Syncing two LR libraries

Moogle Pepper

I will eventually be a future owner of an 27in iMac.

I currently use my mbp to do all my processing and will probably continue to do that when I am out of my place. So my question is, how would I sync the two LR libraries while maintaining the same post processing from one mac to the next?

colourbox

Network the two machines, turn on file sharing, and use Import Catalog from the desktop Lightroom to import any images you select and edits you already made, from the laptop's catalog. It will work exactly like importing from a card in that you can suppress importing duplicates.

Rhuarc

colourbox wrote:

Network the two machines, turn on file sharing, and use Import Catalog from the desktop Lightroom to import any images you select and edits you already made, from the laptop's catalog. It will work exactly like importing from a card in that you can suppress importing duplicates.

Could this be made to work so that only the previews were synced to the laptop, but anything I had added to the laptio (images) would get synced with changes to the desktop?

I want to be able to view all my photos (previews) on the laptop, but don't want tos tore full size images there. I may do imports while on the go, and need an easy way to get those over to my main lightroom library on the desktop.

colourbox

Rhuarc wrote:

Could this be made to work so that only the previews were synced to the laptop, but anything I had added to the laptio (images) would get synced with changes to the desktop? I want to be able to view all my photos (previews) on the laptop, but don't want tos tore full size images there. I may do imports while on the go, and need an easy way to get those over to my main lightroom library on the desktop.

I think this could work...but you'd do it differently. My earlier answer was assuming there's nothing on the laptop, then you shoot a bunch of images to a new catalog on the laptop, then sync to the main catalog on the desktop. I think to do what you want to do, you would first select All Photographs on your desktop computer and use Export Catalog to make a catalog to keep on the laptop. When you do an Export Catalog, you have the options "Export Negative Files" (the raws) and "Include Available Previews." It sounds like you want to export a catalog with "Export Negative Files" off and "Include Available Previews" on and move the exported catalog to the laptop. Then after you add a shoot to that catalog on the laptop, you can do an Import Catalog on it from the desktop. You will find that when you import a catalog the UI is like importing from a card.

Hope that works...

Rhuarc

So I did this last night using my netbook and it worked fine. When I exported from the laptop I told it to not include previews or negatives, since all I had done was change some metadata as a test. I imported that into the desktop catalog, and told it to only import metadata and develope settings. It worked great, although it did take quite awhile , so I don't see this as being something I can do on a daily basis.

Has anyone tried making changes to both catalogs (one on each system) and then importing one into the other? I assume that as long as different images were changed on in each catalog then they would just combine. What would happen if I added one keyword to an image on one system, and a different keyword to the same images on a different system? Would they overwrite or combine?

Thanks!