[Success] Upgrade from High Sierra to Catalina

[iPatch]

I upgraded directly from High Sierra to Catalina without any major issues, once I switched to a compatible GPU. Photoshop 2020 (v21.0.1) and the new Lightroom Classic v9.0 (Camera Raw v12) became unstable and jerky with High Sierra and the GeForce 1060 GPU with the last Adobe update. I replaced the GeForce 1060 GPU to a Radeon RX 590 so I could upgrade to Catalina 10.15.1 from High Sierra 10.13.

Backup

1. Backuped with rsync from MacPorts (/opt/local/bin/rsync). I copied all the files to the regular 2 TB HFS+ internal disk called "Emergency Backup".
2. I skipped the "preboot" step because my target disk is HFS+. (see instruction for APFS cloning (Belight Soft disk clone with Rsync)

Upgrade

1. switched to the new GPU to make sure it worked
2. installed Clover on backup disk "Emergency Backup" from a package (Clover_v2.5k_r5099.pkg)
3. updated the Clover package on the boot disk (risky without a backup of the original)
4. blessed the System folder on the clone "Emergency Backup"
5. recreated the kernel cache on the clone "Emergency Backup"
6. finally cloned the boot disk EFI partition to the "Emergency Backup" disk (use Clover Configurator)
7. from Finder, I directly upgraded to Catalina (Install macOS Catalina.app)

Caveats

• I had some troubles with the Display Port monitor (main) not turning on after installation but the DVI monitor was fine. I tried a few things, including changing back from iMacPro1,1 to iMac18,3. I also turned on iGPU support in the EFI BIOS but I don't think this was it.
• Audio wasn't working until I reinstalled the kexts Lilu and WhateverGreen into /L/E. I also have these in the EFI kext directory, I'm not sure if I need both sets.
• After some undocumented trial and error I got things working properly and smoothly. Now Photoshop and Lightroom have proper GPU acceleration and work smoothly again including the Select & Mask filter in Photoshop.

Things Untouched and Working from High Sierra

• fix USB port limit
• almost all EFI config edits
• most kexts were left as-is or just upgraded

After the upgrade

A working system summary.

Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom "Camera Raw" no longer supports High Sierra and GeForce 1060 GPUs. This configuration works but it's not reliable or easy to use. The only way forward is to update to MacOS 10.14 Mojave or newer, which have no Nvidia drivers. Below are screenshots of the Radeon RX 590 options which were partially greyed out in High Sierra.

Photoshop preferences.

 

[Aevion]

I am desperate to know how you got Lr to work. Which version are you on? Did you manage to pull of some sudo in Terminal to get it to work? Help is much appreciated!

 

[iPatch]

I am desperate to know how you got Lr to work. Which version are you on? Did you manage to pull of some sudo in Terminal to get it to work? Help is much appreciated!

What type of problems are there? I fine with Lr Classic and Lr. Now I'm using Lightroom Classic version: 9.0 [ 201910151439-b660523e ] which is the latest version. I had problems with the Nvidia graphics card not being supported in High Sierra and Lightroom, Camera Raw etc.

 

[Deam]

I think photoshop is a normal issue with Mojave and Catalina, I see a lot of comments on Adobe website.
You can try this on Terminal, it's fixed for my Mojave :

defaults delete -g NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance

after I issued this command and relaunched Photoshop cc2019 working smoothly.

Good luck.

 

[iPatch]

It's a good solution but do you have any links showing where this is listed as a normal issue? I found an Adobe support note for only users who modified their Dock and Menu Bar preferences with the Terminal in the first place.

This is a list of known issues for Photoshop in Catalina.

I think photoshop is a normal issue with Mojave and Catalina, I see a lot of comments on Adobe website.
You can try this on Terminal, it's fixed for my Mojave :

defaults delete -g NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance

after I issued this command and relaunched Photoshop cc2019 working smoothly.

Good luck.

 

[Deam]

It's a good solution but do you have any links showing where this is listed as a normal issue? I found an Adobe support note for only users who modified their Dock and Menu Bar preferences with the Terminal in the first place.

This is a list of known issues for Photoshop in Catalina.

I just use this solutions in my case, it maybe works on mojave only, in fact I didn't have experience on Catalina yet.

Photoshop CC: Crashes after updating macOS to Mojave | Photoshop Family Customer Community

Photoshop CC 2018 is crashing a few moments after opening on Mac OS Mojave.Set up is: MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports)Photoshop version : CC 19.0 What happened : At first Photoshop became extremely slow after updating to Mojave That's why I decided to reinstall Photoshop...

feedback.photoshop.com

 

[Brownie]

I've also updated from High sierra to Catalina, but i've a massive GPU performance drop... What i've done:

1. Updated EFI with latest clover(5102) and updated all kexts installed on a Samsung 970 EVO(High Sierra installed)
2. Installed Catalina on an other Samsung 860 EVO SSD

Booting from the same EFI everything works fine, both on High Sierra as on Catalina, except for GPU performance... (See screenshots) 135fps vs 60fps...

Configured as iMac 18,3, using only RX580 as GPU