Lightroom is a fantastic piece of software. But if it goes wrong, or your computer goes wrong, there is a lot of work you stand to lose. So here are my top tips to make sure you can recover Lightroom if the worst should happen.
1.) Backup your catalogue files. This can be done from within lightroom. So to make sure this go to your catalogue settings, and make sure it is to be backed up. I recommend this is done on another drive, and you can specify the place on the backup dialogue itself when it does a backup
2.) Ensure Pre-sets are kept with the Lightroom catalogue. This is the best option for those of you who only use one catalogue. Once this is done, you can back up the entire contents of the catalogue folder, and keep all your pre-sets safe. Pre-sets include all Meta data, Import, develop, export and preferences. So by backing this folder up, light room is fully installable back to how you had it without worry. Just make sure you are not backing up the <catalogue_name> Previews.lrdata, or the smart previews folder if your running LR5. These don’t need to be backed up and only contain rendering information for previews and 1:1 viewing.
By following these two simple ideas, you can safeguard your lightoom install.
Hope this helps someone out there. 🙂
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