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| Lightroom gurus – I need your advice | Rate Topic |
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| Posted by TomOC: Fri Nov 22nd, 2013 01:45 | 1st Post |
| I've been lying low lately, as my nose to the grind trying to learn as much as I can about lightroom 5. I have drunk the Kool-Aid as it were and have converted all of my archives into one catalog. I keep the catalog on dropbox so that I can use it interchangeably on my iMac and my MacBook. All of the archive files live on an external hard drive that is physically connected to the iMac. I'm able to do most of my work on the MacBook because I make smart previews of all recent files. So why am I posting? I just can't figure out the best way to manage photos that are taken when I'm traveling – which means they are initially stored on the MacBook. I've seen a lot of different schemes for handling this. It looks like the most common one is to create a new catalog for everything you shoot while traveling and then merge it with the mothership when you get home. This makes a certain amount of sense, but it doesn't take advantage of the way I'm using dropbox to hold my main Catalog. I'd be very interested if anyone else here is using dropbox to hold a light room catalog and if so, how do you manage getting all the files where they should be? One would think that at this stage of life (you know, the one where you've lost all your hair) you wouldn't still be up all night worrying about a new way to manage your photo catalog. Oh well. Dying to hear your thoughts ...
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
| Posted by Robert: Fri Nov 22nd, 2013 04:07 | 2nd Post |
| Hi Tom, A good question, I have recently started using DropBox for some stuff, not Lightroom yet... Your idea is very interesting to me, I did try putting my Lr catalogues on a server at home but Lr doesn't seem to do servers. Also it doesn't solve the multi locations problem. My method has been to immediately on return to home off load my new images to my Mac mini's main image data folder hierarchy with the date reversed followed by a descriptive title yyyy-mm-dd title because of the way sorting works, that structure sits well in the folder coming out nicely in date order. I then synchronise that years folder with Lr. That gets the images into the system but not onto the Mac Book Pro. If I am away, I off load the image files into the MBP with the same naming convention and on my return home I move them manually onto my Mac mini. Effectively the only complete set of images exist on my main computer and backups of course. In a way I am not sure I really want a complete set of images on my MBP, which complicates things. I would like a 'lightweight' set of selected images in my portable devices, to refer to and to be able to show people while away from home. That involves selecting them, making them a universal size say 1024 on the long edge, convert to JPEG medium quality and then export them. THAT might be the set to put in Dropbox. As for separate Lightroom libraries, in my opinion unless a set of images are utterly unrelated to the main group there is no justification for a separate library. I keep all my botanical images in a separate library and have weeded out any recreational or family images taken at botanic gardens, storing the non botanic images in my general file structure. I have also tried separating out my work images and my hobby stuff, car building and the like. Work is OK it's usually completely isolated from domestic stuff but projects and hobby stuff is usually pretty well embedded in family activities so it would be impossible to separate them, so they have returned to my main folder structure and the main Lr library. I have multiple groups of images of work projects which include for example hundreds of pictures of leaky roofs, bent walls, rotten timber, and cracks in walls. I don't need them in my general image folders. Eventually I will dump them. The reason for this is the great strength of Lr is it's ability to find an image by location, keyword, camera, lens, date etc. That falls flat if some images are in another library, Lr won't search multiple libraries and opening a number of libraries in turn to search for an image is a pain. Speaking of loosing my hair, I was looking for a particular set of images of a car race meeting at folder level yesterday, I was sure as hell they were taken this year. In the end I opened Lr, did a search on the location and it seems they were taken LAST year... Doh! One of my concerns with putting my entire photo collection in my DropBox is the load it will impose on my internet connection. When I did a major update of iPhoto/Mavericks etc. recently it blew my bandwidth allowance overnight and cost me a packet in excess usage fees. It had been caused by PhotoStream re-distributing my images to all my devices. I had turned PhotoStream off but with the new installation it had reverted to default, which is ON. :-( So I had limited internet for several days before my next period began.
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by TomOC: Fri Nov 22nd, 2013 13:42 | 3rd Post |
| Robert- Don't put the image files on DropBox - depending on how many files you have, they just plain won't fit and you already see the problem with the time of upload etc. But it is perfectly safe and very useful to put the LR catalog (and preview etc) on Dropbox. The only snag you might hit would come if you closed down one of the machines that accesses the LRcat before it had completely uploaded the updates to Dropbox (and if you open a LR on a second machine, you will be protected...LR will open the second instance as read only). If you do make an error in shutting down too soon, you will create a conflicted copy of lrcat on dropbox and it is easily corrected then. I think you should try making some Smart Previews in LR. They can be used to edit your work and do just about everything but print...but you can email a copy and it is pretty good size - I forget how large, but I think it is larger than what you are creating now for your jog's. What I don't see in your workflow (and which dropbox takes care of) is how do you get the proper catalog on your macbook when you go away. Manually copying etc for me is recipe for disaster. I agree - finally - that the LR catalog is great. For some time, I tried LR and quit because the Lr cat was so much larger than the Media Pro catalog which works very much the same way (about 140,000 images previews took only about 3 gb of space whereas the same in LR is about 58 gb). But the LR cat shows more than just the thumbnail - the previews are nearly 1:1 but at 72dpi and much easier to find useful, not to mention the smart previews that allow me to work with them. LR has also allowed me to quit Photo Mechanic and Name Mangler for key wording and renaming. I think you are right about offloading, not just copying the raw files to the archive drive - I've been lugging them around on the macbook just on the odd case I will want to find a printer on a trip and print some old files...not likely to happen and causing too much confusion about what is where etc...leaving me open to database errors. Cheers, Tom
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
| Posted by jk: Sat Nov 23rd, 2013 18:30 | 4th Post |
| Tom, in answer to your question. I use LR for all my catalogs. I have two catalogs one that is pre-2006 which includes early NEFs, JPGs and scanned images (about 55000 images) and a main/current post-2006 of all my recent images which is about 70000 images. When I am travelling I shoot and copy my files to a portable hard disk so when I return I then copy them directly back to my main image store drive. I then import these files with their xmp files if I have done any editing, into my main catalog. Once the images are imported I make sure the metadata are synchronised and then I delete the images off the portable drive. I keep my LR5 cat file on the image storage drive so any machine can use it.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by Robert: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 02:03 | 5th Post |
jk wrote:I keep my LR5 cat file on the image storage drive so any machine can use it. JK, how do you access the drive with the Lr5 cat file on it from multiple computers? I have tried sitting it on a server but Lr refuses to access server based cat files.
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by jk: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 03:34 | 6th Post |
| I just connect to the machine over the network. As long as you have an account on the machine and you can log onto that machine you can get at the drive. The drive needs to be shown as a shared drive on the machine it is attached to so you can attach to it. Alternatively you can attach the drive to a wireless sharing device such as TimeCapsule or I think the new Apple Xtreme Airport. You need to be able to 'map' the shared drive so it is seen by the machine you are using as a locally mapped drive.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by jk: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 04:57 | 7th Post |
| Robert, You might want to take a look at this article  http://osxdaily.com/2013/10/30/connect-smb-nas-network-shares-os-x-mavericks/
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by Robert: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 05:39 | 8th Post |
| So you are using an NAS drive?
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by jk: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 06:10 | 9th Post |
| I have USB attached and NAS as well for my backup of software (installation disks). The same principle applies though. I believe if you attach a USB drive to a TimeCapsule or new Airport Xtreme then this allows them to be wirelessly available. The bug in SMB2 makes the Mavericks connections more difficult but not impossible. Sometimes the Snow Leopard is the best OS
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by Robert: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 15:20 | 10th Post |
| So you are using a shared drive on your 'master' computer to share the single (master) Lightroom catalogue file? I tried this using server software and it refused to work, words to the effect: LightRoom catalogues can not be shared from server hosts. When I can dedicate some time I must try out various combinations. I really only want to be able to share a single small sub catalogue between the desk top, Mac mini and the laptop, Mac Book Pro. Seems to me I can do that via Dropbox. I really wanted to have a single centralised server serving the desktop and the laptop, accessible to any other devices I may get in the future. I don't really want to store large images or files on my working computers, just on a central server, so I know where everything is, all in one place. I think I am going to consolidate my image files and catalogue files in my main computer and then create a smaller subset of selected images in a second folder for sharing and showing people. Life just got a whole lot more complicated!
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by jk: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 18:36 | 11th Post |
| I know this used to work fine for me before I migrated three of my Apple machines to Mavericks as they were all on Snow Leopard and LR4. I will retest with the setup and document if I can get time later this week. But if the drive is a local drive that can be mapped (is shared) then it should work fine across multiple machines across the network. So the LRCat file and the images live on one drive that is attached as a shared drive to a single machine and this data can be accessed from another machine. One thing that I havent tested but I dont think it would work is multiple users on different machines accessing the same LRCat file. Adobe dont make multi-user applications. 
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by TomOC: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 22:46 | 12th Post |
jk wrote:Tom, in answer to your question. Thanks...that's just about what I'm settling in to as my workflow, except that I use my macbook rather than a portable drive. I can see where the portable drive makes it almost impossible to make mistakes though and maybe I should consider one...
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
| Posted by TomOC: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 22:48 | 13th Post |
Robert wrote:jk wrote: Why not just use dropbox. In either case, LR saves you from errors by locking the file when you open it on one machine. If you try to open it on another, it will open read only Tom
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
| Posted by TomOC: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 22:52 | 14th Post |
jk wrote:I know this used to work fine for me before I migrated three of my Apple machines to Mavericks as they were all on Snow Leopard and LR4. JK- The thing I don't understand about your setup is how it manages the lrcat for the laptop that is NOT on the network??? Isn't it simpler to just use some cloud storage space like dropbox and then you have the lrcat physically on each machine and it's constantly updated in the cloud for the other machines????
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
| Posted by jk: Mon Nov 25th, 2013 03:04 | 15th Post |
| Dropbox and Cloud storage dont work for me as the internet connectivity is too poor. That said I would never do that. I have just returned to service on Saturday night after 36 hours of internet outage due to ISP network issues.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by jk: Mon Nov 25th, 2013 06:45 | 16th Post |
| Test 1 MacPro (Mavericks) with USB attached HDD containing images and LR5Cat. Macbook Air (Mavericks) with me Connecting as myself using account on MacPro by wireless sharing to MacPro so I can see disks and files. Confirm that USB disk is visible and accessible in RW mode as I can move, write, delete files on the USB attached drive from the MacBook Air. Load LR5 it sees the USB drive and the LR5 cat file but refuses to let the catalog be used. Standard error message about remote drive access, which is rubbish as the drive when attached to the MacPro in USB mode is visible. Hmm..... Used to work. Currently Photoshop CS6 can access the MacPro and USB attached drive to load the file and edit it, then save it back by accessing the MacPro attached USB drive. Next step is to try same configuration but access via Macbook Pro 15" with Snow Leopard instead of Macbook Air with Mavericks. However I will need to use LR3 or LR4 as LR5 needs 10.7.x (Lion) or above.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by jk: Mon Nov 25th, 2013 08:02 | 17th Post |
| Test 2 Macbook Pro 15" with Snow Leopard instead of Macbook Air with Mavericks. However I needed to use LR4.4 as LR5 needs 10.7.x (Lion) or above. Got the same error as on the Macbook Air testing when trying to access the LR4cat file over the network that is on my MacPro via USB link. So I have tested with a local copy of the catalog which I copied from the USB drive attached to the MacPro over the network to the Macbook Pro disk and located on my Desktop. This works no problem. This is expected behaviour. I guess this inability to work over a network mapped drive is a design issue. Adobe have designed it this way as it improves the speed of LR in its handling of editing. If the cat file was remotely located then there can be big latency (lack of responsiveness) effects and then loss of speed in the application while it waits for the saving of metadata and edit changes and also if the network link is lost then all changes would be lost. So outcome of these tests is that the Catalog file needs to be local or on a USB drive directly attached to the machine you are working on. If you want to use the same file then you need to use a mechanism such as DropBox or iCloud synchronisation features. For me this wont work (as I dont want to use slow internet connections for synchronisation) so I will write some scripts that copy the file between machines or use GoodSync to make sure that the file in use is the latest.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by TomOC: Mon Nov 25th, 2013 12:59 | 18th Post |
jk wrote:Dropbox and Cloud storage dont work for me as the internet connectivity is too poor. That said I would never do that. I have just returned to service on Saturday night after 36 hours of internet outage due to ISP network issues. Say no more...what a disaster that could cause
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
| Posted by TomOC: Mon Nov 25th, 2013 13:06 | 19th Post |
jk wrote:Test 1 Only one question...do you have permissions set to read + write???
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
| Posted by TomOC: Mon Nov 25th, 2013 13:15 | 20th Post |
jk wrote:Test 2 JK- Shame there isn't some software available that allows one to set up their own NAS type system that would basically replicate the functionality of Dropbox on a local network (i.e. Replicating the NAS folders directly on the local machines and updating them automatically). That would be the perfect solution - you go off with the laptop, come back and it updates your "local cloud"
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
| Posted by jk: Mon Nov 25th, 2013 13:26 | 21st Post |
| I still havent tested the NAS option fully Tom but I think that this needs to be 'architected' and the solution offered by Adobe does not offer this. PhaseOne Capture Pro offers catalogs but the catalogs are in my opinion pretty flaky. On Windows there is iMatch which definitely works across the network but since I am now Appled up I dont intend to go back to Windows just for this single piece of great software.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
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