Installing Light Room on a New Computer

dbruno

Hi - I just upgraded the boat anchor I've been using as a computer for the past couple of years. I will be installing LR on this new computer. Anyone have any tips? It's been a couple of years since the last time I installed it. More than likely, unless I get a carrier for my old hard drive, LR, the photos, and the catalog will be all on the same drive. I mention this because I've seen something about having the photos on one drive, and using "Smart Previews" to edit.

The new computer has an Intel i7 processor (3.4 GHz speed I believe), and purchased primarily because of the awful performance I was getting with the old system. Because of this, I don't want to make any non-optimal choices during installation that I will later regret. I also have to say I'm not well versed in the deep-rooted nuances of computers, and get a bit nervous about major changes like this.  All I know is I went for the fastest processor, and as much RAM as I could afford, so my photo developing time would not suffer any longer from the dreaded "An Unknown Error Has Occurred" message, and not being able to process a bunch of photos at one time.

Thanks - Dave

CanonJay

I am useless here:) 

All I can say is that I invested in the best Mac I can get with a ssd solid state drive and us external hard drives for storage. I installed lightroom on my internal hard drive. What I do is save all raws and jpgs to a folder on my external hard drive as (Jane & Jacks Wedding)  I then click import and the add feature. I create the light room file catalog in the same folder as (Jane & Jacks Wedding) for each job. I don't use the smart previews at all, so I can't add any value to that. My system as worked for me for years. I am probably doing it all wrong, but hey It has been problem free for me. 

PS.....Worth noting is that I now use OnOne Photo raw and love it. No catalogs and it works great. It was a rough launch in December but with all the updates it is marvelous and have been faithfully using it for my Fuji files instead of lightroom. 

PSS......I still have the latest lightroom and maintain photoshop with it, just in case.

-Jay

rs_eos

See my responses from last year here and here.