September 23, 2026

The mac mini -- lightroom, adobe

Lightroom is really the whole reason we got this new machine.

I have another page on setting up SMB to my linux machine where my photos currently reside. I did that, and can now see my photos in the mounted volume. The game from here will be:

Download and Install

I use Safari, go to google, and search "adobe creative cloud download". This takes me to the proper page on adobe.com (safari doesn't nicely show actual URL's). I click the download button. This gives me: 
Creative_Cloud_Installer_747x.dmg
I double click this, get a variety of warnings. Eventually Adobe wants me to sign in. I dig up my password and away we go. It gives me a button "Start Installing" and now I am looking at a progress bar.

Now I am running the "Creative Cloud" manager app. I go to Apps -- My Apps and find Lightroom Classic.
There is an "install" button. (I could also install Photoshop, but we will get to that later.) I get a marching progress indicator.

As usual, I screwed up and installed "Lightroom" when I wanted "Lightroom Classic". Lightroom is their new web/mobile version of Lightroom that they seem to think that everyone wants. I'll have to find and delete it to avoid future confusion. They now give me a button to "open in browser" for this.

The LRC install seems to have finished, but it is eager to have me install Photoshop, so I go ahead. This is done now and gives me Photoshop version 27.10. LrC is 15.51

I start LrC and after I start and then exit, it gives me an LrC icon on the Dock next to the CC icon that I now have.

Licenses

Adobe has a 2 computer activation limit. I now have the CC activated on my old Windows machine and this new Mac Mini -- which is OK.

What I should do though is to deactivate CC on the old windows machine, so that years down the road when I get some other computer, I am not painted into a corner. By then the old Windows machine and disk will be in a landfill someplace.

To deactivate the old machine, I can open Creative Cloud and go to Help --> sign Out --- or I can sign out via my Adobe account page.

Lightroom Classic setup - a journey into Windows hell

I boot up my hated Windows system for what I hope is the last timme. This of course takes forever, reminding me why I am doing all this. I reconnect the network cable since this will need to talk to Adobe to get permission to launch Lightroom. Launching Lighroom Classic also takes forever. Remember that this same hardware runs linux in a snappy fashion. All this waiting gives me plenty of time to complain and gripe here. I am forever amazed that they are able to get people (even me!) to pay money for this terrible software.

On the windows machine I have 2 network mounts: 

P: trona://photos
Z: trona://xxxx

We are finally up and running LrC. Sort of. It is stuck, probably due to the SMB situation. Indeed, the P: drive is disfunctional (so says file explorer).

So we go to /Users/Tom/Pictures/Lightroom and we seem to see our catalogs here. So I start dragging and dropping to a flash stick. 

The Ingrid folder has 16,000+ files.
The Paul folder has 3861 files
The Minerals folder has 1779 files

The Tom folder had a huge number of files.
Many were in a directory Backup, which had a collection of lrcat files
back to 2017.  I moved these to an OLD directory.
About 100,000 items were in a preview directory.
maybe the Tom.lrcat file is all I need??
I restart Windows in case by some magic it manages to mount P:
This of course will take forever, allowing me to complain how Windows is a bad cruel joke. I should mention my friend Dick who has a windows machine far worse than mine. It will struggle for 10+ minutes trying to start up a browser, which then seems to work once it finally gets launched. Windows says "please wait", but we wonder what it could be doing? I only asked it to restart after a short session. It says "working on updates", but how can it be given that it is Windows 10 and updates ceased many months ago. It also ways 100 percent complete (doing nothing), but that takes a long time. I'll be so glad to wash my hands of all this. More business for Apple. Now another of my complaints. It seems like it is up, but I still get this spinning blue wheel when I try to do anything.

Despite file explorer saying that P: is non-functional it seems that LrC has started. I check File -- Catalog settings and see: 

C:/Users/Tom/Pictures/Lightroom/Tom
Tom-v13.3.lrcat
7-12-2025  4:40 PM

Where to put the .lrcat file

There is helpful information here: She says that on the Mac, you put the lightroom catalogs in: 
/Users/tom/Pictures/Lightroom/catalog.lrcat
She says you need both xxx.lrcat and xxx.lrcat-data

On the mac, I insert my flash stick with all the stuff I copied from the Windows machine. I copy just one file, namely Tom-v13-3.lrcat and put it into: 

/Users/tom/Pictures/Lightroom/Tom-v13-3.lrcat
The claim is that now I can navigate to this, double click it, and then I'll just have to relink my photos. Let's just try it.

I use finder. I start by selecting "Macintosh HD" and follow my nose from there to Users and then on to the lrcat file. This works. Lightroom tells me it is updating the catalog to a new format. Now it wants the lrcat-data file, which it says has information about AI edits. I quit and go looking. This is a whole directory. But I have it and I move it. Now we try again, double-clicking on the lrcat file.

It launches very quickly -- but no images of course. I could have copied all the previews, but I am perfectly happy to just build them all again.

I try starting Lightroom from the icon on the Dock and get the same catalog file. Now I just need to relink the images. But the SMB mount has gone away.

I redo the "Connect to server" dance and now the photos are /Volumes/photos.
I'll actually want to use: 

/Volumes/photos/lightroom
To relink, they say to fire up lightroom and then look for a question mark on a folder. Click on that question mark to get a File prompt. This is not quite what I want (it would be fine for a single file).

Since I want to relink everything, I want to deal with the parent folder of all (named lightroom with 27,000+ images). Right click this and select "Find missing folder". This gives you a file browser.

I go to Network -- TRONA -- photos -- lightroom
I click the "choose" button and wait -- images begin appearing.

I had to exit and then restart lightroom. Now all the images seem to be showing up as they should. This just might have worked. It seems to make the previews as needed, which is fine. This is a fast computer and that is what it is for.

I have my images in year by year folders. When I visit a folder for the first time, there are no images for about a second then all the previews show up. It is extremely fast.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!