Beginner 2 / 3 macs, 2 with Lightroom but one catalogue (plus backups of course)

[Donnie]

Bear with me, I have a feeling someone will say a NAS or some other term that's currently beyond me, so please speak slowly

So, I now have a new mac mini setup in the dining room / study room, but up to now have mainly been using my 2012 macbook pro for everything and after upgrading disks and ram etc its still great but the new mac mini is nicer and quicker and easier on my eyes lol.

So, Im wondering about how to go about using these both together (I should say I also have a 2013 mac mini I use purely as a plex server too).

In an ideal world I would want to be able to essentially have access to all 3 no matter which machine Im using (eg if im away I can take the macbook pro and access films on the plex mac mini, or access images on the new mac mini) I hope this is making sense to anyone reading. Just writing it is confusing me a bit. lol.

So, Im thinking I need some sort of external drive hooked up to the new mini where I could have my images stored and that would be the lightroom catalogue etc, obviously I'd also need to ensure some sort of periodic backups too, currently my work stuff is backed up on apples icloud and my images are on an external drive I plug in and back up periodically.

Can anyone decipher what I think I want? Or steer me in the right direction?

Any help really would be appreciated.

 

[Pound Coin]

If they are all on the same network you should be able to share files between them. If you mean you’d like to remote control the screen of one from another, that is doable too.

 

[Donnie]

I can manage to use the macbook to control the old mac mini ie the plex server, it's the trying to get one lightroom catalogue for 2 machines thats really doing my head in currently.

 

[Pound Coin]

I don’t use Lightroom, but can you point it to look at a catalogue on a different drive?

Also, what are you using Plex for? Were you using it anyway?


You should be able to share music libraies (iTunes) across a network.

 

[Donnie]

Plex is only for movies nothing else, seem to have sussed out how to use that from outside the network now but not how to control the mac it's on for anything else when outside the network, looks like i need something called ssh and that's beyond me.

I don't do itunes for music at all to be honest so thats a non starter lol.

And lightroom, yes I think you can point it to look at different drives but still trying to figure out exactly how.

 

[LongLensPhotography]

Simplest way is to keep all photos and catalogs on external drives (ideally SSD for catalogs). You can simply plugin the drive(s) to the machine you want to use and that is all.

Or get NAS and all the network wired up (too slow via wifi), but I think you may still have to have catalog on external SSD. I may be wrong but I think I saw somewhere that LR doesn't support loading catalog from NAS. It would be too slow anyway.

 

[Donnie]

Aye having looked into it more and more I think Ill simply have to use the external ssd route, it'll be on the mini most of the time anyway and then can take it with me should I be away with the laptop for any period of time.