Workstation and laptop process: Check in and Check out?

[jtmiller]

Our catalog includes 2.5Tbytes of photos and it is growing faster than ever with D810 raw files which are wonderful.

This isn't a problem for our workstation as capacity there is fine. But when using the laptop on the road or in the studio for tethered shooting we need a process to keep the files in synch. I realize that LR doesn't have a multiuser database but thought that since it is a "library" of sorts that there might be a process to "check out" a photo and later "check it back in." No obvious built in feature found.

The next idea would be to do it manually through a "checked out collection" and perhaps some sort of flag on a photo that would be obvious that it has been checked out to the laptop.

On the laptop the presumption would be that everything there is temporary, whether checked out from the workstation for mods or references, or recently captured through tethered shooting and needed to be uploaded. There would also be on location shooting which result in an laptop store of camera card shots for review/analysis/safekeeping before returning home to enter it into the master workstation catalog and storage.

Has anyone implemented such a manual procedure?

There is only one artist involved so no multiuser issues. No realtime simultaneous access so no database interlocks, etc.

Just would do it as simply as possible to minimize errors.

Thanks

Jim Miller

[Wayne Fox]

Not sure of the type of work you are doing, so my ideas may not apply, but they might get you thinking of some ideas that would work.

First a 4Tb portable external drive, USB  3 or thunderbolt is pretty small 2 drive stripe 0 arrays and performs pretty well (150-190 MB/s). You could use carbon copy cloner or similar utility to sync over the workstation version of your catalog and files to take on the road, then sync it back when you return.  Pretty simple method. Obviously at some point 4TB's might not be enough, so maybe not a real workable solution, unless you cull the older stuff to keep the size manageable.

Following your "checked out" collection idea, you could export that collection as a catalog to use on the laptop.  You can import new files and work on files while on the road, then import that catalog back in to the workstation catalog, which should overwrite any changes and add they new stuff.

My current workflow keeps all my new images and recent working files on a 600gb partition on my laptop SSD.  When I work on them, I use target disk mode and plug the laptop in as a hard drive. A backup program (carbon copy cloner) triggers a backup as soon as it sees the laptop hard drive, but when I go to work I'm working on the laptop drive itself.  Very fast (thunderbolt connection with an SSD, Black Magic write test at over 700 MB/s). Basically I only have one work drive, and theoretically could plug it into any computer that has Lr on it. When I'm finished and don't need them on the laptop, I drag them to another folder that's on my workstation, so they are not longer editable on the road, although I can still view them.

[jtmiller]

Wayne

That was helpful. She's a fine art painter so the full library at the workstation is her source of images potentially used as references.

On the road she works on images she has captured while traveling or compositions that are still under construction. Most often that is using Photoshop. The combination of LR and PS are her main tools until she goes to the studio to paint.

So the traveling portion of her library could be quite small yet without a disciplined approach has often gotten out of hand.

Your ideas are worth studying to see if they could get things back into control.

Thanks!

jim (other ideas welcomed!)