PC and MAC Compatibility Issue With Photos

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sonicbuffalo_RIP

Senior Member
I have a bunch of photos stored on an external hard drive using Lightroom. I stored them using a PC. Will they still be accessible from a MAC? I need to buy a new computer and I hate the displays on the PC's. Their image quality has gone to hell from my last PC. Please say that my photos will still be good with a MAC!
 
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S

sonicbuffalo_RIP

Senior Member
I used Lightroom to store the files through the external drive....not sure about what you asked? How would I know? I had the photos in RAW moved to the hard drive.
 
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Eduard

Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
You should have a file with the extension "lrcat" which will be the Lightroom catalog. Previews can be recreated. Here is a good explanation of catalogs and files.
 
S

sonicbuffalo_RIP

Senior Member
FredKingston said:
Under the Lightroom tab at the top, there's a "Catalogue Settings" option that shows you where the catalogue is stored...
Click to expand...

under whih heading? I watched Terry White's video on the Top 10 things people want to know about Lightroom....and watched him transfer the images over to an external drive....the problem was that he was using a Mac. I just exported one picture file to my external drive and presto, the Seagate drive was active. Then I drug the catalogues individually to Seagate and watched them disappear one by one. I know they went to my external drive by the space they took up on the external. The only question it seems is if they will be able to be read by a Mac?
 
Fred Kingston_RIP

Fred Kingston_RIP

Senior Member
They'll be read. You can't simply drag the catalogues somewhere else without telling LR where you put it. There's a menu at the top. One of the menu options is "catalogue setting". In that menu is where (folder) the catalogue is stored.
 
S

sonicbuffalo_RIP

Senior Member
FredKingston said:
They'll be read. You can't simply drag the catalogues somewhere else without telling LR where you put it. There's a menu at the top. One of the menu options is "catalogue setting". In that menu is where (folder) the catalogue is stored.
Click to expand...

Doyou have a PC or Mac? The reason I ask is because the menus are different depending on which one you are using. That might be why I don't see that heading. I am thinking you are using a Mac, right?
 
Eduard

Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
The easiest way to get this to work is to double-click the .lrcat file in Finder. When you do so, Lightroom will start and load the catalog from your external drive. You will probably see that the folder is marked as "missing" in Lightroom's Library view. Select the highest level folder, right click and a dialog will appear called "Find Missing Folder". Finder will open and all you need to do is select the matching folder on your external drive.

If you want a deep dive on LR catalogs, Computer Darkroom did a very nice write-up. Even though it is based on LR2, the concepts still apply.
 
Fred Kingston_RIP

Fred Kingston_RIP

Senior Member
Screen Shot 2014-06-30 at 7.35.58 AM.png

Notice bottom left... My Toshiba drive is read fine by the Mac, even though it was originally a Windows formatted Fat32 drive...
 
Eduard

Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
sonicbuffalo said:
Ok....you lost me...HDD = hard disk drive, so what's NFTS mean? I'm not the most PC literate person in the world. I can do a lot but haven't had to for a long time, so I am not sure what you're talking about. Help! lol
Click to expand...

Originally DOS and early versions of Windows and OS/2 used FAT formatted drives. As they got larger FAT32 was created. As file level security became more of an issue, a new drive format called NTFS was introduced with Windows NT. That format has continued to this day. Mac's use a different format on their native drives.
 
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