Lightroom trial question

[tipsinartok]

Just wondering, I want to download the Lightroom trial and try it out for the 30 days. I'd love to start organizing my pictures using it, as well as figure out some of the features and whether it will do what I'm looking for right now. But I probably wouldn't actually buy it for a couple of months after I was done the trial. Can I uninstall it but keep settings so that when I reinstall it the keywords, etc., that had been placed on my photos will stay? Or would I have to start from scratch again?

Thanks!

[SCP]

Why would you uninstall it? I would leave it, even if the 30 days run out, you can by the key over the internet and enter it into the pop up message when you start it again. That way all your settings are saved and your ready to go when you have your key.

[tipsinartok]

That would definitely be an option too, though in the next little while we may buy a new computer so I'd have to install it somewhere else anyway. I'm sure it must be possible to move an installation of Lightroom to another computer without losing the settings and keywords and such, so I guess I'm asking if that's possible with the trial too.

Thanks!

[SCP]

What I do.. and you really should have one already.. I install ALL my programs on an External Drive and run them from there. That solves your problem of getting a new computer.

So why not run down and get a nice little external drive they are super cheap right now and you can save everything off your hard drive and be an easy transfer to your new one.

I can't say enough about this.. my laptop died two days ago.. thank god for the external. I was able to buy a new CPU and just plug in and go without having to worry about missing any information from the laptop.

[tipsinartok]

Thanks, I'd love to get an external drive and it is in the cards, but unfortunately there are a ton of other things I'd also love to get and I'm having to prioritize. I back everything up on our server right now as well as on DVD's so I'm not too worried about losing everything.

I have looked around and found out how to save the settings and such from Lightroom, but I can't figure out how it identifies each picture. If I were to back up my pictures and Lightroom, then reinstall everything and put the pictures back on the computer, would the pictures still have all the keywords and albums I'd used in Lightroom even if they were in potentially different locations?

[GrinningBear]

Howdy,

not sure which platform you are on and if it matters at all. But anyway I am running LR 1.4 on the mac and there are 2 main files which you need to take care of.

"<catalog_name>Previews.lrdata" which holds the thumbnail images for the catalog.
"<catalog_name>.lrcat" which holds all the keywords and collections data for the catalog.

If you move your images to another drive, LR will mark the images as offline/missing. All you need to do then is right mouse click on the top level folder of the library and say locate. The rest is automagic.

Hope it helps.

Regards,
Robert.

[tipsinartok]

Thank you Robert, that's exactly what I was trying to figure out.