In Desperate need of some help with Lightroom on a mac

[bigsarg7]

I've purhcased this week copies of Adobe cs5 production premium, Lightroom and Nik Software. Good old tax return came in finally!

Now i've loaded them all on, but lightroom will open, i then enter my serial number etc and then it goes to continue on ... only to stop with the dreaded error changing modules or something along those lines, now i've googled it, and people say to do something but expect everyone to know their way around a mac ----and i have no idea! I'm pretty good on a PC but not so good on this new imac..... Does anyone know how to help me out? or had this issue themselves and managed to fix it?

I can work in lightroom when i sign in as a guest user but it deletes everything after i exit, so it doesn't really work so well for me! and when i use Nik Software in Lightroom i have to continually keep registering it eveytime i open up any of the software......

I am so over it right now i've got so many pics from my work for the last month i need to complete and i just can't seem to get these new software to work.

So please any help is greatly appreciated.......Ps I need step by step instructions as i barely know my way around a mac! sorry!

kristen

[sirhc55]

Although I have been working on Mac since the middle 80s I can’t quite understand what is going on.

The normal procedure for program installation is to insert the supplied disk(s) and let the installer do its job. The serial number is either entered during installation (when asked for) or when first opening the program.

The business about guest accounts has not happened for me in over 25 years of use.

Maybe you could give some idea on what you have done to install these programs.

[DaveB]

It's possible this is due to a corruption of the Lightroom database ("catalog") you're using (either in the catalog itself or in the previews database associated with it).

By default Lightroom will create a catalog under ~/Pictures called "Lightroom Catalog", but I prefer to use explicitly named catalogs.
In fact I've made a special ~/Catalogs folder to contain each catalog (initially you'll just have one, but when you have thousands of photos you may need to play with more: just make sure that each catalog is managing different folder trees of images). I also put my Expression Media catalogs in there.

So, when you double-click on the app in a Finder window, or single-click on the LR icon in your dock, the icon will start bouncing. IMMEDIATELY after you do that clicking, press and hold down the alt/option key, and keep it down until Lightroom pops up a window that allows you to choose which catalog to use (or to create a new catalog, or to do an integrity check of a catalog).

From the sound of it any existing catalog won't contain important info, so I'd suggest creating a new catalog and see if the problem remains.
By the way, the default behaviour for Lightroom is to open the catalog it was last working on. So if you start a new catalog then Lightroom will keep using that until you switch again.

Let us know if a fresh catalog resolves (or doesn't) your problem. Or if I need to explain it differently!

[MATT]

So, when you double-click on the app in a Finder window, or single-click on the LR icon in your dock, the icon will start bouncing. IMMEDIATELY after you do that clicking, press and hold down the alt/option key, and keep it down until Lightroom pops up a window that allows you to choose which catalog to use (or to create a new catalog, or to do an integrity check of a catalog).

Sorry I cant help with the original problem, but thanks Dave for this little tip.. I also use multiple lightroom catalogs but would let lightroom load then swap to the catalog I wanted..

back to kristen problem, is there multiple users logins on the mac similar to windows? I don't have any of that on my mac, and I install LR 3 last week with no problems.

MATT

[photohiker]

i've googled it, and people say to do something but expect everyone to know their way around a mac ----and i have no idea! I'm pretty good on a PC but not so good on this new imac..... Does anyone know how to help me out? or had this issue themselves and managed to fix it?

If Dave's tip doesn't help, could you possibly post the actual error you get and the help you got from google? I'm sure there are plenty here who know their way around a mac well enough to help.

Michael

[gstark]

In fact I've made a special ~/Catalogs folder to contain each catalog

One other more general point here ... as Kristen is a new user in the Mac realm, she may not be aware that the ~ in the folder reference that Dave has made refers explicitly to the current user's home directory. That would typically be /users/<username>. On my Mac it's /users/gstark, and thus the special ~/Catalogs folder that Dave has referred to would actually be /users/gstark/Catalogs.

Also, you should note that folder and filenames on the Mac are case senstitive, which is different from what you may be used to.

[DaveB]

One other more general point here ... as Kristen is a new user in the Mac realm, she may not be aware that the ~ in the folder reference that Dave has made refers explicitly to the current user's home directory. That would typically be /users/<username>. On my Mac it's /users/gstark, and thus the special ~/Catalogs folder that Dave has referred to would actually be /users/gstark/Catalogs.

Thanks for bringing this issue up. It's a hang-over from the old Unix csh command-line, which has carried over into OS X (which is Unix under the covers).

Also, you should note that folder and filenames on the Mac are case senstitive, which is different from what you may be used to.

Well, yes and no.

By default the system will preserve the case in any files/folders you create, but ignore it when opening them.
So if you create "Catalogs" you will see it in the folder as "Catalogs", but if you then try to create "catalogs" in the same place it will tell you the file already exists. Gary's home directory is probably actually "/Users/gstark".

On the whole you don't have to worry about this, but as noted above you can't create two files/folders with the same name but different case, so it helps to be aware of the issue.

[bigsarg7]

Thanks everyone for all your comments, after spending hours and hours yesterday I found some files that were recommended on another lightroom forum to be deleted in this type of error, and I finally found them and deleted them with all my fingers and toes and legs crossed and thank god they worked! it began to work and i am loving it! It is apparently an issue that has happened in the past with older versions and is continuing to happen with lr3. But if anyone else has the issue i think i might be able to show them which files to delete!!

So thanks everyone, i will follow your promts on the cataloguing side of things, sounds like a wise move to me!

So yeah, thanks!

Kristen

[stetner]

/rant

I would have called the Adobe tech support line and got them to fix it for you, in fact demanded they get it working for you.

I went to buy CS4 a while ago but wondered why it was a thousand dollars more dear than the US price + exchange.

I was told that you MUST get tech support for a year bundled with it in Oz. I have never bought it (or used it) because of this.

Maybe one day they will sell it with out tech support, at a comparable price to the US, and then I may buy it.... But probably not now as I can get by just as well with much cheaper products and open source software.

/rant

Doug