LR3 Help needed please - working in LR3 without the originals?

jasonstone

Hi all,

I'm looking to take a weekend away - just a chill out weekend - and thought it would be a great chance to maybe sit in front of the laptop for a few hours and sort out photos into collections and to set em up ready for a massive upload the smugmug.

However most of my photos are on an external drive and i don't want to take that with me....

So I was wondering if the following will work....
1. I have my LR3 catalog on my internal HD
2. I make 1:1 previews of the originals
3. I disconnect my external drive

Will I then be able to view, move, rate, mark for deletion/rejection, copy photos into collections for publishing????

Basically most catalog actions except for any editing or exporting.

If anyone knows the answer I'd be most grateful!

Thanks in advance all
Jase

Icebear

Let me be right upfront and say that I don't know the answer to your question, but it may have a lot to do with whether you're working with proprietary raw files, or DNG files. If you convert to DNG, your LR edits are encoded into the DNG sidecar files if I understand correctly, so your edits are also on your external drive. If you keep your raw files unconverted, it may depend on how you have set up your lightroom catalog. Then again, I may be completely off base. I'm going to be watching this thread with interest. :lurk

pathfinder

You should not need your image files for viewing ( at lower resolutions anyway ), rating, marking for deletion from the catalog, or into collections, or adding keywords. These actions can all be done just on the catalog file I believe.

You can only move your image files, themselves, with access to the drive they are stored upon which you are not taking with you.

Be aware, I have not actually done any of these steps, so.....

arodney

Will I then be able to view, move, rate, mark for deletion/rejection, copy photos into collections for publishing????

View, mark, add metadata etc, yes. Move no (the originals are not there to move). You can’t edit the files in Develop (they are not there). You’re basically viewing the thumbnails and updating the database (for this, high quality is useful), you could in theory print out lower quality prints again using the thumbnails you generate (draft mode printing).

jasonstone

OK thanks all - so seems i can do the limited changes i want to...
i won't be moving the files from folder-to-folder just moving links to them into collections ready for publishing

I guess i'd better report back how I went

Cheers all!