Lightroom syncronisation

gamgee · 07-04-2008, 07:49 AM

I have Lightroom at home and at work.
Is it posible to synchronise them so that any editing I do at work appears at home and vice versa?

marstein · 07-06-2008, 12:08 AM

You can export the metadata into files, or you can just export a bunch of pictures as a catalog and then import them at home. I did this and it works.

*falconeye* · 07-06-2008, 06:59 AM

Originally Posted by gamgee

I have Lightroom at home and at work.
Is it posible to synchronise them so that any editing I do at work appears at home and vice versa?

Lightroom has 3 places
- The catalog file (.lrcat) Mine is ~100MB.
- The preview folder (.lrdata) Mine is ~6GB.
- The folder where you actually store your originals.

If you have a matching directory structure at home and work, it should suffice to copy the first (.lrcat) file every time you move. BTW, this file is the only one which is saved by LR backup.

Of course, you need to copy the originals which you want to work with as well...

*heliphoto* · 07-06-2008, 07:45 AM

Any sort of file synchronization software syncing the directories where your Lr information exists ought to do it, though I've not played around with this. If you use a mac with os x or a *nix based system, you could use the free utility rsync to sync files (especially usefully if you can connect to the other machine over the net). If you run windows, I'm sure there's a comprable method, but I don't know it.

gamgee · 07-07-2008, 04:34 AM

I'm on Windows.
So, I should have EXACTLY the same file structure on both computers. That meens I'll have to synchronise ALL of pictures and everything.

Where Lightroom stores changes made to files? In catalog?

*falconeye* · 07-07-2008, 04:49 AM

Originally Posted by gamgee

I'm on Windows.
So, I should have EXACTLY the same file structure on both computers. That meens I'll have to synchronise ALL of pictures and everything.

Where Lightroom stores changes made to files? In catalog?

Forget the file synchronization advice. It is not practical.

Lightroom stores changes in its catalog file (.lrcat). It may export them to .XMP sidecar files which would be in the same directory as the images. But this isn't the default, so can ignore this.

You only have to carry the single .lrcat file around. In order for this to work, you need the same paths on both computers (you can virtualize and unify paths by mounting them to a "photo" path "P:").

You only need to copy pictures you want to work with. Missing images won't display (they display their preview only -- but since you didn't copy their previews...) and missing directories will be marked in red color within LR.

gamgee · 07-08-2008, 06:24 AM

By "virtualize" you mean that I have to mount them with Daemon tools or some similar "virtual drive" software?

*falconeye* · 07-08-2008, 08:40 AM

Originally Posted by gamgee

By "virtualize" you mean that I have to mount them with Daemon tools or some similar "virtual drive" software?

No, just the ordinary...

You create a share (a directory on your local hard disk or on the network) and connect it as a network drive giving it a letter, such as P:\. Windows is able to do this since Windows 95 or even before that.

Whatever is at P: will remain accessible via P:\... paths. Of course, when the mount point changes (because you move) you will have to re-connect the network drive letter.