Any Lightroom and/or Mac whizzes?

[Kell]

I used to use a PC at home and a Mac at work, and couldn't ever really get a LR catalogue set up on one to work on the other. Even though in theory they should - in the same way as my Photoshop files would work on both.

I kind of worked around it, but only by running two separate work streams.

But now I've bought myself a Mac for home and am having issues with one particular catalogue.

LR will still open on both Macs, but I attempted to open a catalogue on my work Mac that I created on my home Mac. It wouldn't open - but didn't give me any error messages either.

Figuring maybe it was still a sync or network error, now I'm home I tried to open it on the Mac it was created on and it still won't open.

All my other catalogues will, but this one just hangs and I get the spinning beachball.

I left it over lunch (1 hour) and came back but still not responding.

I've tried Googling, but nothing seems to be hitting the spot in terms of solving it.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

 

[ancient_mariner]

Definitely same versions of LR (and therefore catalogue formats)?

 

[Hanley]

Have you tried opening the catalogue that works and then selecting 'Import from Catalogue' option? This will show you if LR can read read from the catalogue.

Are both the same versions?

 

[Hanley]

Your catalogue will have, or should have, 4 files:

Helper.lrdata
Previews.lrdata
lrcat (this is the actual catalogue)
lrcat-data

I would try deleting (or moving to be safe) the top 2 files and then try opening the catalogue. Then try movign the bottom file so you're just left with the actual catalogue file and see if that will open it.

 

[Kell]

Definitely same versions of LR (and therefore catalogue formats)?

Yes - just checked.

We have Creative Cloud through work and can run it on two machines.

 

[Kell]

Tried the above and then tried reopening the catalogue. It's coming up with a few more than the ones I'd normally see.

For ref, I dragged the other files into the untitled folder

 

[Kell]

Have you tried opening the catalogue that works and then selecting 'Import from Catalogue' option? This will show you if LR can read read from the catalogue.

Are both the same versions?

Getting this message doing that way.

 

[Hanley]

Is the Lightroom catalog stored locally on your Mac?

 

[Hanley]

These are the files I see for a standard catalog (that is not currently open)

 

[Hanley]

And for a catalog that I currently have open in Lightroom

 

[Kell]

It's on a OneDrive

But gets stored locally when used. (I think).

 

[Hanley]

Copy the whole catalog across to a folder on your Mac, then give it a try

 

[Kell]

Copy the whole catalog across to a folder on your Mac, then give it a try

Still not playing ball. It just sits like this and doesn't ever open or give me an error alert.

 

[Hanley]

Hmmm, how big is the catalogue file?
Is there any way you can take it back to the Windows machine that it did open up okay on? You may be able to repair it on that device.

 

[Hanley]

I backup my catalogues weekly, don't suppose you have a backup of this catalog do you?

 

[Kell]

Hmmm, how big is the catalogue file?
Is there any way you can take it back to the Windows machine that it did open up okay on? You may be able to repair it on that device.

This particular catalogue was created on my home MAC.

One of the first to not be cross-platform.

I'm going to uninstall and re-stall LR as now it's not opening any of my catalogues.

 

[Kell]

I backup my catalogues weekly, don't suppose you have a backup of this catalog do you?

I don't think so. It's relatively new and I don't think this folder has been backed up to my RAID drive yet.

 

[Hanley]

Ah it may be a Lightroom problem then.
Hopefully either uninstalling or resetting all your preferences to default will fix it.