Lightroom, transfer pics from laptop to desktop...

[shiato storm]

So, just wondering whats the best way to add/move across files etc from lightroom that I work on whilst away with the laptop onto desktop for when I get home?
can the 'away' library be inserted into the 'at home' one by some obviously simple trick but so simple I've not found it yet...?! (being bit slow at the mo cause of nasty man-cold-bug-urgh!)

 

[Kerioak]

Do you have an external hard drive? You could use that to work from on both your machines once it is loaded into Lightroom

 

[chriscrafter]

Just be careful that you don't plug in too many harddrives and into different ports.

I'm using 3 seperate ones at the moment and I unplugged them all. When I put them back in they obviously went into different ports and were assigned different drive names. This meant that i had to troll through the file system in Lightroom to point it in the right direction (approx 15000 photos, oh I did laugh).

Lesson learned here was simple: Learn how to file the d*** photos logically!!!

 

[hepburn]

Just be careful that you don't plug in too many harddrives and into different ports.

I'm using 3 seperate ones at the moment and I unplugged them all. When I put them back in they obviously went into different ports and were assigned different drive names. This meant that i had to troll through the file system in Lightroom to point it in the right direction (approx 15000 photos, oh I did laugh).

That can be solved by setting a permanent drive letter to each disk in the Windows Disk Manager (assuming you use windows).

 

[pxl8]

The simplest way is to select the photos you want, export them as a library and then import that library into LR on the other machine. The drawback is that it will copy the raw files across rather than sharing them.

The other option is to simply copy the LR database file from one machine to another and then when LR complains it can't find the photos point it at the right place to the files on the network. Of course you then have to copy the database file back again in order to keep it up to date on both machines.

The "cheat" option is to trick LR into allowing a database to be on a network drive. To do this you have to mount the network location as a drive letter and then use the SUBST command in a dos prompt to assign the network drive to another drive letter - LR won't detect this as a network drive and so will let you use it as a path to a database. Of course the drawback now is two people can access the database at a time and really muck things up and LR is pretty slow over a network.