Master the art of moving edited photos from one device to another with this comprehensive Lightroom tutorial, including steps on importing and exporting photos, generating Smart Previews, and importing a Catalog of photos from one hard drive or computer to another.
This exercise is excerpted from Noble Desktop’s past Lightroom training materials and is compatible with Lightroom updates through 2020. To learn current skills in Lightroom, check out our Photo Retouching Certificate and graphic design classes in NYC and live online.
Topics covered in this Lightroom tutorial:
Importing & exporting photos as a catalog, Generating Smart Previews after importing photos
Exercise Preview
Exercise Overview
Imagine that you went on vacation and took some photos which you edited on your laptop. You are now home from vacation and want to transfer those edited photos to your desktop. What do you do? In this exercise, we’ll show you how to transfer a Catalog of photos from one hard drive or computer to another.
Importing New Photos
Make sure you’re in the Library module.
At the bottom of the left panel, click Import.
Under Source, navigate to Desktop > Class Files > Lightroom Class and select the 20121231 Oklahoma Trip folder.
At the top, above the photos, make sure Add is selected (highlighted).
In the previous exercise, you saw how to add Smart Previews here in the import dialog. Let’s see how we can add them later if we forget to generate them on import. In the File Handling panel on the right, uncheck Build Smart Previews.
On the bottom right, click the Import button.
In the Catalog panel on the left, Previous Import should already be open. Press Cmd–A (Mac) or Ctrl−A (Windows) to select all the photos.
Still in the Library module, open the Quick Develop panel on the right, if it’s not already open.
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In the Saved Preset dropdown, select Lightroom B&W Presets > B&W Look 1.
It may take a little while, but the photos will eventually all be converted to black and white. You can see the progress at the top left of the Library. If any of the photos fail to be converted, just select the photos and apply the preset again.
Exporting a Catalog
These black & white photos are the edited vacation pictures that would be on the laptop in our vacation scenario. In order to transfer these photos to another computer, we need to export them as a Catalog.
On the left side, open the Folders panel if it isn’t already.
Ctrl–click (Mac) or Right–click (Windows) the 20121231 Oklahoma Trip folder.
Select Export this Folder as a Catalog.
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In the Export as Catalog dialog box, navigate to the Desktop.
NOTE: Normally you would choose the external drive you will be using to transfer these photos to another computer. For the purposes of this exercise though we will just export to the Desktop.
Name the catalog Oklahoma.
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At the bottom of the dialog, make sure that Export negative files is checked.
NOTE: Checking this box will export all of the image files as well as the Catalog. If the photos that you want to export are on the hard drive of your laptop you will need to export both. If you keep the photos on an external hard drive and that hard drive moves between your desktop and your laptop all the time then you would uncheck this option. In this exercise, the pictures are not on an external hard drive, so that’s why we checked this option.
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Checking on the Build / Include Smart Previews option means that Lightroom will build Smart Previews if they haven’t already been generated. This is another way to create these lightweight RAW files that remember your edits, so check it.
NOTE: Another way to generate Smart Previews after importing is to select the appropriate photo(s), then go to Library > Previews > Build Smart Previews.
Make sure that Include available previews is also checked. This will import the 1:1 previews that were already generated so new ones won’t need to be created.
Click Export Catalog (Mac) or Save (Windows). This will export the photos as a catalog to the desktop.
Importing a Catalog
Because we are working on only one computer, we need to fake this a little. Normally you would export from your laptop onto an external hard drive. Then you would plug the removable drive into the desktop and import the catalog to Lightroom, which wouldn’t have any of these edited photos. Let’s delete these photos from our catalog, so we can pretend they were never on this computer.
Wait until the export is complete before going on to the next step.
In the Folders panel, Ctrl–click (Mac) or Right–click (Windows) the 20121231 Oklahoma Trip folder and select Remove.
Click Remove again to delete these photos from our library.
Go to File > Import from Another Catalog.
In the Import from Lightroom Catalog dialog, navigate to the Desktop.
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Double–click the Oklahoma folder to open it. You’ll see the following files:
- The Oklahoma catalog (Oklahoma or Oklahoma.lrcat depending on your system)
- A 20121231 Oklahoma Trip folder with the physical photos
- An Oklahoma Previews.lrdata folder or file (depending on your system). These are the 1:1 previews we generated when importing the photos.
- An Oklahoma Smart Previews.lrdata folder or file. Like the previous file, they also contain preview data. These are the Smart Previews you told Lightroom to build.
Double–click Oklahoma or Oklahoma.lrcat to import this catalog.
In the Import options that pop up (you may have to wait a few seconds for it to appear), make sure All Folders is checked.
From the File Handling menu, choose Add new photos to catalog without moving.
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Click Import.
The developed photos will be added to our catalog. Awesome!
