Lr On New Laptop (Sharing w/Desktop?) Pt.2

[chesterdawg]

Thanks to all with your help on my previous ?s.

So I'm about ready to setup my new Windows laptop. I've been trying with my current laptop to be able to work with Lr CC on both my laptop and desktop, trying to do edits on both and save everything to USB 3 drive.

I have everything on the desktop so I thought to export as catalog and everything (folders, backups, previews etc.) were sent to usb 3 hd. I then connected to laptop and I believe it was import catalog. All of the images came in along with ratings & keywords (metadata?). It looks as though the images as had been edited are also as they were but all of the sliders in the develop module are set in the middle?

I'm not sure I imported and/or exported correctly.

Short story long = I'd like to do the edits on my new laptop, it has plenty of power and a 500GB SSD. I'm not sure if that will hold my entire catalog, likely not after I install all of my other apps.

I'd like to do the edits on my laptop and somehow copy that over to my desktop via the USB 3 drive but I don't know exactly how to go about it. After I finish the edits on the laptop I  would likely just keep the finished large jpegs and have the originals & edits on the desktop and USB3 drive.

Can you please explain step by step how to do this? I want to get it right and not mess up my collection.

Thank you for your knowledge, time & patience.

Steve

[JP Hess]

If you put the working catalog on the USB drive you wouldn't have to do any exporting of the catalog. Just move the USB drive from one computer to the other and use the same catalog. Personally, I don't like the idea of just having "finished" images available. If you decide that you want to make you change at some point in the future you either have to make the change to the finished image or go back to the master image and make the change and then export the  finished one again. By just maintaining the master images,  I can export copies when they are needed for e-mail or other purposes. But after that exported copy has been used  it can be discarded.

[chesterdawg]

That's exactly what I want to do but for some reason can't get it right. What do I need to copy from the current HD to the USB3?

Do I copy all of the images and all of the adobe folders? I know it shouldn't be that hard but for some reason I don't have the correct data/file/folders on my USB3.

Thank you

[JP Hess · Accepted solution]

There is a Lightroom folder inside of the Pictures folder on your computer. That Lightroom folder contains your catalog and your preview images. If you copy that Lightroom folder to the EHD and then open that folder and double-click on the catalog file Lightroom should start and load the catalog from its new location. I don't know if you already have the images  on the EHD. You might have to spend little time relinking your image files. Let us know if you need more help.

[chesterdawg]

Thank you.

I will copy all of the images to the EHD then the Lr folder and take it from there.