Lightroom Catalog portability
Can I move a catalog created on a Macbook Pro to a PC and get it to load the same files (and tree structure) on the PC as on the Mac?
I am running LR 4.4.1 on both machines but cannot import videos on the PC whereas I can easily do this on the Macbook.
You can change the links via
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm
I have a very dynamic set of image files that have to be created and filed away (deleted) very frequently and the stability of the Lightroom catalog seems to be in the way.
Most people don't delete photos once imported into LR, and everything works very smoothly. Once the photo is imported, leave it in Lightroom. Saves you some work.
Furthermore, the idea of importing the photos to a certain location, working with the photos and then moving the photos somewhere else might make sense in your operating system, but in Lightroom this is an extra step with no obvious benefits (in my opinion). Better would be to import the photos to their destination, and not perform the two-step Move to Folder A followed by Move to Folder B.
By the way, I hope you understand that if you delete photos from Lightroom (but not from your hard disk), your edits may not stay with the actual photos. By default, the edits and other metadata are not stored with the photo files.
And as John said, an organization scheme that uses keywords and other metadata will be far superior in the long-run than moving photos from folder to folder and location to location.
Similar Messages
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Technical question:
Is it possible to work on the same Lightroom catalog across two computers and have the catalog sync? If so, how??
Here's a little more information on what I am trying to do.
I have a desktop computer with 4tb worth of pictures that has Lightroom and Photoshop on it. I also have a laptop with Photoshop and Lightroom. I would like to be able to edit those same pictures with their current edits that are currently on my desktop on my laptop. If this can be done, I'm sure I need to be on the same wifi network for my laptop to be able to access my desktop's photo library. I am technically savvy enough to map a network drive, but how do I get my two Lightroom catalogs to sync when I make a change on one of my computers? Would i be working only on one catalog? Or two separate catalogs that would need to be manually synced to the other computer? Would it be beneficial to put my lightroom catalog on something like dropbox?
I'd appreciate any information or tutorials if someone knows how to do this.I do this by having my LR catalog and photos on an external drive that I swap between the two computers. I am on Windows and have the same drive letter assigned to the drive on both computers.
Because the photos are on a portable drive I back up the portable drive to another hard-drive every night or after important work, because portable drives are susceptible to damage or loss. -
Wish List Item: Adobe Lightroom Catalog Reader (free)
Adobe Acrobat Reader is the reason for Adobe Acrobat (the creator) success.
A Lightroom Catalog Reader would enable me to take a catalog of images stored on an external drive to some other location, plug it into some other computer, and view the images. The reader would apply the fixed held in the catalog database, on the fly, just as Lightroom does. It should allow for thumbnail browsing, single image view, and full screen, plus a very basic slide show. Nothing more; no exporting, no printing, no rating, no developing... just viewing with fixed applied, without a need to export the images. ...Ok, maybe allow for flagging.
Why not just export? Because that takes time, creates another copy, and is inconvenient.
How about this scenario: I've got a catalog of images from a shoot. I want to present them to someone for him/her to choose some picks. My catalog resides on a little USB drive. If I could put Adobe Lightroom Catalog Reader on my USB drive, I could take the drive to this person, review the images, make a few picks, and then bring the drive back home to work on within the full version of LR. I should just haul a laptop right? A little USB drive is a lot more portable.I'd like to see a reader as in Expressions (formerlly iView). I can give a client a catalog. She can browse & make selections, E-mail those to me in their notepad function. When I get that E-mail, I can load it into my catalog and see those picks as a collection. I can then tweek those originals and get them ready for printing. Great feature for client relations. Lets have it in LightRoom!
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Wanted: Lightroom Catalog Viewer
Am I the only person who would love to see an Adobe Lightroom Catalog Viewer, available for all to use to view the contents of LR catalogs?
Why?
Here's one example: I have a portable USB drive on which I keep several catalogs. I work on these catalogs by plugging into my LR-installed computer. But sometimes I have the drive with me, but without my computer, and I find myself wanting to show a few pictures on a friend's computer. It would be great if I could just plug into his computer, and use a LR Viewer to show him my images.
I know, I could just export a copy of the images to this drive. But that's sort of a waste when all I need is a simple view once in awhile. Plus, Export doesn't seem to retain file/folder hierarchy if I export more than one folder at a time, so exports are sort of painful to search through if you're trying to find one photo to show off... especially when you don't have LR handy.... which brings me back to the need for a LR viewer.
Could this be in the works?Yes, actually I've used SQLite for some of my database needs within Perl applications (web/cgi, etc.). So I've been able to look over the contents of LR database files that way. But as you surmised, I'm looking for a slightly more elaborate solution.
I know Adobe would never want to erode Lightroom sales with a freebie such as Lightroom Catalog Viewer (my own name for the idea), but I think if the functionality were limited only to viewing thumbnails, screen-full displays, and simple slideshows from a LR catalog, it wouldn't erode sales, and may actually serve to entice people into LR who otherwise might not have the motivation.
I would think that there should be no library editing, no flagging, color coding, none of that. No develop module, no printing, no web page generation, and only a single type of basic slide show.
Why would people use it, being so basic? Because it applies all of the database-stored settings to an image without first exporting the image. I would be able to save an entire catalog to my external drive, take it on the road, and invoke the viewer from any computer to browse through the catalog. No editing, no frills; just let me see my corrected images without having to export them all. -
Can I move the Lightroom Catalog from one location to another?
Lightroom by default, places the Lightroom Catalog in the Pictures folder on my PC. My image library though, is located on an external hard drive. I've read that it is better to have the Catalog at the same location to avoid disconnected images, which sounds reasonable. Is it feasable to move the Catalog over to the same drive as my image library, or will that cause a problem? In other words would I need to start over again and create a new Catalog on the external drive? I know this sounds like a dumb question, but I've learnt to my cost that the obvious solution isn't necessary the correct one.
For better performance it is preferable to have the catalog located on an internal hard drive. By default the catalog and the preview files have to be located in the same folder since there is continual read/write taking place while working in Lightroom. Lightroom does not make any changes to the original files so its fine for them to be located on another hard drive internal or external. Lightroom loves lots of hard disk space to operate so if your catalog is on an internal drive make sure it not starved for disk space.
However its ok for your catalog/previews files to reside on an external HDD with your original photo files.
Your photo files can reside on a HDD conected to a network but your catalog and preview files cannot be located on a network.
e.g I have my catalog / previews on the main HDD with my operating system with over 50% free disk space. My Photo files are on a secondary internal HDD with over 75% free disk space. I back up to external HDD. -
why do i get the following message when i attempt to open my backup file for lightroom cc? "Lightroom cannot use the catalog named "Lightroom Catalog" because it is not writable and cannot be opened". This message just started coming up after downloading lightroom cc (previously using lightroom 5)...am i backing up properly or not???
Open Pictures folder and move the files named lrcat-journal and lrcat.lock to Desktop.
Make sure that , they are not inside Pictures folder any more and try to open backup from Lighrtroom and check..
Any LRcat file with .lock extension , move it to Desktop. -
please help I need to open my my lightroom to edit and it says lightroom catalog cannot be opened bc another application already has it opened.... I went to download the update but computer went dead when came back on it was gone so I reinstalled. now wont open but ps will help birth session to edit
Make sure you don't have another copy of Lightroom actively running on your computer. If not, find your catalog file in Finder/Explorer. Look for a file with the same name, but with a .lock extension. delete that file. Now Lightroom should open the catalog again.
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I have a new Mac Pro computer and have migrated my files from my older computer to the new computer. In trying to open a Lightroom catalog on an external hard drive I keep on getting the message "lightroom cannot use the catalog named " " because it is not writable and cannot be opened. I have fixed all the "permissions" and yet it will still not open. How do I fix this?
Hello Forum Members,
I figured it out. You have to select the actual logo of the Lightroom catalog and then click on "get info" and allow what ever your new user name to "read and write". That worked!
Henri Silberman -
I have a new computer. I wish to uninstall Lightroom5 and photoshopCC on old computer and re-install on new computer. How do I do this. Also, Lightroom catalog is currently on external drive. Will Lightroom recognize it on new computer
Hello Francinera,
please have a first look here: Activation & deactivation help >>> http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/activation-deactivation-products.html.
Please come back if necessary.
Good luck!
Hans-Günter -
Files missing in Lightroom catalog after import?
I've got an external HD that has 7712 pictures in a single folder. All the files are either .JPG or .CR2 files taken from the same camera, a Canon EOS 5D. After importing the pictures into Lightroom the catalog only shows that 6712 pictures were imported. So there is a difference of 1000 pictures between what is in the folder on my external HD and what was put in the Lightroom catalog. Is there an easy way to determine which of the 1000 files did not get imported into Lightroom?
It might be that some Raws and Jpegs shared the same base filename, and Lightroom treated them as one Raw+Jpeg.
Check if your "treat jpegs and raws as separate files" option is selected in Preferences. If it is not, select it, and reimport your folder. Synchronize folder might work too. -
In this Episode of The Complete Picture Julieanne demonstrates how to combine individual Lightroom catalogs into a single, “Master” Lightroom catalog to simplify a photographers workflow and enable multi-shoot searching.
http://adobe.ly/ytQLSLWhat if I'm one of those disorganized folks who made the mistake of having the same images in multiple catalogs, some with and some without edits? How would I fix that mess?
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I use Lightroom exclusively for my photos. I initially used it with my desktop Mac (PowerPC G5) and then started using it also on my laptop (Macbook Pro). Both computers have all photos on external drives. There is a separate Lightroom catalog on each computer corresponding to each computer with it's individual external drive. You can imagine my problem now, I'm sure. I have, effectively, TWO Lightroom catalogs, each with unique images, but also I've copied some photos over between them. The problem is growing exponentially.
Here's what I'd LIKE to do. I'd like to install a shared NAS drive (perhaps an Apple Time Capsule drive) on my central hub in my house (my whole house is wired for Ethernet so that's not a problem), then put all photos on that single hub, thereby using a single Lightroom catalog and with it's images from either computer. If I have to travel somewhere and take some photos with me, I can deal with that because that it is typically the exception, not the rule.
Has anyone tried to do this? I don't need to nor expect to hit the shared catalog from both computers at the same time. I'll be using one or the other, but not both. But I'd like to bring these two environments together.
I'd love some insight from forum members who've attacked this problem and solved it. I just don't know if Lightroom will allow the catalog to be on a shared drive, thus accessed by either computer. If it will, then I imagine the work I need to do is:
1) create a large shared NAS drive.
2) copy all images to that drive.
3) pick one of the two Lightroom catalogs and make that the master and somehow point it to the NAS drive.
4) import the remainder of the photos on the NAS drive to Lightroom.
5) make sure that both computers reference the Lightroom catalog on the NAS drive.
or maybe not. Maybe there's a better way. I'd like your input.
if this won't work, then has anyone successfully merged two Lightroom catalogs together. One of my catalogs has about 80,000 images, and the other about 35,000 images. At least 50% of all images are keyworded and I'd really hate to lose my keywords and collections that I've created.
anyway, insight is welcome. Tell me if I'm nuts too.
Thanks in advance.
DennisThe closest think to this that will work is to put all the images on a large Firewire 800 drive with the LR catalog on the same drive, possibly in another partition. And alternately plug the drive into one machin or the other.
It is Networked drives where one can't put a Catalog, as John says.
Don -
Is it possible to access my lightroom catalog on my iMac from my macbook air ?
I was just given a yr old macbook air and want to access my lightroom catalog on my I mac ? possible or do I just use the mobile and set up a share folder ?
thanks in advance for any infoDuring a call, press the home button (note the green bar at the top of the screen). Navigate to your Calendar app and open it.
The Calendar app won't be able to update OTA during the call but you should be able to see everything that was there before the call. -
Combine Lightroom catalogs with the same name.
Newbie, be easy on me. This will probably end up being a dumb question, but here goes anyway. I have 2 lightroom catalogs named (Lightroom 2 Catalog.lrcat) What is the easiest way to combine those 2 into 1 catalog (Lightroom 2 Catalog.lrcat). Thank you in advance!
ScottHi Scott
I'd open one of the libraries, and rename it "catalogue2" and then open the other one and import the "catalogue2" into the 1st one
alternatively, find where one of the catalogues is and rename is thru explorer or finder, and open that one and then import the other catalogue.
All the import is in File Import
import from catalogue,
from chip from disk etc
Hope that helps
Cheers
Hamish
hamishNIVEN Photography -
Importing into lightroom catalog on a mac
I just moved my lightroom catalog on an external drive to a mac from a pc. I got the entire catalog moved with no issues or problems except for this. When I try to import new photos i get a message saying that the file cannont be read and that the files were not imported. Has anyone else run into this issue while using a mac? Thanks for any help
How did you format the external drive? It needs to be FAT32 if you want it to be able to be read and written by both PC and Mac. Sometimes when LR says "cannot be read" it also or instead means "cannot be written".
John
John G. Blair Studio
Occidental, California
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