Accessing LR catalog

[armand]

The problem is that I have repeated requests from my wife that she can see the photographs on her own pace, and her own computer/tablet.

I use LR for everything and all the photos and LR catalog gets backed up on a NAS that can be easily accessed.
What I would like is for her to have access to that catalog (and the edited versions) without being able to modify anything (or delete) and much preferably without LR, just a simple viewer.

Do you know or used any application that fulfills the above? Or do you have a different solution?

Thanks,
Armand

[Manoli]

Not sure on this one (and are you on OS X or Windows ?) but assuming your wife uses her own account (not yours) then one potential solution might be to alter the permissions on the Lr catalog folder to < Read only > : your account being the only one with <Read & Write> access.

As for a stand alone viewer: XnView MP ?
http://www.xnview.com/en/xnviewmp/

[armand]

Not sure on this one (and are you on OS X or Windows ?) but assuming your wife uses her own account (not yours) then one potential solution might be to alter the permissions on the Lr catalog folder to < Read only > : your account being the only one with <Read & Write> access.

As for a stand alone viewer: XnView MP ?
http://www.xnview.com/en/xnviewmp/

Windows + iPads. I thought about altering permissions but some applications need to write something in the folder (and if I really have to use a standalone LR than it might give errors every time she accesses the catalog).
I don't think that XnView can read the edited versions as the information about edits is in the catalog only (btw, I still use IrfanView which was probably the inspiration for Xn).

[Hans Kruse]

The problem is that I have repeated requests from my wife that she can see the photographs on her own pace, and her own computer/tablet.

I use LR for everything and all the photos and LR catalog gets backed up on a NAS that can be easily accessed.
What I would like is for her to have access to that catalog (and the edited versions) without being able to modify anything (or delete) and much preferably without LR, just a simple viewer.

Do you know or used any application that fulfills the above? Or do you have a different solution?

Thanks,
Armand

Subscribe to Lightroom CC and then decide which photos should be synched to the iPad. You simply make collections and then select the Synch with Lightroom Mobile. Download the Lightroom App on the iPad and then you have it. There are other ways also, but this is the easiest way.

[armand]

Subscribe to Lightroom CC and then decide which photos should be synched to the iPad. You simply make collections and then select the Synch with Lightroom Mobile. Download the Lightroom App on the iPad and then you have it. There are other ways also, but this is the easiest way.

I have the CC but using collections means I have to go through all the photos a decide which to synch and I hear it can be quite slow for a big library (also limited storage on iPad). I have 10k-15k photos/year, I would rather not go through all of them and decide which to select.

[john beardsworth]

I have the CC but using collections means I have to go through all the photos a decide which to synch and I hear it can be quite slow for a big library (also limited storage on iPad). I have 10k-15k photos/year, I would rather not go through all of them and decide which to select.

It depends on the speed of your internet connection. I routinely upload many hundreds of photos and soon see them on my tablet. They only use a little storage on the iPad - unless you make them available for offline editing, in which case it's about 1.2 mb per photo. Alternatively you can just give her a link to the LrMobile url and let her use the iPad's browser to look at pictures.

If you don't want to decide which to sync, just sync them all or just add images you have already flagged or starred, for instance. You could even build a smart collection with criteria like starred or flagged images which aren't in the synced collection, easily detecting which images need adding to the synced collection.

[bassman51]

Lightroom Mobile on the web does not allow editing via IOS Safari.  So she can't "damage" anything. 

[Hans Kruse]

It depends on the speed of your internet connection. I routinely upload many hundreds of photos and soon see them on my tablet. They only use a little storage on the iPad - unless you make them available for offline editing, in which case it's about 1.2 mb per photo. Alternatively you can just give her a link to the LrMobile url and let her use the iPad's browser to look at pictures.

If you don't want to decide which to sync, just sync them all or just add images you have already flagged or starred, for instance. You could even build a smart collection with criteria like starred or flagged images which aren't in the synced collection, easily detecting which images need adding to the synced collection.

A smart collection can unfortunately not be synched with Lightroom mobile. I wish it was possible and it was one of the first things I looked at when Lightroom mobile became available.

[Hans Kruse]

I have the CC but using collections means I have to go through all the photos a decide which to synch and I hear it can be quite slow for a big library (also limited storage on iPad). I have 10k-15k photos/year, I would rather not go through all of them and decide which to select.

Yes, you have to decided which ones to synch. Storage is not an issue on the iPad. If you want to rate all on the iPad then you can just make a collection of all photos. Every time you import you can just make a new collection check the synch with Lightroom Mobile option. But it will take quite some time to do the synch depending on your machine which need to generate the smart previews which are uploaded to the Adobe servers before Lightroom mobile on the iPad can download them. I think the better approach is to do the initial culling in Lightroom and then synch for further selection.

[john beardsworth]

A smart collection can unfortunately not be synched with Lightroom mobile. I wish it was possible and it was one of the first things I looked at when Lightroom mobile became available.

b

No, though my point was about using one to easily identify new pictures which should be added to a synced collection. Obviously it would be good to be able to sync smart collections directly.