Lightroom Catalog on Dropbox

[ario]

I am considering the possibility to use Dropbox (or other similar services) to syncronize my catalog among two or more computers (Mac). My main concern is the risk to get a corrupted catalog during the syncronization process over the net. Is there any positive or negative experience which can be shared about this?
Thanks.

[AFairley]

I can't speak to corruption, but be sure check the service's limit on file size.  For example, I have enough space on my free 50GB Box account, but the catalog exceeds the maximum syncable file size.  However, I believe that the size limit may be larger or not exist at all for paid accounts.

[ario]

Dropbox in now offering 1TB at approx 100€/year, which is affordable and for my catalog is more than enough.

[john beardsworth]

Will your photos also be on Dropbox? If not, maybe generate smart previews.

Also , you need to think about how you define "corruption". It's unlikely that the lrcat file will be rendered unreadable, but what can easily happen is that you work on computer A, then open Lightroom on computer B before the sync up from A and down to B is completed. There will be a "conflicted copy" of the lrcat file on Dropbox, but the big pain will be that you may overlook that you've opened an earlier version of the catalogue and might re-do work or assume pictures have been edited. So you need to be sure the sync upwards is completed, and that the sync downwards is finished before you open the catalogue on the other machine. I found this such a pain I don't use Dropbox for the catalogue, but some people do it.

[ario]

The risk to work on a catalog that has not been syncronized jet is clear to me.
The photos will not be on Dropbox, I plan to keep them on a 4 TB portable HD to be connected to the working stations.

[dreed]

Something to remember is that wherever your catalogue lives, the previews also live.

[Wayne Fox]

I think the problem is any change to the catalog file will require dropbox to re-upload the entire file to the server, and any change to a preview (which pretty much happens anytime you open LR) will require it re-upload the entire preview file.  This also means the other computer to download those files.  there is no mechanism to get just changes.  The catalog file may not be that bad, but the preview file is probably many gigabytes.

I think this could be pretty problematic unless you have a very robust internet connection ...

[smahn]

The risk to work on a catalog that has not been syncronized jet is clear to me.
The photos will not be on Dropbox, I plan to keep them on a 4 TB portable HD to be connected to the working stations.

Why not jut keep the catalog on the same portable drive?

[John Hue]

The risk to work on a catalog that has not been syncronized jet is clear to me.
The photos will not be on Dropbox, I plan to keep them on a 4 TB portable HD to be connected to the working stations.

Why not just have the catalog on the external hard drive then ? That's what I do for my main catalog, I keep everything on a USB3 HDD (speed is ok, but I plan on buying a 512Gb SSD) and have "archive catalogs" on my main desktop computer where I transfer the files once I'm "done" with them (printed them, sent them do Blurb for a book, etc...) and I create backup images of the external hard drive on a regular basis.

[ario]

Thank you all, I am presently keeping both the catalog and the raw files on the same external HD, which is fine in terms of workflow. I just wanted to explore this other possibility to see if the speed of Lr can be improved keeping the catalog in the boot drive (SSD).

[John Hue]

see if the speed of Lr can be improved keeping the catalog in the boot drive (SSD).

I tested this and it does improve the speed especially in the Library module. It also removes a bit of lag when switching module for the first time after startup, and other things like that. I take advantage of that with my workflow described above.

[AFairley]

Dropbox in now offering 1TB at approx 100€/year, which is affordable and for my catalog is more than enough.

I was referring not to the total storage space, but to the maximum file size that can be uploaded.  Most likely for any paid account, the catalog size will not be a problem.  However, bear in mind that for many services (and perhaps all, I don't know), you have to sync a folder to the cloud, and cannot "carve out" files or subfolders in that folder.  The folder containing the LR catalog also contains folders containing previews and cache files, so the total folder size can be quite a bit larger than the LR catalog file itself.  I am just pointing these out as issues that may or may not arise depending on the cloud service one chooses.