Lightroom will search for a catalog, without which the application doesn’t start. The idea is to copy all the required pieces before installing Lightroom itself. Once done, the copy operations can begin. The challenge is to determine the directory where all those things reside on a macOS machine (items placement is well documented and differs from a Windows machine). When migrating Lightroom Classic, there are quite a few things to copy from one machine to another: the catalog, catalog backups 3, photos, presets, photo previews 4, any plugins and applications settings (preferences). Less recent files are eventually put on a cheaper drive but are also backed up to my Synology NAS using Synology Drive. My most recent images are stored on the internal drive (the fastest but the most expansive space to use). I’m referring to the way I store and manage my photos on the Mac and how I use Synology Drive to sync folders to my Synology NAS. My Lightroom Classic setup is relatively simple, but I had to take care of a few things outside the application itself. All in all, the migration was easier than I thought. Moving Lightroom Classic to another computer is well documented on the web, but I wanted to write about my experience and maybe provide another perspective, a new experience point. The timing was perfect this summer as I didn’t have a bunch of photos to process and some spare time 2. Lightroom Classic was the last application to be updated to support the M1 chip.

There was one thing that was holding me back: Lightroom Classic had to be migrated to my Apple Silicon Mac mini. Last fall, I bought an M1 Mac mini and since then, I had to put my older 2017 Intel iMac up for sale while its market value is still good 1.

Lightroom classic m1 version