Lightroom query

LeeP

LeeP

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Lee
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I'm running Lightroom on my Mac. I've just bought a license for my Windows (:cuckoo:) machine.

Now - i'm wanting to be able to share the Lightroom database across my network so that users on my machines can access any picture easily.

However, having mapped a drive to my Mac from the windows machine, and attempted to open the database it's coming up with an error (cannot open database across a network share). ARGH!

This is a mammoth problem for me.

Anyone know of any workarounds for this? I really dont want to go down the route of duplicating the images and all of the tagging ....

Cheers

Lee
 
Sorry, it's bad news - Lightroom won't allow databases to be used across a network share. LR uses MySQLlite which is single user only. If you opened the file across multiple machines at the same time you'd most likely lose the database.

The only thing you can do is to schedule daily backups of the database to the other machines which would, in effect, be in read only mode - any edits wouldn't be replicated to the main machine.

The images can be stored on a network share as the database just refers to them.
 
Yeah, I have all of the images on NAS and Servers.
I use the Mac for keywording and archiving, then printing from Windows.

However, would have preferred it to have been able to share the keywords between machines without the need for replicating the database.

I guess it wouldn't be too much of a problem to copy the database as it's not particularly large - just the hassle of keeping them all in sync!
 
How about using FTP and something like Beyond Compare to keep things sync'd?
 
If it's only keywords you want you could always get LR to write the XMP files during editing so it's stored with the image. Then something like bridge would probably read it without needing to run LR. A waste of the licence maybe but it skips the db issues.
 
Basically, I have on record about 600,000 pictures from various events this year. We're having an open day for clients where they can come in, we can quickly find their images having been tagged and show them what we have on record.

I guess it could be written into the file, but then I find Bridge quite slow to work with.

Thanks for the pointers ... :)

I guess a multi-user DB maybe in the development side at Adobe at the moment.

I can't think of any decent off the shelf apps that do what I want at the moment.
 
sambonebs said:
How about using FTP and something like Beyond Compare to keep things sync'd?
Click to expand...

I think it's a bit messy.

TBH, thinking about it I can see the probems ahead straight away.

I think i'll wait for LR multi-user to surface :)
 
Fair enough! I'm about to try the same thing, so I'll make sure I'm fully backed up and let you know how it turns out! :)
 
Just waiting for the NAS to be re-imaged, then i'm going to have a whirl at writing some stuff myself too.
 
Lee, one thing you could try is to map a network drive on the Windows box to the network path of the database on the Mac. Off the bat that won't work, LR will see it as a network path and complain but you can fool it using the subst command like so:

subst new_drive_letter: mapped_drive_letter:

stick the command in a .bat file and have it run on startup.

Now LR will open the database cross network but you need to make sure the paths to the images are the same from the Mac and the PC or LR won't be able to find them and if you update it to the right location and switch machines you'll have to repeat the process.

I'd test it with a new db to start with to iron out any problems and to make sure LR will detect the lock if the other machine is running, etc. The biggest problem will be speed, LR is constantly reading/writing to the db and the network could be a bit of a bottleneck for that.
 
Thanks mate :thumbs:

Mac has Gig connection to the network, and my Cisco switches are running Gig also right up to my servers and machines so network *should* be ok in theory.

Have gotten something-like working at the moment now.

The paths to the pictures will be over the network - guess it depends on how Mac mounts the drives compared to windows as to whether or not the PC can find the images.

Will report back.
 
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