Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: sanfairyanne on November 02, 2014, 08:37:46 am

Title: L/room external drive, quick question before proceeding
Post by: sanfairyanne on November 02, 2014, 08:37:46 am

Having too small a hard drive on my computer I decided to use an external 1tb drive to store my images for Lightroom. Having all my images in folders on the ext' drive I simply began a LR catalogue on my computer the went Import > Add and chose to add from the external drive. All good, I can now work with my images providing of course the ext' drive is connected. Upon shutting down my computer my edits are saved to my catalogue.

My question is:

Can I in some way use another computer to do edits. For instance could I use my desktop computer connected to the ext' drive for the majority of my work but also use my laptop when out in the field.

I realise I'd have to have two catalogues and somehow sync' them together but I'm not sure of the implications or indeed how I'd go about doing this.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Title: Re: L/room external drive, quick question before proceeding
Post by: sanfairyanne on November 02, 2014, 12:30:41 pm

Well I fixed it, I'd detail what I've done for others but I'm not convinced I could put it correctly in writing as I did it with a friends help.

Title: Re: L/room external drive, quick question before proceeding
Post by: eliedinur on November 02, 2014, 12:52:13 pm

I don't know, of course, what you did, but I can tell you what I do. The catalog file and its associated previews folder don't have to be in the default location, C:/Pictures/Lightroom. It can be on the external together with the photo files and thus go with them to whichever computer the external is connected. Two program installations, but only one catalog, so no synchronization problems.

Title: Re: L/room external drive, quick question before proceeding
Post by: Wayne Fox on November 03, 2014, 12:32:26 am

Quote from: elied on November 02, 2014, 12:52:13 pm

I don't know, of course, what you did, but I can tell you what I do. The catalog file and its associated previews folder don't have to be in the default location, C:/Pictures/Lightroom. It can be on the external together with the photo files and thus go with them to whichever computer the external is connected. Two program installations, but only one catalog, so no synchronization problems.

I do it this way as well, catalog is on same drive as images.  I also have LR presets stored with the catalog, this means presets are also available on both machines. (Preferences->Presets->Store presets with this catalog checked on)

Title: Re: L/room external drive, quick question before proceeding
Post by: martin archer-shee on November 06, 2014, 06:41:21 pm

I tried to use LR on my MBPRO and n external drive and got a message basically sayingI could not use an external drive. what gives??

Martin   ??? ???

Title: Re: L/room external drive, quick question before proceeding
Post by: RikkFlohr on November 07, 2014, 09:59:13 am

Images can be stored anywhere however, catalogs must be on a locally attached drive - not a network asset. How do you have your drive configured?

Title: Re: L/room external drive, quick question before proceeding
Post by: martin archer-shee on November 08, 2014, 06:33:37 pm

Rick
Could be the problem. I will have a good look.

Thanks
Martin :)