Several years ago I looked into using a desktop and laptop and syncing the files; i.e. doing preliminary work, like selection and organization, in the field on the laptop and the processing/PP on the desktop. At that point it didn't appear feasible, and for a number of years I have just continued on, waiting on any PP work until I returned home. Basically, laptop as storage device in the field and email/internet device. I am getting ready for a few trips in the near future, and do not see any obvious way to do this with the current 2.5 version.

Have I not looked hard enough? Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Terry

I have a "working" lightroom catalog with just currently active images (to keep it small), and I just sync the .lrcat file and the image directories between my computers. Works fine. I use "chronosync" to do the syncing... keeps track of incremental changes on either side, and notifies you of conflicts, etc. My directory structures are the same on both computers (same user name, for example).

j

I use two machines.

I have a laptop with LR installed that I use on the road. When I get home, I fire up my desktop LR install and use the "Import Catalog" feature to import the latest remotely captured images into the home motherload from the laptop right over the wireless network. Once I've backed everything up, I delete the images from the laptop and keep it empty until the next remote session.

I keep my main catalog on an external HD, with all 26,000 of my images. I use that same catalog and HD with a netbook, and my main desktop tower. Once you figure out where Lightroom looks for things like develop presets, it's pretty easy to to set it up that way. I love not having to remember where the original copy of an image might be, or what pic might be in which catalog. I should add that I don't often do huge multi-shot stitches with Lightroom. If I did, that might cause performance issues when working accross the USB bus. Or, it might not. Not sure.

That's how I do thing also, except that the external drive supports both eSATA and USB so I use eSATA connection on my desktop computer and USB on my laptop.

Ronny

What you want is not a "feature" of LR, it's a workflow issue (and very simple). Use LR on your laptop to create a working catalog of the images you are taking and do what you want in terms of processing. Later, use export/import to move the images, or some of them, to the main catalog on the desktop.

Peter
www.peteraitken.com

Pretty simple really. Dedicate a drive to just photo’s, LR database files and presets. Then use a clone/sync utility (on the Mac I use SuperDuper). Clone to location drive, work and update, then clone back to desktop. Works with any number of drives, does it quickly.

I believe I read somewhere that this is addressed in v3.0. You might check it out.

can't seem to find anything new related to managing LR databases on 2 different stand alone computers in LR 3beta