Sharing/Syncing Lightroom 5 Files Between PC & Laptop

danny_bhoy · 18 Apr 2015

I've trawled Google & YouTube but can't find the answer - Is it possible to import photos onto my PC and have them appear in the Lightroom library on my laptop. It's mainly so that when I'm culling wedding stuff I don't have to be stuck at the PC, the idea would be to cull on the laptop and edit on the PC.

Does this wizardry even exist? I'm sure it was brought in with the addition of Lightroom Mobile but I might just be making that up too.

Thanks in advance for any help.

huffy · 18 Apr 2015

I too would be interested in knowing this.

I believe it can be done by opening the catalogue files and picture files from an external hard drive but have got myself in a muddle doing so.

danny_bhoy · 18 Apr 2015

huffy said:
I too would be interested in knowing this.

I believe it can be done by opening the catalogue files and picture files from an external hard drive but have got myself in a muddle doing so.

Yeah I thought I'd seek advice first before I balls it up and delete my entire library or something.

Would be very handy to be able to do a little bit of work on the move.

danny_bhoy · 19 Apr 2015

Anyone know if this is possible or have a dreamt it?

The Weaver · 19 Apr 2015

Could you use a Network drive, to host both the files and library? Alternatively use a sync type service like dropbox to keep a common set of files on both?

danny_bhoy · 20 Apr 2015

The Weaver said:
Could you use a Network drive, to host both the files and library? Alternatively use a sync type service like dropbox to keep a common set of files on both?

Ah Dropbox is a good shout, should be easy enough to do.

I'm sure I remembered Adobe announcing that you could now do this directly through Lightroom, but I might be getting this confused with Lightroom mobile. I'm easily confused.

boyfalldown · 20 Apr 2015

why don't you just create smart previews? Its exactly this sort of thing they were developed for

danny_bhoy · 20 Apr 2015

boyfalldown said:
why don't you just create smart previews? Its exactly this sort of thing they were developed for

I had a brief look at smart previews Hugh but not quite sure it's what I'm after. Maybe what I'm after doesn't exist. In simpleton terms - I want to import photos onto my Lightroom library on my desktop PC and have them automatically available for cull/basic edits on my Laptop - with the changes I make syncing automatically between both.

Go on, shatter my dreams & tell me no such thing exists

boyfalldown · 20 Apr 2015

I think it is...opssibly. The point of smart previews is creating them will let you edit without having access to the originals. If you want to edit in to seperate catalogs though then your dreams will be shattered

Fodrigal · 20 Apr 2015

i do this at the moment

I have a PC running that has all the images on it, and the catalogue on my laptop points to them in their network share

when I close lightroom I back it up to the same share so that I can then open that catalogue on the PC and all the edits are still there

I use this to share the PC's images across 3 different machines (all with the same LR catalog)

mal robb · 26 Apr 2015

I have my Lightroom catalogue on an external HDD and then Lightroom on 2 Laptops as my Creative Cloud license allows. You need to ensure that the external drive has the same reference eg F or G drive. There is more here:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1054081?start=0&tstart=0

I wouldn't say its a great solution and I feel Adobe should be getting better at facilitating this sort of set up as a lot of us photographers are lucky enough to own more than one device. With OneDrive etc now having 1TB of storage then using this for all your photographs seems the way ahead.