Hello,
I am working on a group of about 20,000 pictures. It is the stored photos of multiple users on a network drive. My job is to organize the pictures in LR. When I am done, several users will be sharing the catalog. The workflow the group wants to use involves downloading the catalog from a shared site on the network to their desktop. The users would then upload the latest catalog back to the network when they are finished. They are used to the communication this involves and share other work this way.
I am working from my home computer. (The VPN was too slow) I have the pictures at home on a portable external drive. The catalog is on my internal drive. When I have a section done, I export it as a catalog onto the external drive. I import it to the latest version of the master catalog on a desktop at work. The work computer security does not allow me to directly work from my portable external drive so I have to copy and past the import catalog on to the desktop before I import it. When I import it to the master catalog, I move the pictures to the network drive.
My main question is can the users back-up the catalog on the network drive? As part of their workflow, they would automatically back-up the catalog to the network. The next users would then download the back-up to their desktop to use. Once a week, we would clear old back-ups.
Also, are we losing information from the catalog when we copy it back and forth?
I am losing print presets (and import presets) as I test this. When I test the process on two computers at home, this does not happen. I wonder if it is the work computer security? Part of my workflow is to create a pdf contact sheet to send to the user. I use the form pdf wizard to make it interactive so the user can fill in whether to discard the picture and identify people/add text. I e-mail them the contact sheet. They e-mail it back completed. The preset can be recreated but it is tempermental. I want something I can leave for the users.
I am not proficient with the technical language about this. Any advice on sharing the catalog this way or using the back-up as the shared catalog would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you -Nancy
