Lightroom 3 - importing keywords etc

[cowasaki]

I have just put Lightroom 3 beta 2 onto my spare iMac just to have a look and it will not run with the Lightroom 2 catalogue. So I copied the current image files from my server onto the local machine and allowed it to create a new catalogue. LR3 will not import from LR2 either (just the beta!) so I had LR3 running and imported my images......

I prefer to view my catalogues using keywords but did not want to go through all that messing about to keyword them again so here is how to transfer them......

• With LR2 running look in the left hand pane
• In the menu bar under "Metadata" select "Export keywords"
• Under [FOLDERS] click the root directory of your pictures to highlight it
• Click on [GRID VIEW] - press G
• Hold [CMD] and [A] {mac} or [CTRL] and [A] {PC} to select ALL FILES
• In the menu bar under "Metadata" select "Save Metadata to Files" and confirm this. {note you may get a message saying that some files have had their XMP changed in an external editor - nothing you can do here just accept it}

Right what you have done now is create an XMP file for every image and a text file containing all your keywords. (This might allow you to transfer to Aperture too but I would have to check!)

• Right now leave LR2

• Run LR3 and if you have not done so already import the same directory of images
• In the menu bar under "Metadata" select "Import keywords"
• Under [FOLDERS] click the root directory of your pictures to highlight it
• Click on [GRID VIEW] - press G
• Hold [CMD] and [A] {mac} or [CTRL] and [A] {PC} to select ALL FILES
• In the menu bar under "Metadata" select "Read Metadata from Files" and confirm this.

Right now you have read the metadata and each image will have it's keywords associated with them.

You will now have to re-create the collections although I am now looking at have to export them. Still the above should save MOST of the work. Will update you all if I find a way of exporting the collections definitions.........

 

[Craikeybaby]

Useful stuff for getting a catalog into the beta. The shipping version of LR3 should be able to import/convert an LR2 catalog, that is just one of the restrictions on the beta.