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| Lightroom gurus – I need your advice - Page 1 | |
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| Posted: Fri Nov 22nd, 2013 00:45 |
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1st Post |
TomOC
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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 |
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| Posted: Fri Nov 22nd, 2013 03:07 |
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2nd Post |
Robert
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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. |
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| Posted: Fri Nov 22nd, 2013 12:42 |
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3rd Post |
TomOC
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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 |
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| Posted: Sat Nov 23rd, 2013 17:30 |
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4th Post |
jk
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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 |
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| Posted: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 01:03 |
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5th Post |
Robert
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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. |
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| Posted: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 02:34 |
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6th Post |
jk
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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 |
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| Posted: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 03:57 |
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7th Post |
jk
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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 |
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| Posted: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 04:39 |
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8th Post |
Robert
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So you are using an NAS drive?
____________________ Robert. |
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| Posted: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 05:10 |
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9th Post |
jk
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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 |
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| Posted: Sun Nov 24th, 2013 14:20 |
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10th Post |
Robert
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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. |
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