2 Replies Latest reply: Oct 25, 2010 11:19 AM by JW Stephenson RSS

    Syncing Lightroom between laptop and desktop

    SF Ellen Community Member

      I  did large, two day studio shoot last week.

       

      I do the majority of  my work on my desktop, and for the first time I used a laptop for this  shoot.

       

      I used an exteranl hard drive that I plugged into the laptop, and I kept my catalog and all my images on that external hard drive. I shot tethered directing into Lightroom. I did a little  work at the shoot, changing things in the develop module, cropping, and  adding metadata.

       

      Now, I'm at home, I've got my external hard  drive still plugged into my laptop, and on my  laptop I selected all my images and chose 'Save Metadata to file'  (command S) so all my changes would transfer.

       

      A window popped up that said 'One or more of these  photos has been changed in an external application. Should Lightroom  overwrite the Settings on disk??' I then have the option of hitting  'cancel' or 'Overwrite Settings'.

       

      I'm confused by this as I have  only amended these images in Lightroom. If I say 'Overwrite Settings',  will I loose information? For example, every image has been cropped, but  I would like to be able to retain access to the full image, and I'm  nervous if I hit overwrite settings I'll lose this.

       

      Am I being crazy?

       

      Ellen

        • 1. Re: Syncing Lightroom between laptop and desktop
          JW Stephenson Community Member

          Ellen,

           

          This is a long-standing bug that seems to get better but never completely go away.  There is probably one or two images that LR "thinks" have been changed from somewhere outside of LR and when you select all images it is just telling you that at least one is in this state.  Unfortunately there is no way I know of to sort or automatically isolate images with potential metadata conflicts except to browse the grid display looking for conflicting icons.

           

          I usually select less than all (say 40 or 50 at a time) and keep saving until I isolate the image or images that is in question such that I save data to all the other images that are not in conflict first, then attack the error images one at at time.  In all cases though, I end up overwriting the data since I trust the database of LR to have stored the most correct data.  I just want to know what images were at risk so I can review them immediately after overwriting the data to make sure indeed they are alright.  I generally use a temporary quick collection to isolate them.

           

          The good news is I have never had a result that required me to go back in and re-develop an image.  The bad news is I still am not comfortable hitting "overwrite" after selecting all images and just letting it rip.  Hmmm ...

           

          Jeff

          • 2. Re: Syncing Lightroom between laptop and desktop
            SF Ellen Community Member

            Jeff,

             

            I took your advice and it worked out--I went back through and save the images in small batched, until I hit upon the 'problem' batch. Turns out, one image had an exclamation point in it, and when I looked in the metadata, I saw 'conflict detected'. Fortunatly, this was not one of my finals, so I deleted it and all seems good now.

             

            Thanks!

             

            Ellen