Will LR v. 6 work with Mac OS El Capitan, or only Sierra?

[Teri_Bloom]

I'm having terrible crashes since I upgraded to LR v. 6.7 and 6.8, since I've upgraded to Mac OS  El Capitain.

I'm thinking of going back to LR v.6 as I had no problems while on Mac OS Sierra.

Questions are: 

1)  Will LR v. 6 work also with El Capitain, or I have to go back to Mac Sierra before re-installing LR v. 6.

2)  Does anyone have the link explaining how to un-install LR v. 6.8, and then how to re-install LR v.6?

3)  Would my current catalog have any problems if I back-track to an earlier version of LR?

thanks so much, Teri

[99jon]

Sierra is the latest Mac OS. Are you rolling back to El capitan?

[Teri_Bloom]

Yes -- sorry about this -- I'm on Mac. 10.12.1, so that is Sierra --

Had no problems with El Capitan and LR 6, so am thinking about back-tracking as the crashes are constant.

thanks Jon!

[99jon]

I’m not having any problems running LR6.8 on Sierra. I would suggest you try trashing the prefs before rolling-back.

-Quit Lightroom

-Press and hold down the Opt(Alt) and Shift keys while launching Lightroom

-Keep the two keys pressed for a couple of seconds after double-clicking (control-clicking) to launch the app or launch by clicking the doc icon if you have one.

-When you release the Opt & Alt keys a  dialog box will appear asking to reset the preferences. Simply click the button “Reset Preferences”

[Teri_Bloom]

Thanks Jon -- will do this later...

great idea 🙂

best, Teri

[Teri_Bloom]

Hi Jon,

When I'm doing this to re-set prefs, LR is asking me if I want to open the earliest Catalog from July 2016.  More recent catalogs are grayed out.  Is this normal or should the latest catalog be available?

Don't understand this and am wondering if I have a bigger problem?

Also I have a brand new memory- maxed out iMac and yesterday I got a warning box that my catalog was bigger than 4 GB and I should use Stuffit or other compression software to back up.  So I deleted a bunch of older catalogs.  Is this a new dialog box in v. 6.8 and I should ignore if I know I have enough memory?

thanks so much, Teri

[99jon]

LR will usually launch with the last catalog you were using. If necessary launch LR normally and choose the correct catalog and then quit and trash the prefs.

The 4gb warning is just to let you know you will need to unzip the backup if you ever need to use it. You can ignore it and check the box “do not show again”

[Teri_Bloom]

thanks but don't understand -- can I open LR and trash the preferences while its running?

as stated, when I restarted and tried to trash prefs, only my July catalog was available and not current one, and I'd rather not loose 5 months of metadata...

can you describe how to trash prefs while LR is open if that is possible?

thanks so much Jon!

[99jon]

You can do it from Finder.Launch Finder and on the menu bar click “Go” whilst holding down the Optn(Alt) key and choose Library. Open the Preferences folder and trash the two plist files relating to LR6 (see image below)

Then re-launch Lightroom.

N.B. Apple hides the user Library until the Alt key is depressed.

[Teri_Bloom]

thanks so much Jon -- so I only have the Lightroom6.plist and not the shared file list for v. 6. -- so maybe that is part of the problem...

Also I have these prefs for LR 3 and 4 including some ending with .lockfile

should I delete ALL of these and restart computer and LR then?

thanks so much

[99jon]

Just delete the plist file for LR6. Don't touch the Lock file. That simply shows LR is runnung.

[Teri_Bloom]

thanks but I need to explain more

For LR 3  and 4 -- there are shared file list, plist and lockfile

In additional LR 4 has another additional plist and lock file

LR 6 only has lock file and plist -- no shared file plist

Should LR 6 have the shared file list and the lock file -- which is doesn't?

Or leave everything for previous versions as directed and only delete plist?

It appears I'm missing 2 prefs for LR 6 based on what I'm seeing from v. 3 and 4.

again thanks SO much for your help 🙂

[99jon · Accepted solution]

LR creates saved prefs each time you quit the application. So you don’t need to worry about older versions or the shared files plist. Next time you quit LR the prefs will be re-created for your latest catalog.

[Teri_Bloom]

thanks so much Jon, trashing this pref seems to have fixed the reasons for all the crashes... hopefully and fingers crossed everything is fixed 🙂