Share LR3 Catalogs

[Zerodog]

Got a new laptop. I need to be able to do some work on photos living on my external drive that is shared with my other computer. I guess LR doesn't support Network drives. What is the smooth way to do this?

[ARKreations]

This might help: http://digitalprotalk.blogspot.com/2010/06/technique-tuesday-lightroom-jailbreak.html

[Zerodog]

Cool link. Thanks! I might have to try it with a test catalog on another external drive before I go for it with my real deal drive. I am surprised that adobe doesn't support this. How many photographers use a laptop in the field and a desktop in the office?

[pathfinder]

Most of them?

[Zerodog]

Exactly. I didn't even think about this when getting a laptop. I figured the laptop would be perfect for sorting and viewing on the road and on the couch. Then I would just drag and drop the file folders into my main catalog on my big external drive over the network.

[Zerodog]

Had a bit of a break through this morning on this issue. I found a program, (that the new laptop already has) called Live Mesh. It comes with the windows live package that is free online. This program allows you to sync multiple devices and folders over a cloud? Anyway it worked. I synced my new LR folder on the laptop. It appeared on the main computer and opened up and worked just fine. I saw all of my adjustments and everything. The problem is, it appears in the same exact place on the main computer. So I can't specify a folder on my external drive. But, this is ok. Just a change in workflow. I opened my main catalog and then imported the folders from the new catalog on the C: drive.

All of this could work pretty slick. Maybe my new workflow for 2011 should go to the C: drive on this "lightroom working folder" when I am done processing a group of photos then import them to the main catalog on the external drive when I am finished with the bulk of the editing. Will probably make LR run a bit faster too right?

[colourbox]

Got a new laptop. I need to be able to do some work on photos living on my external drive that is shared with my other computer. I guess LR doesn't support Network drives. What is the smooth way to do this?

This is often mis-stated. Lightroom does not support opening a catalog stored over the network, but it does support using a catalog on your machine to edit images stored over a network. If what you want is to edit photos stored on another machine, that's supported. If you want to work with a catalog and have the changes synced to a catalog on another machine, then...

How many photographers use a laptop in the field and a desktop in the office?

Lots of them. That's why they use the built-in feature for syncing only the changes between laptop and desktop via catalog import. There are many tutorials for this on the web. Here are a couple
http://lightroomkillertips.com/2008/friday-video-moving-between-laptop-and-desktop/
http://layersmagazine.com/working-with-database-catalogs-in-lightroom.html
(see steps 8 and 9)

I might have to try it with a test catalog on another external drive before I go for it with my real deal drive. I am surprised that adobe doesn't support this.

What I have read is that Lightroom doesn't support network catalog access because they use SQLite, and that database doesn't have the network support needed. Apparently Apple Aperture made the same choices, and apparently both apps went that way because they couldn't have both high performance and network capability so they both went for high performance.

It seems like the only apps that have network access cost a lot of money (enterprise level asset managers), so it doesn't look like a simple thing for anyone to do.

[Zerodog]

Thank you for the links. I checked them out. I am doing some tests with exporting and importing catalogs. It is working great for small ones. But I am having some difficulty with a really big one. 8814 photos in one folder from one event. There is no real good reason for me to do it besides try it. But it seems to be crashing lightroom right at the 7500ish mark. So close but so far away. All of this makes me nervous.

The size of this stuff is the problem with all of it. A few 16gb cards is a lot of files and a lot of data. So these sync programs are pretty slow it turns out. The windows one is smooth. But you need to upload and download from the internet. So this is slow slow. I tried another program called Viseversa. It is a sync program that supports network connections. The reviews said it was fast. Fast is 3mb per second. The chart really showed 1.8mb per second. No way Jose! This will take forever for a big event. And has potential for problems.

The microsoft livemesh program sounds great on the surface. But installing windows live on my main computer has caused some issues. In typical MS fashion, it took over for me. Pop up junk, updates, windows opening. 85 windows 7 updates. Multiple computer restarts, reset defaults, etc. I opened pandoras box with this thing. I got a message that said I have an unregistered version of windows. Which is true but...........no problems until this wonderful upgrade.

[Dan7312]

If all you need is to sync up some directories you might try dropbox.com. It pretty light weight. Live sync does quite a bit more than just sync up directories.