Thank you for all your replies. I think i now have a way forward. If i can’t get LR6 working on Win 11. I can use the method recommended by Nicolas…great😀
The only problem that I had was actually finding the LR6 download. I couldn’t find it anywhere on Adobe’s sight, either here in Germany or elsewhere. Adobe even says that it isn’t available any longer for download which I find amazing because I paid for it. But then I remembered that I had gotten the info that it would be removed and had downloaded and saved the exe file on a hard drive. It worked perfectly and I didn’t have any issues installing or activating.
The real interesting thing is that I have Windows 11 Pro, but Lightroom thinks it is running in Windows 10 Business when I look at the system info in LR 6.14. I have never owned Windows 10 Business. I had 10 Pro.
I would never trust Bridge for keywording and labelling. Years ago I labeled a few hundred of screenshots (PNG) to get sort of a workflow in preparing them for documentation. After opening, editing and saving in PS, all labels were gone. Maybe PNGs are not suitable for labelling, but if an app gibes labels I expect it to read them as well and keep them somewhere safe.
ExifTool can both read and write tags like Label, Rating, Subject, etc to PNG files
So, it’s Bridge then? Better said, was Bridge at the time, after that disappointing adventure I didn’t use Bridge for colour tagging. Just checked, now I can edit and save and the colour tags remain set. But still, as a DAM, Bridge is the wrong choice imo. It’s an image browser/sorter with neat tools like contact sheets as PDF.
LR 6.14 was released five years ago. Most software companies do not allow downloads of their older software versions in perpetuity for those users who have decided not to upgrade. In fact, historically many vendors have even put a hard time limit on downloading the most current version of their software. It is important therefore, and incumbent upon the end user, to keep copies of installation software and back it up.
Mark
I know why they do it. That doesn’t make it right in my opinion…which is worth basically nothing to anyone other than me…
. This is one of the reasons that I stopped giving Adobe money with Lightroom 6. I was happy that I was smart enough to save a copy of the installation file. Even though I wasn’t smart enough to remember that I had saved it initially before wasting probably half an hour trying to find it on Adobe’s various sites.
I’m happy that you remembered you had a backup.
Mark
Thanks. The older I get the more I get excited when I remember something…
2 Likes
Trust me, I know the feeling.
Mark
Another LR6 & PL6 user here.
Let me add a complication: CameraRaw update issues for newer cameras. Many new cameras (like the Fuji X-100V) need the latest CameraRaw – which isn’t supported in LR6. But an upgrade to LRCl and using it as a non-licensed library manager (while processing photos in PL6) would not allow changing the development settings of my 40,000 images I had developed in LR6 over the years. In other words, the options are:
- I use LR6 for library management of old photos, with the ability to keep/change dev settings, but process AND organize all new photos in PL6 (since LR6 won’t even “see” new camera RAWs, it can’t catalogue them)
- I upgrade to LRCl to manage the full catalogue (old and new) and use PL6 for processing of all photos. Then I’d lose the ability to make any changes to old RAW image dev settings (unless I pay Adobe for LRCl every month)
- forget about Adobe but re-create the entire catalog structure in PL6. With this, I’d lose the LR library sync features and all my dev settings for 40k photos processed in LR. I could render them in LR before moving over tiff-s, I could even move the unprocessed RAW files but there’s no way to move the dev settings with the photos to PL6… so a catalogue would be mainly unprocessed RAWs and tiff-s.
Sounds like most of you have opted for option #2? Does anyone anyone have the CameraRaw limitations I’m dealing with? Am I missing an option #4?
M~
The core issue you have is “old edits”. You need to decide how likely you are to want to modify those. Personally, I prefer re-processing in PhotoLab to get better results than I ever got in LR.
If you abandon “re-editing” LR-edited photos, you can just migrate your library from LR6 to LR Classic and you’re done.
Thanks for sharing your take on this @zkarj. I might just have to spend a long weekend with committing the trickier developments in LR to tiffs and move the rest of the catalogue as undeveloped RAW files to LRCl for possible future re-editing in PL6. I’m comfortable with working in both but cannot stand subscription models.
M~
@millenniumsea I’m not sure about migration, but all the edits I have ever done in Lightroom are still there in my catalogue. I’m currently paying a subscription, but for the year or two I wasn’t, I could still export the fully edited versions to JPEGs or TIFFs or whatever. I just couldn’t change the edits. (But I could change the metadata and reorganise the library etc.)
The unknown to me is whether you could migrate your library to the current version without having an active subscription. One way to find out, I guess, is to try it. I would suggest create a new, small LR6 library, do some obvious edits, then try migrating that to Lightroom Classic and see what happens. It’s been a long time since I installed or migrated anything so I cannot comment on those processes today.
Same situation for me, but I will stay on Windows 10 till 2025 
So the time will tell what to do
That’s an excellent idea, I will try to install LRCl next to LR6 (might have to do it on another computer) and copy a folder over to it. I’ll post here how things work out. Thanks @zkarj