LR editing on Two Computers

[EMA747]

I have a netbook that I use while I am away from home for basic editing and keywording in LR. I do my main editing at home on LR and PS. My question is how do I use the same files on both computers? I don't want to store them on an external HD as this is one more thing to carry around.
If I copy the DNG files as well as the LR catalogue from my netbook to my main computer will all the keywording and such be saved?

Andy S

 

[Chappers]

Working on two computers with any applications that works with a database can be difficult. There is no easy way to sync 2 Lightroom databases as far as I am aware.

Probably the easiest way, and to stop screwups, is to keep the database on your netbook. Then when you want to work on the main computer, connect the netbook to the main computer via a network, and get the main computer to reference the Lightroom database on the netbook. That way everything stays in sync. This is ideal if you want to have copies of the images on both computers

The other way is to "save the metadata to file" for the images on the netbook. then when you import the images to the main computer, run "Read metadata from file" . But this is a one way option as any work you do on the main computer won't be transferred to the netbook. You'll find that you have .xmp files along with your original files. This is where the metadata is stored. Once you've read the data in you can delete these.

 

[pxl8]

LR won't open a catalog file if it's stored on a network path or drive.

On Windows the way around this is to mount the path as a drive and then use subst to assign a letter to the share again which fools the OS into thinking it's a proper drive, not a shared path.