Transfer folder/files develop metadata

[eleanorbrown]

I haven't been able to find out the answer to this question.  I have hundreds of files in two separate folders in Lightroom with develop metadata changes to most files on one computer.  I need to transfer all these files to my main computer while keeping all the changes I made to the files in these two particular folders.  Could someone tell me how I can do this?  Thanks very much!  Eleanor

[tomrock]

From the File menu choose Export as Catalog...

And on the other computer, choose Import Catalog.

[Nat Coalson]

tomrock is right, but I'd like to add one other important point:

It's a very good idea to regularly save out the metadata changes made in Lightroom to the files themselves. This way, your edits will be saved elsewhere in addition to the LR database. So if you ever had to move the files themselves, and make a new LR database, you wouldn't lose edits that were only stored in the LR database.

This is done woth cmd/ctrl -S, jsut like saving files in any other program. If you're using native camera raw files, this will generate sidecar XMP files. For all the other file types, the metadata will be written into the files.

I have gotten in the habit of selecting an entire folder of images at the end of an editing session and saving metadata out for all them at one time.

[DavidB]

This is done woth cmd/ctrl -S, jsut like saving files in any other program. If you're using native camera raw files, this will generate sidecar XMP files. For all the other file types, the metadata will be written into the files.
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I heartily agree, but need to point out a caveat:
If you use virtual copies, be aware that when LR saves the metadata in this way, it won't save the settings for the virtual copies: just for the primary copy.  The VC data stays in the library (although you could save things out as separate DNG files for backup purposes).

I have gotten in the habit of selecting an entire folder of images at the end of an editing session and saving metadata out for all them at one time.

There is an option in the Catalog Settings to auto-save the changes out to XMP, but I would not recommend using this at the moment.  As soon as your catalog gets to an appreciable size it ends up slowing all of Lightroom down significantly.  Saving out the changes in groups as Nat suggests is the best bet at the moment.

When you save the data out this way, the changes will be visible in Bridge/Photoshop (apart from any virtual copies) as long as your Bridge/Photoshop is running an up-to-date Camera Raw plug-in.