Lightroom on Two Computers

[msknyc]

I swear I've seen this discussed, but I can't find the thread.  Apologies if this has been discussed!

I'm going to be working on both a laptop and a tower at home (MAC.)  Is the easiest way to stay organized with lightroom to simply store the WORKING images on an external hard drive, and also keep the working catalog on that same hard drive?

Thanx in advance.

Mark S. Kornbluth
www.msknyc.com
mark@msknyc.com

[johnbeardy]

That's an easy enough way if you want to lug the EHD around.

Alternatively you need to look into Import as Catalog and Export as Catalog - I regularly use these methods to push pictures over to the laptop, do some work there, and then bring back just the descriptive and adjustment metadata.

John

[msknyc]

Thanx.  I'll test each option.  I thought that one couldn't work in the DEVELOP module if the actual file wasn't available.

~Mark

[johnbeardy]

Mark

Develop isn't available, but what I do is send the originals across once, ticking the negatives option in the Export as Catalog from my desktop PC, and then untick it when I do Export as Catalog on the Mac laptop. You have to keep your head screwed on, especially with cross platform stuff, but it is workable. And if you're only doing metadata entry and Quick Develop on the other machine, you can forget about sending across the originals.

John

[peterkrogh]

Mark,
I would say that by far the easiest way to do what you want is to keep everything on the external.

You could keep the catalog on the internal and swap back and forth, but the way the catalog is structured (with all previews stored as individual files) makes it extremely slow to copy between drives.

Peter