Lightroom Catalogue

[Tysonator]

Hi all,

I use to computers for editing a PC tower and laptop.
If I copy the catalogue folder from one computer to another will this mean that if load the same RAW fil on the other computer the editing history will appear in Lightroom ! ?

 

[ecoleman]

Yes, as long as the raw files are in the same location (same folder structure) as they were on the old PC.

Otherwise you will have to tell the catalog the new location of each image.

 

[Craikeybaby]

It theory, but that is not how Lightroom is designed to work and could result in a corrupted catalog.

How I managed this in the past was to keep my desktop as the main machine with Lightroom Classic on it, and to have my laptop as a secondary machine for when I was away from home. On the laptop I had both Lightroom Classic and Lightroom.

On the laptop Lightroom Classic did not have my main catalogue, I would create a fresh catalogue each trip, then when I got home, use the "Import from another catalogue" option in Lightroom Classic on the desktop to pull the images, keywords and edits into Lightroom on the desktop. Then within Lightroom Classic on the desktop I moved the raw files to my usual folder structure.

To get my existing images onto laptop I synced the images to Creative Cloud and used Lightroom (the slimmed down version) to view/edit the images. Any changes would then be synced to my main catalogue through Adobe's cloud network.

 

[Harlequin565]

One other thing to be aware of is that some settings aren't stored with the catalogue. Custom keyword sets and colour labels, Develop presets, Print templates. Pretty much anything you have customised, that remains even when you switch catalogues, will not move with a catalogue switch. Lightroom Queen has a great article about what Lightroom stores where https://www.lightroomqueen.com/backup-lightroom-files/