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.

Similar Messages

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!

Lightroom catalog together with network

Hello, i have a home network with Lightroom on my base computer. The Lightroom catalog is also stored here. The pictures are on a central server, connected to the network. This works fine. But: i want to use a second computer in another room with Lightroom installed to see the pictures by using the Lightroom catalog. But this is not possible, because the catalog is not allowed to stay on a network server!!! It should be there so that it can be used within a network (therefore i have one!) Does Adobe or anybody has a solution? Thank you very much

To: Bill
thanks for the tip on substitutiary locomotion for LR using a catalog across a network (obscure kid's movie reference there!). I tried it, and it works. On WinXP, that is.
For everyone viewing this, the process is as follows:
You have an LR catalog on another computer in your local network, that you want to access from your computer.
In Window's Explorer on your computer, "map" the network drive (on the other computer) that holds the folder with the catalog, or perhaps even specifically that folder, to a virtual or single-letter drive on your computer, say "x". (And note, the quotes I place around things are there by me to delineate exactly what you type, do not type them in yourself. Only type what is BETWEEN the quotation marks.)
Then access the command-line (DOS level) editor on your computer through the menu system, "Start | Programs | Accesories | Command Prompt".
Type "cd\c:\"
(The above step may not be needed, but I was taught to make my commands from a main-drive location, not a subfolder. Back to the little routine.)
At the prompt, "c:\ ",
type "subst p: x:\"
where "p" stands for any free local drive letter on your computer, and "x" is the local drive letter you mapped the other computer's LR catalog drive or folder to. NOTE THE CLEAR SPACE BETWEEN P: AND X.
Now, open LR on your computer, tell it you want to open a new catalog, and choose the drive-letter that you typed where I use "p" as the drive to find it on, navigate to the folder that has the ".Ircat" folder on it, select it, click on "open".
If you get a message that it cannot access files across a network, simply click on the drop-down box to the right titled "choose" and select the folder-path on the "p" drive and it will now load.
It takes half the time to do this that it does to read it!
I tested this by exporting a small folder as a catalog, copying that folder to another machine, doing the mapping\substitutiary routine above, and accessing it (only from one computer at a time) sequentially from both computers, changing a couple things each time, without saving back to the XMP either manually or automatically.
After doing several changes I then closed the catalog without saving either manually or automatically to xmp. All changes were there immediately on opening the catalog with the other computer. Virtual copies, exposure changes, ratings, labels, keywords ... all saved from both computers to a local drive on the one computer, and readable and useable from the other computer.
You do need to keep from using both at the same time, like duh, but then, we've managed to use file-sharing across our network here for several years with up to 5 people accessing files without both being on the same file at the same time in ANY program, CS, word processing, whatever.
Of course, anything one EVER does it always at your own risk.
Neil

R/3 ISA B2B: Catalog Views

Hello experts in the group,
I need to create catalog views for R/3 ISA B2B application. I have to use cross division 00 to handle multiple sales areas and I want to address these divisions using catalog views. I already have one of the four product catalogs that we would need, in place.
I have tried to use followed SAP Notes:
696095: ISA R/3 4.0: Collective note on Catalog Views
695978: How to create function modules for ISA R/3
677319: Coding sample assignment of customers to views
677320: Coding sample catalog item assignments to views
610393: Example for using catalog exit after read
and
Note 837119, that was referenced by SAP Help but I could not find.
Problem is, despite spending all that time and effort, I am not able to make much headway here. I would really appreciate if someone could help me out here and tell me how to create a catalog view. I needs to reference this catalog view to a few layout areas and items in the product catalog, and then assign it to a webshop where a customer (who has access to the web shop) can see only these products that are contained in the view.
Thanks in Advance,
Biren Bugati

Hi Biren,
I simply went to t.code SRMO (Search Server Relation Monitor) and went to <i>Index Category (index)</i> tab. There I searched for all indexes and painstakingly deleted each one, one by one by clicking "Delete Category." I'm not sure if this is the right way to do it, but it worked in the end. After deleting all indexes when I executed ISA_CAT_REPLICATION tcode, instead of error code 2007, I saw a green indicator light, and "No documents in deletion pending status" text.
The TrexAdmin tool that I am using is Python based and delivered with TREX itself. Its in /sap/usr/trex<instance_number>/python_support/TrexAdmin.py
You can find more info about how to launch and use this tool here:
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_erp2004/helpdata/en/3f/d4ae0fc46e1d1ee10000000a114cbd/frameset.htm
Hope this helps.
By the way, I didn't know about ISA_CAT_REPL_DELETE and TREXADMIN tcodes. Do you have a list of all ISA-relevant tcodes?

Reg creating Catalog Views through R/3

Hi Guys,
I am working on an internet sales application with backend as SAP R/3 ECC 6.0. We are not supposed to use CRM. Can someone tell me how to create them?
I have to create Catalog Views. I tried to acess the SAP Note 998453 and 998458, but i am getting the message "The requested SAP Note is either in reworking or is released internally only". Can someone tell me how to access these notes.
I have also gone through the SAP Notes : 696095, 677319, 677320 but couldn't find much help.
What is a BP or a target group?
I have gone through the the following sdn link also but couln't find much help.
Creating Catalog Views
Can someone provide me the step by step process.
Any kind of help will be deeply appreciated. Please do reply.
Thanks,
Ibrahim

Hi Ibrahim,
I understand your requirement is slightly different than ours.
Based on the customer type (let's say: gold and silver) the catalog view should be displayed, right?
The question is: how do you match a material with the customer type? Let's say you have 20 materials in the catalog, how do you know what materials can be displayed, and what not? In order to do so, you will need to put a "label" on every material.
The option we choose for this is using attributes.
trx. CT04 - define the attributes (1 attribute, with 2 values 'gold' and 'silver')
trx. CL02 - create a class (of type 001 - material class). The class is only used as a dummy, so you can attach the attributes to it.
Now add the attributes to the class.
Now, for every material you maintain the class (dummy) and the attribute (gold or silver).
Mat 1    gold
mat 2    gold
mat 3    silver
mat 4     silver
Now, with the coding I gave to you, the product catalog is replicated to TREX. Every material is given a label "VIEWS_ID", which is filled with value "gold" or "silver".
Now, when the customer logs on to the webshop, it's checked what customer type he is (gold or silver). Let's say it's gold, then from all materials, the VIEWS_ID is read, and materials with a matching VIEWS_ID (gold) are shown to the customers. So material 1 and 2 are shown, 3 and 4 are hidden.
In case you have a catalog with a large structure, you might want to show also a limited piece of the catalog structure to the customer. In that case, you do the same for catalog branches, with classification type 060 layout areas.
Hope this helps you out.
regards,
Wim

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 info

During 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.

Creating the customer specific catalog view....

Hi All,
I am working for e-Commerce with mySAP ERP scenario where the customer wants to implement customer specific Catalog View. As it is not a standard functionality provided by SAP. So, I was searching through the SAP notes on how to implement it and found the note 998453 and 998458 which details on how this can be achieved.
I implemented the relevant SAP Notes i.e. 998453, 998458, 677319 and 677320 in a system. However, the appropriate result is not appearing. This is my perception; some customizing setting will also be required for the same. Moreover would be the possibility, I have missed some technical steps.
On this regards only, Could you provide me some reference documents or suggestion based upon these notes which help me in implementation? Apart form that, Could you suggest me any another approach for implementing the catalog view? This is really great help from your end.
Regards,
Ashutosh Jain

it is done...

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

Lightroom Catalog is Huge

I have 129,980 in my lightroom catalog. The photos go back to January 2000 and are only about 350GB but this previews file is over 116GB. This seems excessive.
Is the alternative to simply take a moment to build previews when I go to a folder? Most of my folders are pretty small.

PictureTakerGuy wrote:
My concern is both wasted space and disk overhead. 120GB seems like a high percentage of overhead for a 350GB collection. Especially when I consider I might never edit many of the photos there.
If you've got a number in mind that's too much, then there's a problem.
Many people don't worry until there's a performance issue, in which case it doesn't sound like there's a problem.
I'm coming from ACDSee world where there was little overhead and blazing fast photo thumbnails created when you went into a directory.
How would I do same in LR. I like LR and I'm not trying to bash it. I just don't feel comfortable with the amount of wasted space where I need to back it up, etc.
You need to understand that these are two very different programs which operate under very different principles. If you want the fastest performance out of Lightroom, then I think you want to have the largest possible previews, and they are left on your hard disk forever and beyond.
When I run WinDirStat it takes forever to even figure out how many files are in that catalog. It takes less time to get the pictures counted than the catalog or preview files.
Time it takes WinDirStat to finish? Hmmm ... I have never seen anyone complain about that before. Seems like you are inventing a problem. Lightroom is designed to produce a lot of preview files.

I am using Lightroom 4 but, notice that I am still seeing Lightroom catalog 3.2.2 running ?

I am using lightroom 4 upgraded from three, two , one etc. etc. but, I notice that the lightroom catalog 3.2.2 is still running and seems to slow things down a bit what did I do wrong ?

You did nothing wrong. When LR converted your LR 3 catalogue, it just tacked a .2 on the end of the filename. LR 4 won't work at all with unconverted LR 3 catalogues, so you're OK. The slowness must have some other cause. You might want to try the 4.2RC version to see if that speeds things up for you.
Hal

Saving or Saving As Directly from Photoshop to disk AND into Lightroom catalog?

If I create a file in Photoshop without coming from Lightroom or duplicate a file in Photoshop that I opened from Lightroom, is there a way to save the new file from Photoshop to the desired directory on my local hard drive and simultaneously have it added to my Lightroom catalog? Or do I need to save the file then import the file into the catalog? I'm working with CS6.

W-W, just a slight addendum to your reply. You CAN use "Save As" from within PS after an "Edit In", and even change the file-type AND the destination folder, and the file WILL be returned to LR. The caveat is that the file-type has to be either Tiff or PSD (it doesn't have to be the same as what's set in the External Editing tab of the Preferences), it just can't be a Jpeg, and using a different folder will lose the stacking. In fact you can make multiple "save as" commands, and they'll all appear back in Lightroom provided they are Tiff or PSD (though you'll need to use a different file-name for the second or more derivatives of the same file-type if you want them all in the same folder and thus stacked with the original).
That's on Windows using LR4.3 and CS5....but I think it works that way on other versions as well. One further caveat, however, is that where an ACR mis-match occurs (as in my current setup) when using the Edit-In operation, the option to "Open Anyway" would have to be used to make use of this option....if you use "Render Using Lightroom" the Tiff/PSD is created in Lightroom and subsequent "save as" files are NOT brought back into LR.
Apologies for the complicated post, but thought it important to clarify that "Save As" can work.

Lightroom catalogs from images stored on DVD'S

I have hundreds of DVD disks that I want to Catalogue. I import the files using just the ADD function into a newly created collection, yet once he DVD is ejected the files loose their path.
I thought that files from external media did not have to exist on a hard drive to be catalogued. I used Portfolio before this adventure into Lightroom and I had nop problem at all.
I have studied tutorials and the only discussion within these lessons is about files on connected hard drives or RAID systems.
Any advice is welcome.
PD

HI,
Lr does not really support the workflow you want. You want to catalog dvd's with LR. So, if you eject the dvd the path in Lr will be your dvd rom. Not usefull.
You can try the following work around: import the dvd an use some of the metadata fields (exif, iptc or keywords) to store the name of your dvd in it. You can use the search inside Lr to find the contents of a dvd or you can brows your catalog, find an image and read the metadata to find out on which dvd the image is stored.
You can also use the collection feature and create a collection for every dvd.
It might be usefull to set the following cataloge settings: generate 1:1 previews and do not delete previews.

ISA Catalog Views B2B

Hello Experts,
I have created three catalog views & assigned a set of BP for each view.
I assigned each view to a different webshop. I want to restrict these webshops to only the BPs those were assigned to that view.
But users who are not included in that particular view are also able to view the catalog.
Could anyone help me out in restricting the users.
Thanks in advance.
Cheers
Vamsi

Hi Gudladona,
Regarding your first problem I suggest you check:
1. Updated Support Package CRM, IPC and SAPJ2EE
2. I have similar problem before and please check
   following SAP NOTES:
   - 528671 Missing views during the catalog
   - 598285 Catalog determination: sold-to catalogs
   - 509248 Displaying invalid product catalogs/variants
   - 660795 Missing category description in catalog of
   - 696095 ISA R/3 4.0: Collective note on Catalog
Which CRM version are you? Use Internet Sales for
R/3?
Just some clarification (may be you already know these):
1. Even you use Catalog Search setting in ShopAdmin,
   you still need to maintain/enter the Catalog and
   Catalog Variant (don't leave it blank).
2. Webshop will only shows product assign to Catalog
   with match BP ID in Catalog View. The webshop will
   verify this when you select the SOLD TO PARTY in
   webshop (so webshop will not verify against user
   id).
Restriction webshop for specific user can be done, by
setting Authorization Group in ShopAdmin (when creating
webshop). You define authorization group and use this
in user authorization object CRM_ISA_SP.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you still need more info.
Cheers,
Gun.

Lightroom catalog backup find missing file location- please help!

Hi,
Before I start, if anyone can answer this question I would be so grateful. I would cry!
Ok, so let me start.
Recently I cleared my whole entire mac and backed up everything on a hard drive. when I reinstalled lightroom on my clean mac, I also imported the catalog that I backed up. It all worked fine, and this post isn't about a lost catalog, or accidentally deleted photos.
So, what is hapenning is. When I imported my catalog I got an error message, for all the photos and folders. this:
So I found re-finding the folder, or finding the "missing file location" (which is so annoying because I wished Lightroom just backed up the pictures along with the catalog). But when I found the folder, only some photos showed up and some still displayed the exclamation mark.
Now I do have all the photos with the exclamation marks in folders on my backup hard drive, BUT they are all unedited raw versions. I honestly cannot go back and edit 2000 photos, especially after me having to clean all of the photos when my camera had over 30 spots of sensor dust on the photos. So those backup photos are what lightroom backed up, but I want to know how I can recover the photos in the lightroom catalog with the edits APPLIED.
May I PLEASEE get help on this. I am SO STUCK and do not want to mess up ANYTHING at all!
I would appreciate so much for ANY help! PLEASE!
Kind regards,
Josh

Please post on the Lightroom Forum.

HELP! Need to restore corrupt file/recover deleted file from LIGHTROOM Catalog

Hi,
I recently edited a wedding I finished and sent to her via WeTransfer. It showed that she opened the file, so I deleted it off of my computer. A few days later she said she couldn't open the file because it was corrupt (at this point I couldn't resend because I had deleted it as stated).
She sent it back to me to see if I could try opening -- but every time I try to open in Lightroom it reads:
Unexpected Error Opening Catalog
The Catalog could not be opened due to an unexpected error.
Can ANYONE help me recover this file?? I've also tried to run a Data Recovery software to retrieve it from the trash, but it won't recognize .lrcat files (it brought up all of the .jpegs, photoshop, .tiff files etc -- but no lightroom catalogs.
I REALLY really really don't want to have to re-edit 1000 photos again.
Thanks so much in advance for any advice xo
LB

City where you were born? wrote:
Thanks Rob --
Just did the scan (mind you I have NO clue what I'm doing), but I dropped it in the SQLite and clicked "expand" and it came up "Idle".
I've attached the two messages I got :
Uh, yeah - it's not an archive and so you don't want to try and expand it as if it was one.
I'm not sure which SQLite app you are using. I think SQLite Spy is Windows-only, but for Mac, maybe:
https://www.sqlitepro.com
Other Mac users may have more recommendations.
Once you get a real SQLite app, then open the .lrcat file with it.
R

Wanted: Lightroom Catalog Viewer

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for