Friday Vid. - Moving Between Laptop and Desktop
Happy Friday. This week I’ve got a video for you that answers the never ending question of how to move between a laptop and desktop with Lightroom. I’ve been asked this just about every time I teach Lightroom and it occurred to me that I haven’t really done a video to cover it. Fortunately it’s a lot simpler then it may seem and Adobe has given us an easy way to save out specific images or folders to move from one catalog to another (which by the way is really what is happening when you move from one computer to another). If you’ve had any experiences that are similar to what I show then let us know in the comments and if you’ve found any hiccups along the way, by all means let us know as well. So, watch the video. Enjoy it. Feel the thrill of moving freely between computers with no chains to hold you back 
Oh yeah, and enjoy your weekend.
Get your weekly video dose of the coolest Adobe® Lightroom tutorials, tips, timesaving shortcuts, photographic inspiration, and undocumented tricks with Matt Kloskowski, one of "The Photoshop Guys" from 
on June 20th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Finally a cure! Thanks for the information. That should be very helpful.
on June 20th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Cool Matt. that’s a great tip. I do wish Adobe had a more integrated method to sync without exporting the files in a new catalog. Can’t have everything I guess.
I suppose another way to do this without exporting a new catalog would be to simply copy the whole catalog to the other machine (say the desktop) and then import it wetting the sync settings needed.
Gavin
on June 20th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I’ve been using folder syncing to make sure I have the more current version in both places but what I’ve found is that while automatic, doesn’t always work. Even with automaticly writing changes to XMP, sometimes it doesnt save it right away. Which is why I like this method, even though not automatic, works better.
What I want to see in Lightroom 2.0 is built in catalog syncing.
on June 20th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I use Microsoft’s Sync Toy (from their pro photography site) to basically copy the entire catalog, all the DNG files and all the lightroom data. One of my three backups is a passport 320 mobile drive that becomes basically a mirror of the primary photo drive (the third is one of two external hard drives that gets rotated off site on a weekly basis). This way I always have at least two backups out of the office when I am gone and I can work on anything at the drop of a hat.
Downsides, since I use DNG files, if you touch the file it gets backed up so you can end up moving a lot of data since the DNG files are pretty large (especially with the RAW file embedded). You have to keep track of which drive has the most current data so working on the same file on the different drive sets is a no no. Other than that it has worked since Lightroom came out.
I tried the making a catalog option but just never could get it to work out, always seemed like I had extra catalogs floating around from doing importing of cards on the go etc and invariably a client would call and ask about an image that was back at the studio when I was a 1000 miles away.
on June 20th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
“Adobe’s easy way” sucks. It takes time to mess around with the catalogs and pretty soon you end up with catalogs that you can’t trace version of. You simply loose control which of your catalogs has the latest version of your settings.
The best solution would be enable Lightroom to read catalogs located on network drives. I’ve got all my photos on a network drive so that I can access them from any computer. The drive is regularly backed up with traceable snapshots back in time.
It would be very logical to have the LR catalog at the same place in order to be able to edit the photos from any computer on the network and to have a proper backup.
Now I have to mess up with moving the catalogs as you describe and find it _extremely_ inconvenient. I find the inability of the LR to work with network-based catalogs the major drawback of the program. It ruins the whole work flow.
on June 20th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I keep my NEFs and catalog on a portable HD and switch between my laptop and desktop all the time. The files are in one place so there no risk of ‘multiple versions’. Lightroom is smart enough to know that if the portable HD changes drive letter, it will look for my NEFs on the same drive and within the same structure as the catalog is located. On both computers, I have Synctoy installed to back-up in a common network directory when the computers are in my local network.
It is a hassle to carry around a portable HD but the WD Passports are quite small and they are available in 320gb size wich is quite respectable for a catalog and pictures.
For all of Lightroom qualities, this is one area where Adobe doesn’t shine. Fortunatly, there are other ways.
on June 21st, 2008 at 3:25 am
Thanks, Matt. One question I have is about how keywords are handled. If I export images from computer1 (C1) to computer2 (C2), I assume that any keywords on C1 along with their taxonomy will get copied to and integrated within C2’s taxonomy. I guess if the pictures are copied back and then deleted off C2, those keywords which weren’t originally on C2 will show up greyed-out on C2’s taxonomy. By the way, in the video do you really mean that you *move* the images when you export them, rather than *copy* them? Thanks!
on June 21st, 2008 at 8:00 am
I still have little problem to understand how to move pictures between a laptop and a desktop, keeping all adjustments and metadata intact.
I am converting all pictures directly to DNG in lightroom. Is it not so that this file then contains all lightroom adjustments and metadata which has been put in?
Thank you for a lot of good stuff concerning Lightroom and Photoshop!
on June 21st, 2008 at 9:05 am
Hi Matt -
Great tip. Left me wondering about when “save in current location” and then you can move photos to where you normally store them, like under main folder “photos”. I must have missed a beat because I think that causes LR to lose track of them, since they’re no longer where LR thinks they should be.
Make a terrific day! (I am)
Jim
on June 21st, 2008 at 10:37 am
Matt,
Thanks….
will LR Handle Going between platforms?
Pc to mac laptop.mac laptop back to pc?
Thanks
David
on June 21st, 2008 at 10:53 am
Matt,
one more question.
can you then e-mail folder with changes made to either computer as long as images are on each machine & they will then be in sync with each other?
Thanks again
David
on June 21st, 2008 at 11:56 am
Thanks for the info Matt. One question: What if I want to export a whole laptop lightroom catalog into my desktop catalog - not just some images from a particular folder - how do I do that? For that matter how do I transfer a whole lightroom catalog to a new computer?
Joe
on June 22nd, 2008 at 4:08 pm
I use Allway Sync for synchronizing between my laptop and desktop computer.
on June 22nd, 2008 at 9:28 pm
A good tip, but to echo part of what others have said, and to add my own $.02…
It’d be nice if there was an automatic way to move photos/catalog from one machine to another. I’m guessing (for the Mac anyway) it’d be possible to write an Applescript/Automator Action to automate the process.
However, I’m not always working on one set of photos at a time. My changes could be made in multiple folders all over the place. What would really be useful would be to have a general sync function where you specify the root of the directory structure for two photo areas and catalogs, and it just syncs up changes.
Alternatively, being able to access a Lightroom catalog over the network on another machine, where the photos themselves also reside on the remote machine would be great. That way you can have a machine as a central repository “server”, and do your work on a remote (maybe faster) machine. And of course you should be able to integrate catalogs (note I said integrate, not just copy) and photos imported from the remote machine with the “server” machine.
Right now it’s a royal pain in the rear for my workflow.
Thanks Matt!
on June 23rd, 2008 at 12:34 am
Cool tip Matt - I think that more can be done, however. Looking forward to the next evolutionary leap…
on June 23rd, 2008 at 6:21 am
Hiya Matt and all!
- How to move catalog(s) from PC to Mac - does it work the same?
- Since 2.0 is on its way, it does not make sense to purchase the Mac version of LR if one already owns the PC one… But then, how to switch a PC license for a Mac one? Would Adobe accept to do this? I will (try to) contact Adobe…
Thanks a billion - cheers - Flo.
on June 23rd, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Matt,
Incase you did not know, you do not have to ‘export as catalog’. If your on your desktop, you can simply import from the catalog on the laptop. In the import dialog box you can pick and choose what photos you want to bring in. No need for that extra step!
on June 23rd, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I second the external hard drive. Most of my photos and catalogs are on a WD firewire drive. This is formatted as FAT32 and I switch it back and forth between my MacBook Pro and PC laptop all the time. (I have an NTFS driver for my Mac so I can also use that).
Catalogs and Photos are also backed up to a Drobo and a Network attached storage device as well.
I find the firewire drive gives the best performance for actually working with the files in Lightroom. Just picked up a portable Firewire drive to use as well.
on June 23rd, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Thanks, that’s really helpful!
I have a related question about importing photos:
Is there a way to tell LR to move (and not copy) photos from e.g. an SD card when importing?
on June 24th, 2008 at 1:06 am
Matt- I appreciate your taking the time to answer this perplexing and very confusing problem. Hopefully Adobe will make this process much easier in future versions. I’m confused a bit. Are you importing the folder with the catalog and the images or just the catalog. I watched the video several times and thought you were importing the catalog and not the folder with
the images and the catalog. That doesn’t make sense as the size of the images is much,much greater than that of the catalog. Have I missed something? I would greatly appreciate some clarification. Also, I use an external FW HD to store all of my images. Can I copy or move the images/catalog directly from the laptop to this drive or must I import them on to the desktop computer and then direct them to the external hard drive which is now connected to the desktop computer? Again- are we moving the images or the catalog or both?
Again, thanks for your help.
on June 24th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Matt,
This is an unrelated question. In the Library module what is “missing files” and if they are missing, why do they show up when you click on them?
Kevin
on June 24th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Matt: I enjoy your Tips and received a lot of neat presets. I have a slightly different catalog problem. I have located an corrected a number of files that were out of sync but I still have a number of “Red” files which I get the following message:
The file “xxxxxxxxxxxxx” is associated with another photo in the catalog..
Each file can only be associated with one photo.
The problem is that there is no suggestion on how to correct this problem. Is there any way to resolve this issue?
Ted
on June 25th, 2008 at 5:03 am
Thanks Matt, for those of us using a PC, who are constantly organizing our images into folders, your suggestions and comments about the Photo folder and m-o-v-i-n-g the exported catalog folder to w-h-a-t-e-v-e-r location we want is very easy to understand and right on.
For those people who are not folder and sub-folder oriented for organizing their photos this may be confusing.
Overall a good tut. Thx!
on June 25th, 2008 at 8:40 am
I’m using an external HD, too. So i could’nt forget to sync between the PCs.
on July 8th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
I can’t get the video to run for the laptop to desktop instructions
on August 14th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Hi,
Sorry if this is not the right place to ask…..
I am trying to move a selected few pictures from one folder to another in LR2. I have tired using export, but that does not delete the files from the original folder. I am seeing a xmp file in the new folder. I am guessing that is an information file telling where the original files are?
My question, can I select a couple of pictures in LR2 and then move them to another folder without the xmp file?
on August 18th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
My LR says ver.1 but does not have the command ‘Export to Catalog’
It looks different than the one in the movie, there iare also no commands for ‘New Catalog’, ‘Open Catalog’ neither.
Sync button also is not highlighted, has no function.
Searching my PC for lrcat doesn’t give any result.
??do I have an imcomplete version?
AS I must transfer my files/develpments from a PC to a notebook, how to proceed? Can I still do it? Or do I have to get a newer/complete version of LR first, but if so, how will it load my developments?
thank you for any hint,
best regards