I have a desk top computer and a notebook. I have Lightroom2 on both. I have a gazillion pictures on several drives I'd like to be able to manage from both computers.

Can Lightroom2 keep track? If I import some new pictures using one computer, will they show up in the Lightroom installed on the other computer? Do I need to reimport on the 2nd comp? How do I synchronize this all? Can I just ask Lightroom to resynch to a drive or update the synch, and will it take hours each time?

I hope to avoid a master slave type solution where one comp is always used for importing and moving, and the other is display only,... I don't know if it will come to that.

Open to experience, thoughts, ideas :-)

If LR can see the same .cat file then it will have the same info. what may mess things up a little is if the drive/s the images are on have different drive letters. In that case you will need LR to find them again which is easy enough to do. You will of course have to work from the SAME .cat file.
I have a dual boot on my desktop machine at the moment (waiting for win7 to come out properly) and both installs have LR on them, any changes I make in one are fine in the other. I have made the 2 drives that have images on them the same drive letters now so all's fine

Roy Pertchik wrote:
I How do I synchronize this all? Can I just ask Lightroom to resynch to a drive or update the synch, and will it take hours each time?






No the finding takes very little time once you have pointed LR to the correct place. its not syncing its just just telling LR where the images are

I got it. That makes perfect sense. Here is my setup:

I have a desktop computer w/ internal C: for programs and misc, plus 2 external hard drives, (data and mirror). Then I have a laptop w/ internal C: for programs and misc, plus 2 portable hard drives (data and mirror). The desktop external drives are nearly full. The laptop portable drives are new.

This makes me think of two possible solutions; 1)multiple .cat files that live on external drives and get pointed to on the fly when I need to access the kind of info on one pair of drives, or the other, or on the local c: at the time. vs: 2)one .cat file that lives on one of the portable drives but indexes all photos on all drives, when it's all plugged together. Then, I just remember to only access drives when they are connected, and to attach the portable with the .cat file to the desk top when I intend to use LR from there. When I plug stuff together, I have to check that Windows assigns the right drive letters.

I suspect solution 2 is more workable. Thoughts?

Solution 2 is the most stress free option. It saves you having to worry which catalog is the most up to date.

Here's what I do. I have 3 machines that I use Lightroom with.

I have my catalogue and previews on a 500GB portable drive. This drive also has image files I'm currently working on and has a permanent drive letter assigned to it. i don't need to worry that Windows is assigning a new drive letter this way. The whole thing is automatically backed up to a 2nd portable drive every night at home.

I then have all my "archived images" on large external drives (1TBx4). I have two sets of these. One at home (attached to a computer) and one at the studio (attached to another computer). They are identical in content and folder structure. The drives at home have exactly the same drive letters and names assigned to them as the ones in the studio. Again, these are assigned in "computer management" to avoid issues.

I simply carry the portable drive with me and plug it into the computer I'm using. LR opens the catalogue on the portable drive as the default. As the image drives at home and the studio are identical and use the same name/drive letter Lightroom just opens everything right where I left off, no matter what machine I'm working on. When I'm finished working on a job I just copy it to both the home and studio drives and delete from the portable. Then I just point LR to the new location once and all is good.

You will also need to store your presets with the catalogue (LR options) and make sure you install any plugins you may have on both machines.

The portable drive also carries all my other important files like invoices etc. So I always have everything I need no matter what computer I'm on. The 3rd machine is my tablet pc. I only need to access the catalogue using it occasionally and I will also us it to import files to LR while I'm on the road. I don't have any image file drives attached to it.

Gordon

flash wrote:
Here's what I do. I have 3 machines that I use Lightroom with.

I have my catalogue and previews on a 500GB portable drive. This drive also has image files I'm currently working on and has a permanent drive letter assigned to it. i don't need to worry that Windows is assigning a new drive letter this way. The whole thing is automatically backed up to a 2nd portable drive every night at home.

I then have all my "archived images" on large external drives (1TBx4). I have two sets of these. One at home (attached to a computer) and one at the studio (attached to another computer). They are identical in content and folder structure. The drives at home have exactly the same drive letters and names assigned to them as the ones in the studio. Again, these are assigned in "computer management" to avoid issues.

I simply carry the portable drive with me and plug it into the computer I'm using. LR opens the catalogue on the portable drive as the default. As the image drives at home and the studio are identical and use the same name/drive letter Lightroom just opens everything right where I left off, no matter what machine I'm working on. When I'm finished working on a job I just copy it to both the home and studio drives and delete from the portable. Then I just point LR to the new location once and all is good.

You will also need to store your presets with the catalogue (LR options) and make sure you install any plugins you may have on both machines.

The portable drive also carries all my other important files like invoices etc. So I always have everything I need no matter what computer I'm on. The 3rd machine is my tablet pc. I only need to access the catalogue using it occasionally and I will also us it to import files to LR while I'm on the road. I don't have any image file drives attached to it.

Gordon

Sounds perfect. Like my solution 2, but fleshed out with solid detail, and the addition of permenant drive letters. Didn't know you could do that :-) Thanks. I think that'll be it.

Ok, I see two files inside mypictures/Lightroom/

Lightroom 2 Catalog Previews.lrdata
and
Lightroom 2 Catalog.lrcat

If I put those two files on my external hard drive inside a directory called Lightroom, and then point the program there under edit/preferences/general/default catalog, will that take care of everything? Will lightroom also know to put the develop data there too, and make a backup folder there, and so forth? Or do I need to set other pointers, too?

Yes. They are the files you need. Move them to your external drive and then have LR default to open them. You'll need to select "store presets with catalogue" in the LR settings so the presets are in the folder with your catalogue and not in the C drive.

You can select where the backup goes, althoujgh it will default to the C drive on each machine. But it doesn't really matter if some are on the "main computer" and some on the "laptop" C drives. In fact it's better to have them on a different drive to the main catalogue anyway.

Gordon

Thanks, Gordon. I'm going to try to do some work tonight, so I'm glad you were on line!

flash wrote:
Yes. They are the files you need. Move them to your external drive and then have LR default to open them.
Done
You'll need to select "store presets with catalogue" in the LR settings so the presets are in the folder with your catalogue and not in the C drive.
Done, that is, I've checked the check box. Now, I also see that Lightroom has a whole directory of application data on the C;/ presumably with all sorts of presets, routines, etc. It would be nice if that was on the external drive too...

You can select where the backup goes,....

When do you make that selection.. when that popup screen comes up asking if you want to run the backup?