Here is what Tim had to say on 17 May 2017:
========================
Today's Question
I purchased a new laptop for travel and teaching. I want to use the same
Lightroom catalog and images on both machines [laptop and desktop]. What do you
recommend?
Tim's Quick Answer:
In this type of situation my recommendation would be to keep both your
Lightroom catalog and your photos on the same external hard drive. You can then
open the catalog from that external hard drive on whichever computer you're
currently using to work with your images.
More Detail:
Lightroom does not offer a native solution for effectively working with your
full catalog on more than one computer. That includes the inability to store
your catalog on a network storage location, preventing you from being able to
access the catalog from multiple computers on a network.
Some photographers have employed an online synchronization service such as
Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com) to make a catalog available on more than one
computer. While this can most certainly be a workable solution, I do have
concerns about the potential for synchronization failure, and of course this
type of approach would require that you have access to an Internet connection
in order to synchronize the actual files you're working with.
As a result of the various limitations related to working with a catalog across
two computers, I recommend simply keeping the catalog itself on an external
hard drive along with the photos being managed by that catalog. You can then
connect the external hard drive to whichever computer you want to work with
currently. Within Lightroom, you can then open the catalog directly from the
external hard drive, so that you're always working with the actual catalog
files (without the need for synchronization), and you always have your photos
readily available as well.
The only potentially significant drawback to this approach of storing the
Lightroom catalog on an external hard drive is degradation in performance. Most
external hard drives are slower than a comparable internal hard drive, and
there are also latency issues that can further degrade performance. For some
photographers this reduction in performance is reason enough to work with only
a single computer for Lightroom. For example, I keep my Lightroom catalog on my
laptop, so that I always have access to the catalog whether I'm at home or
traveling with my laptop.
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And on 12 December 2012:
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Today's Question: I have "snow-bird" issues concerning Lightroom, which I just
bought and am beginning to learn. I live six months in Ohio and six months
Florida with a desktop Mac in each state.
I've been keeping the photos I take while I'm in Ohio on the Ohio computer's
internal hard drive and the photos I take while I'm in Florida on the Florida
computer's internal hard drive. I carry three external hard drives with me
between states [two of them representing backups, one for Ohio and one for
Florida]. What is a reasonable workflow for working in Lightroom if I want
access to all my photographs whether I'm in Ohio or Florida?
Tim's Answer: This is actually a very good example of when storing your
Lightroom catalog on an external hard drive along with your photos makes
perfect sense.
The first thing I would do is start using an external hard drive as your
primary storage location for all photos, which might mean buying a new external
hard drive that has enough space for all of the photos in both of your
locations (Ohio and Florida). If you've not really gotten started with your
Lightroom catalog you could simply create a new catalog on that external hard
drive, transfer all of the images from both locations onto that hard drive, and
then import using the "Add" option so that the catalog contains a reference to
all of the images on that external hard drive. During that import you could
simply choose the hard drive itself (not a folder on the hard drive) as the
source of images to be imported, and turn on the Include All Subfolders
checkbox so all photos on the drive get imported.
If you have already gotten started with your catalogs in each location, I would
recommend a slightly different approach. Start by exporting as a catalog (File
> Export as Catalog from the meu) to copy your first catalog to the external
hard drive complete with all photos. Then connect that external hard drive to
the other computer at the other location, and open the catalog in Lightroom
from the external hard drive. Then choose File > Import from Another Catalog,
select the "local" catalog that contained images only from that location, and
use the Copy option to copy images from your internal drive to the external
drive, adding them to the catalog in the process.
The result is all of your photos will be on a single external hard drive, and
your single Lightroom catalog will also be on that external hard drive. This
allows you to work with your Lightroom catalog on any computer in any location
(provided that computer has Lightroom installed) by simply opening the catalog
directly from the external hard drive.
========================
But I confess to not understanding "paying subscriber".
Piers
-----Original Message-----
From: olympus <olympus-bounces+piers.hemy=gmail.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Jez Cunningham
Sent: 07 January 2020 23:10
To: Olympus Camera Discussion <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [OM] Musings - Re: setting up a photo database
Tim Grey has answered that question a few times - not sure how accessible
his q&a are if you’re not a paying subscriber though...
Jez
On Tue, 7 Jan 2020 at 21:49, Mike Gordon via olympus <
olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> So what is a good strategy to deal with 2 computers?
>
> Keeping all photos and the LR catalogue on external drive seems nuts with
> all the space I have on the new system. Some keep a catalogued synced on 2
> systems, usually a laptop and tower with a laptop for travel. That looks
> complex.
> It does not look like LR will accept having the catalogue on a network
> drive if I configured my current laptop C drive as such. The catalogue by
> itself can be on an external drive and LR doesn't care which computer it is
> on.
> Perhaps just transfer the images to the new system as there is plenty of
> room and have two separate catalogues (one on each)and add the images to
> the system where they were not processed. Both will be backed up and adds
> redundancy but is more work too.
>
> Trying to get sorted, Mike
>
> --
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>
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