Lightroom (5) Offline editing question

philthejuggler

philthejuggler

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Phil
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Hi all

I don't think this is what they intended...but I have my Lightroom catalog and all my photos on an internal hard drive on my home computer.

Is there any way of exporting the catalog to a portable drive, working on it and then merging changes back to the 'master' version on my home machine?

Thanks

Phil
 
You could try to use synchronisation tool. In Windows there's the built-in mobsync.exe which allows you to synchronise folders with a mouseclick. You can work in the local folder (in your case that would be the one on the portable drive), and when you come home, you click the synchronise Icon, and the folder on your main machine will get updated.
 
It's synchronising the database that's the killer here. Lightroom works on one database so it's not easy ( If at all possible) to update individual images from a second system.

A very messy system would be to " Export as catalogue" the images you wanted to work on. Then import this catalogue onto you lap top. Once you've worked on them do the reverse to import back to your desktop machine. ( Don't forget to include "negatives" with the export)

Now there could be some problems here. First is that the original database will see these as duplicates of images already on the system. OK you can simply rename the exported ones with a slightly different name, ore delete the originals before reimporting ( probably not a good idea). You could also end up with duplicates, so which is the correct. Possibly the best way is to reimport with a different name, preferably into a different folder, and once you are happy delete the originals.. Or rename the folders with an "original" and "edited" suffix.

Not very tidy but I can't think of a better way
 
First off, I'd advise against having your images and your LR catalogue on the same internal drive. If the drive develops faults you've all your eggs in one basket. Perhaps you already do backups of both the catalogue and images?

If you make image previews, for viewing "offline", then you could manually copy the relevant folder and catalogue to your external hard drive, for editing, then copy them back manually, overwriting the original catalogue and preview. Not exactly user friendly, but workable.
 
There is no reason for you to keep the images on your internal hard disk at all.
You can keep them anywhere. lightroom will be able to work on them and keep them in its database just fine. But it does expect a file to be in the same place all the time.
 
Thanks for the suggestions guys.

At the moment the LR images and catalogue are held on one internal drive. I'm thinking of getting an external SSD drive, transferring the catalogue and smart previews to that so I can take it with me and edit offline.

Everything is back up to the cloud in real time!

Phil
 
You must ensure you have some external drive system which is regularly backed-up, as sooner or later your system will fail.
I'm not sure why you want to do what you say in the introductory post, if you are working from just one home machine. It sounds like a recipe for confusion in terms of identification of files. It's a different matter if you wish to export to a lap top for mobility or travel, as has already been advised by Chappers.
I use Chronsync software to back up to two external hard drives. Chronsync permits back-up between external multiple drives.
I suggest you keep it simple and don't have more than one catalogue, unless you have a very good reason, as LR4 only works on one catalogue at any time. LR4 will never corrupt or lose your originals. Do not set-up folders or move files around outside of LR4 or you may lose track of your work.
I recommend you read Chapter 3 (Catalogues) of Martin Evening's excellent book on Lightroom 4, in which he gives a thorough understanding of the options available.
Good luck.
 
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