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Adobe Lightroom on two devices

M

MartinC

pfm Member
For a number of reasons, I am looking to be able to edit images on a laptop as well as on my current Windows desktop PC. As of today I have a legacy perpetual license of Lightroom and Photoshop on the PC and all my images and Lightroom catalog files reside on that PC.

My confusion lies in how the Lightroom catalog is configured and located when editing Lightroom from two machines (obviously not concurrently). From what I can tell Adobe only allows the catalog to resided on the computer that is being used at the time, as opposed to for example, having the catalog on the cloud. If that is the case, I suppose one could sync the catalog between machines, however that seems very time consuming and potentially prone to problems.

Seems like Adobe allow 2 copies for LR to be installed as long as only one is used at a time, however if a catalog cannot be shared between machines it seems to defeat the purpose of having LR installed on two machines?

Has anyone recommendations as to how to deal with this ?

Thanks
 
That's certainly an option when I am at home, but I was hoping that I could also edit images without having to drag an external HDD around with the laptop, particularly if I am on travel. I guess though I would still have to have the images accessible perhaps on the cloud ?

Seems like portable HDD is the only real option here.
 
MartinC said:
That's certainly an option when I am at home, but I was hoping that I could also edit images without having to drag an external HDD around with the laptop, particularly if I am on travel. I guess though I would still have to have the images accessible perhaps on the cloud ?

Seems like portable HDD is the only real option here.
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There are a few kludges like mapping a network drive to a Cloud Service so it “looks” like an internal hard disk or using iSCSI with a NAS but there are no good solutions to share LR Classic on different computers, the problem is the CATALOG file really has to be kept on your local hard disk. You can mess with a few different scenarios but appears there is a risk of corruption.

Have a search on the Adobe forums
https://community.adobe.com/t5/ligh...-network-drive-so-others-can-edit/m-p/8341403
 
You could always keep the catalog on Onedrive. Or keep a backup there depending on how often you want to switch.
 
Bananahead said:
You could always keep the catalog on Onedrive. Or keep a backup there depending on how often you want to switch.
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Using Dropbox for the Catalog is not 100% solid, it can and does become corrupted. Using a USB Drive for the Catolog works but it is inconvenient swapping it back and forth between computers.
 
I use the subscription version where Lightroom Classic is the desktop based version and Lightroom is the cloud based version. I'm not sure, as I don't used the cloud based version, but I think you can use the same catalogue on both. That would seem to make sense to me.
 
Colinb said:
I use the subscription version where Lightroom Classic is the desktop based version and Lightroom is the cloud based version. I'm not sure, as I don't used the cloud based version, but I think you can use the same catalogue on both. That would seem to make sense to me.
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You can but have to watch out as the Catalog (LRCAT) can get corrupted by Classic rebuilding the index in the Cloud. If you are 100% Cloud versions I think you can use the Collaborate Function to share the Catalog to multiple Lightrooms.
 
I have copies of the Lightroom code on both the laptop and the desktop machines. I have the LR Catalog on both machines. The processs is when travelling to use the laptop with it's catalog to store amd review the images. Then when home transfer the source files and catalog records to the home machine. The imagees are then available on the home machine. I do not transfer catalogs and files from the home machine to the laptop.
This can all be handled with one single LR and PS licence. I do not use the cloud for data storage.
 
Derek Wright said:
I have copies of the Lightroom code on both the laptop and the desktop machines. I have the LR Catalog on both machines. The processs is when travelling to use the laptop with it's catalog to store amd review the images. Then when home transfer the source files and catalog records to the home machine. The imagees are then available on the home machine. I do not transfer catalogs and files from the home machine to the laptop.
This can all be handled with one single LR and PS licence. I do not use the cloud for data storage.
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The OP appears to be looking for a seamless way to keep 2 computers in sync and use both for edits, do you edit on the home PC?

I’m not aware of a supported/reliable way to do what he wants, we’ve had a few clients run into trouble trying to share Catalogs in PS/LR classic versions.
 
I edit on the laptop when travelliing and the desktop when at home. I became quite adept at copying the catalog from the laptop to the desktop. However I would not do that now, i would do light touch editing on the laptop and then do the full edit once the files had been transferred to the desktop.
 
Thanks for the ideas and information, much appreciated. I think I have a plan now, and will just use the cloud as a way to import / export between machines. Using catalog import / export on specific images should work and not risk corruption of the main catalog.
 
I edit on the laptop when away then transfer the files over to the desktop when home using an SSD - the Lightroom edits are retained. I upload some photos to Flickr from the laptop when away, so back home I just make sure to create an identically-named folder on my desktop PC and I can upload more photos to those same Flickr folders. I delete the photos on the laptop. This is a bit of a clunky workflow I guess but it is reliable and I do delete unwanted photos as I go through the process.
 
MartinC said:
Thanks for the ideas and information, much appreciated. I think I have a plan now, and will just use the cloud as a way to import / export between machines. Using catalog import / export on specific images should work and not risk corruption of the main catalog.
Click to expand...

If that’s not yet the case I also would recommend that you keep a back up copy of both your catalog and your photos.
 
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