling 3.5 Terabytes.  One physical drive is allocated just for images, and another is for image backups and I have a 3rd drive, external USB, for backups as well which goes in my safe.  My LR data is also backed up.  So I hope when I install LR4 and import my old library all goes well.  I'll post my out come for others who might be in a similar situation.   I don't have a lot of edits or presets, but that is my concern that everything stays in tack. 

I noticed after I built my new PC (which also had a clean Windows & LR install), I seemed to have lost all my keywords from my images.  Funny thing is, the keywords were listed in LR but no longer associated with my images.

Not a real big deal on the keywords, but this is the very thing I'm confused on.  What file/s contains the edits for the images?  I always figure it was the lrcat file.


Good grief, what is going on with Karma?  I post a question, comment on a couple of things (very politely) and my smites more than double in just a few days.   

[Shawn L]

Not sure what time-frame you're look at, but I'd avoid upgrading from LightRoom 3 to LightRoom 4 at the moment. There's a bug that causes tone curves to be dropped in the upgrade. Looks like they have a fix in the works, though:

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lr4_deleted_all_my_tone_curve_adjustments

Shawn L.

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Not sure what time-frame you're look at, but I'd avoid upgrading from LightRoom 3 to LightRoom 4 at the moment. There's a bug that causes tone curves to be dropped in the upgrade. Looks like they have a fix in the works, though:

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lr4_deleted_all_my_tone_curve_adjustments

Shawn L.

Thanks for the post, its Too late, I already updated mine.  I have jpegs already made of my keeper images, but if I want, i can always upgrade them to the new process and re-edit.  That will be pretty rare.

Although I still have the LR3 catalogs, I'd also lost about 3000 edits made in LR 4.

[DavidRiesenberg]

Yeah, I installed 4 but went back straight to 3 when I saw the curves being reset. Fortunately the original catalog file was not modified so I'll stick to 3 while they sort this out.

[RC]

Not sure what time-frame you're look at, but I'd avoid upgrading from LightRoom 3 to LightRoom 4 at the moment. There's a bug that causes tone curves to be dropped in the upgrade. Looks like they have a fix in the works, though:

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lr4_deleted_all_my_tone_curve_adjustments

Shawn L.

Thanks for the heads up on the LR bugs.  Very rarely do I install a first release software of any kind but I wanted to get in on the $79 upgrade incase Adobe raises the price.  Not in a big rush, still need to upgraded to Win 7, just got it in the mail.  Still waiting on B&H, LR is on back order.  Hopefully Adobe will have the fixes soon.