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Sharing catalog in Lightroom 2.0

Justin PhillipsJustin Phillips Registered Users Posts: 15 Big grins
edited September 10, 2008 in Finishing School
I just want to make sure I understand the Lightroom workflow properly. I have my main PC and my laptop. I like to work from both of them sometimes in my office sometimes on my laptop so I can spend time with my family. I exported the catalog to an external USB drive and opened the catalog on my laptop. My question is when I go back to my PC I have to export the catalog again to the firewire drive.

However every time I do this it rewrites all the photos. Is there a away to export the catalog and keep the photos where they are on the USB drive. If not the eport is very time consuming, considering I am working with 800 RAW photos. Just curious, if anyone has any feedback.

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    jfriendjfriend Registered Users Posts: 8,097 Major grins
    edited September 8, 2008
    Justin Phillips wrote:
    I just want to make sure I understand the Lightroom workflow properly. I have my main PC and my laptop. I like to work from both of them sometimes in my office sometimes on my laptop so I can spend time with my family. I exported the catalog to an external USB drive and opened the catalog on my laptop. My question is when I go back to my PC I have to export the catalog again to the firewire drive.

    However every time I do this it rewrites all the photos. Is there a away to export the catalog and keep the photos where they are on the USB drive. If not the eport is very time consuming, considering I am working with 800 RAW photos. Just curious, if anyone has any feedback.

    I work with both a PC and a laptop. If you can get them both on the same network and put one of the catalogs in a shared location that the other can directly access, then you have many nicer options.

    Here's how I manage with my laptop.

    My PC is my main storage repository and I have something like 80,000 images there.

    When I'm going traveling and I want to work on some of my images on my laptop, I put them both on the network and export a catalog containing those images directly to my laptop's hard drive over the network.

    I then modify the images on the laptop.

    When I get back home, I put the laptop on the network and I go to LR on my PC and do File/Import from Catalog and point to the laptop catalog (over the network). In the import options, I choose to synchronize so any changes that happened on the laptop will be pulled into the PC catalog. Because LR never changes the original images, those do not need to be copied over the second time as LR can see that it already has them in the catalog (they do have to be copied to the laptop the first time).
    --John
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    Justin PhillipsJustin Phillips Registered Users Posts: 15 Big grins
    edited September 9, 2008
    I really hope Adobe comes up with an easier solution in on of the dot releases. I know catalogs was a big step and I am sure Adobe will take it ot the next level!
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    jfriendjfriend Registered Users Posts: 8,097 Major grins
    edited September 9, 2008
    Justin Phillips wrote:
    I really hope Adobe comes up with an easier solution in on of the dot releases. I know catalogs was a big step and I am sure Adobe will take it ot the next level!

    What else do you need from Adobe than what I've described? That allows two catalogs to be kept in sync or changes from one to be merged into the other. Isn't that what you want?
    --John
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    colourboxcolourbox Registered Users Posts: 2,095 Major grins
    edited September 9, 2008
    Justin Phillips wrote:
    However every time I do this it rewrites all the photos. Is there a away to export the catalog and keep the photos where they are on the USB drive. If not the eport is very time consuming, considering I am working with 800 RAW photos.

    If I understand correctly, that the images aren't changing and are already at the destination, then all you have to do is de-select "Export negative files" when you Export as Catalog. That will transfer the catalog and the metadata but not the originals, saving much time. As long as Lightroom can be relinked to the copies of the same images on the other drive it will keep your adjustments associated with the images. It would be the same going the other way. As long as you have the same images stored the same way in two places, all you need to transfer is the metadata.
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    cmasoncmason Registered Users Posts: 2,506 Major grins
    edited September 9, 2008
    http://www.layersmagazine.com/working-with-database-catalogs-in-lightroom.html
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    ClubFlysClubFlys Registered Users Posts: 95 Big grins
    edited September 10, 2008
    cmason wrote:
    http://www.layersmagazine.com/working-with-database-catalogs-in-lightroom.html

    Thanks for the link. It is nicely put together and easily understandable.
    ClubFlys.com | Lasher Photography
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