Import photos w/edits from laptop to desktop

Question

I used my laptop to edit photos I took this week while on vacation.  I'm looking for the most convenient way to import them from my laptop to my desktop including the edits.  Basically don't want to re-edit the photos.  Whats the best way?  I'm running LR3 3.5 and OSX 10.7.1 (Lion) on both computers. 
Thanks,
Mike

Answer 1

Are the photos imported into both computers’ LR catalogs, yet, and/or is it your intent to make this a one-way transfer from laptop to desktop, or are you wanting to work with the photos in both places from here on out?
If it is a one-way transfer and they only exist in the laptop’s LR catalog, then select all the photos you want to transfer—perhaps use a collection so you can re-select them easier, later, use (on Windows it is) LR / File / Export as Catalog to create a small, temporary LR catalog with the settings and to a flash-drive/card-in-card-reader/other external drive or across the network to a temporarily location, containing just the edits/settings of the photos in question, and then copy that catalog and the photos to the desktop, then import that small catalog into the desktop’s catalog and use Locate Missing Photos from one of the thumbnails to re-hook-up the photos if the paths are different between the to computers.
A slightly less useful alternative because it doesn’t contain ALL the settings in LR, is to write XMP files for all the photso in question, then copy the photos and XMP files over to the desktiop, then import the photos into the desktop catalog, where it’ll pick up the current edits from the XMP files.
If you already have the current photos in both locations, then if you can keep track of what you’re doing well enough, either remove the exact set of photos from the desktop and import them, again, using one of the two procedures, above, or you can copy the XMP files over from the laptop and re-read all the metadata for the photos to get their edits up-to-date.
If the photos are supposed to be moved from the laptop to the desktop, then after you’re satisfied they are safely on the desktop, you should remove them from the laptop to avoid confusion.  If all the photos on the laptop’s LR are moving, then just delete the catalog, but if only some are, then remove them from the catalog and hard-disk by deleting them using the same selection you used to export the photos or write the XMP files, earlier. 
If the photos are supposed to be worked on in both places, then having the photos and LR catalog on an external drive is the only reasonable way to do this, so after consolidating all the photos into one LR catalog using the above prodedure, then copy all the photos to an external HD and copy the LR catalog as well, and tell LR to open the catalog on the external drive and re-find the missing photos because the path to the external drive isn’t the same as on the local drive, I wouldn’t think, although I’m a Windows guy so am not exactly sure.  Once you are satisfied everything is working on the external drive, figure out a way to back up that external drive somewhere so if you drop it, you still have your work, and then you can remove the photos from the local drive on the desktop, unless you’ve decided that is where your backup will be.