Moving pictures from LTR to LTR

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giulioz
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p.1 #1 · Moving pictures from LTR to LTR

I have been on a couple of weeks trip and I shot a lot of pictures which I downloaded in Lightroom on my MacBook Pro. During the trip I also had time to edit some of them. Now that I am back home I want to transfer the pictures from Lightroom on my lap-top to Lightroom on my iMac, saving the changes that I made to some files. What would be the best way to do that?

Thanks, Giulio

Mar 30, 2008 at 10:32 AM

John Webb
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p.1 #2 · Moving pictures from LTR to LTR

Use Target Disk Mode. Basically it'll treat one of the Mac's as an external drive for the other.

You'll need to get a fire wire cable - if you have newer Mac's with Firewire 800 use the 9 pin FireWire cable if not use a 6 pin model, has the large connector on both ends.

Not SUre what operating system your running but with my wife's powerbook and my G5 both running Tiger this is what we do.

Connect the MacBook Pro and the iMac with the cable.

On the powerbook Apple menu - System preferences - Startup Disk

From Startup Disk click Target Disk mode.

The Macbook Pro should turn off but will come back up with a Yellow fire wire icon. At this time on the iMac it should refelct the MacBook Pro as an additional hard drive icon.

Copy file as you normally would between hard drives.

When finished - EJECT the MacBook Pro from the iMac. Then turn off the laptop by pressing the power button.

We did this initially when my wife got her MacBook Pro and then several times since when we gone on vacation and I've needed to transfer my images back down to the G5.

As I said this was for Tiger not sure how it's handled with leopard or older versions of the OS.

Regards,

John

Mar 30, 2008 at 02:09 PM

giulioz
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p.1 #3 · Moving pictures from LTR to LTR

Thanks John, will I be able to transfer the images as they have been modified in LTR?

Regards, Giulio

Mar 30, 2008 at 03:16 PM

John Webb
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p.1 #4 · Moving pictures from LTR to LTR

Giulio,

I don't use lightroom, but I would assume that if they have been modified and then saved to a folder that you should be able to transfer them.

Maybe some one who uses lightroom can provide additional information.

Mar 30, 2008 at 03:22 PM

Jonathan H
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p.1 #5 · Moving pictures from LTR to LTR

You've got a bit of a problem with what you're trying to achieve. Lightroom "remembers" all its edits and adjustments in a catalog. This is the *.lrcat file. Obviously, your laptop and desktop each have a different catalog.

Your end goal requires to you to transfer two specific "items" - your lightroom catalog (which stores your edits) and your actual file architecture (which stores your folders/images).

Moving the folders is easy - John's description of Target Disk mode is perfect. Just click and drag all the folders from the laptop to the desktop. Hopefully you use the same "system" and nomenclature for your image folders on both computers, which will make the transition seamless. If not, you'll need to do some tweaking to make sure the folders on both computers are identical - the folder names must be identical, as well as all the internal files must have identical file names.

The catalog, however, presents its own challenges. I'm assuming you only want to move part of your laptop's catalog to the desktop. So, do the following:

1a - Click and drag your laptop catalog and all your image folders to your desktop's hard drive
1b - At this point, you can eject your laptop from TD mode - I highly recommend doing so, but it isn't absolutely critical
2 - In LR, go to File > Import From Catalog
3 - Select the catalog from Step 1 and hit OK

The entire catalog will be imported, i.e. all the previews, edits, etc, however all the folders (in the "Folders" pane in LR) will appear in red text because LR is unable to locate the new folders. Now, you can right-click (or control-click) on only the folders you want and choose "Locate folder". As long as the internal contents of the folders you moved haven't changed, this will work perfectly and preserve all your edits. The final step would be to then delete all the new folders you haven't moved to the desktop (again, from LR's "Folders" pane) from LR.

As always, MAKE SURE to properly back up both drives before attempting anything like this. I use and highly recommend SuperDuper.

Hope this clears everything up!

Edited on Mar 31, 2008 at 06:31 AM

Mar 31, 2008 at 06:27 AM

giulioz
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p.1 #6 · Moving pictures from LTR to LTR

Many thanks Jonathan, I successfully followed yours and John's instructions.

Regards, Giulio

Mar 31, 2008 at 03:59 PM


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