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Author Topic: Lightroom on a laptop question ref. 'Where is my bleeping pictures'  (Read 1550 times)

bongobongo

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Hi.

Anybody here that can explain to me how to do the following:

Export my entire library to an external drive (previews only), so I can add images, keywords etc from the laptop,

and then how to get the changes back into my library on my main computer.

I want the library on my laptop not to have the original image files (only previews), but I would like to be able to view, create slideshows or create web presentations with the images.
It would also be nice if possible to add/change keywords, keyword list, and hopefully add/change collections and smart collections for my old images while on the road as well.

When I come back I want to be able to import all the changes made to keywords, collections, keyword list, newly added images etc into the library on my main computer.

I saw the video #9 "on the road" from 'Where is my bleeping pictures', but I could not figure out how to do what he told by watching
the video.

I would like to name / use disks same way as Seth Resnick did:
One external drive called Ligthroom_Library (for laptop).
One drive in my main computer called Lightroom_Library (this is the main library).

Using LR 2.4

Regards
« Last Edit: June 30, 2009, 11:14:26 am by bongobongo »
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frugal

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Lightroom on a laptop question ref. 'Where is my bleeping pictures'
« Reply #1 on: June 30, 2009, 12:27:01 pm »

major caveat: I haven't tried this yet, so this is only based on what I think should work.

I think what you can do is setup your disks and folder structures identically as shown in the video. Then you should be able to copy over the folder that contains your LR library file as well as the folders for any full-res files you might want (Seth talks about this in the video). That should give you previews for everything that you've rendered previews for and use them for slideshows etc.

Then, what I would do (and I think works) is work on any changes to metadata (obviously you can't use develop on any images you don't have the full-res versions of) and work with any new images you shoot. When I got home I would first make sure all the metadata changes are saved out to the file (if you're using xmp files) and then connect my laptop to my home network and use some type of synchronisation software to sync the laptop back to my desktop. Since the paths are the same, it should be able to quickly look at which files are newer on my laptop and only copy those ones. This should be the LR library files, any updated sidecar files and any new raw files.

As I said above, I haven't tried this yet, but it seems to me that using some type of automatic synchronisation software would be far safer and less error-prone than the manual process Seth describes in the video.
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bongobongo

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Lightroom on a laptop question ref. 'Where is my bleeping pictures'
« Reply #2 on: June 30, 2009, 05:01:04 pm »

Thanks for the feedback.

There are some other stuff I have not figured out yet:

Is it possible to create 1:1 previews of each image after they have been imported?
(update: found it here: http://foto-biz.com/doku.php/blog:lightroo...fter-importing)
The reason I ask is that as have understood it, it is these previews that should be put on my external "on the road" drive for usage against my laptop, in order to
be able to view old images (while on the road), as well as building slideshows and/or web stuff (on the road)....

And then, I do not see any XMP files in the folders where I have imported the images into.
When and where are these XMP files created?
And what is the benefit of having those files?

Regards
« Last Edit: June 30, 2009, 05:33:42 pm by bongobongo »
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