Lightroom library?

<p>Hello,<br /> I want to try moving my workflow over to Lightroom to take advantage of it's DAM capability. I keep hesitating because of the daunting task of building the library optimally.</p>

<p>I have a Workstation at my studio with all my images on, and a Workstation at home that also has all my images on. I transfer new images to either Workstation and mirror the drives manually, every few weeks. I backup my images at both locations, so end up with four copy's in total. Also I sometimes transfer images to my laptop and keyword and cull them on location.</p>

<p>Ideally I would like to keyword and import images, at any location with Lightroom to save time later. But I am not sure how I keep the library up to date on both Workstations?</p>

<p>I realise it would be easiest to keep all my images on one large external drive and move it around, but that is not practical for me.</p>

<p>Cheers</p>

<p>Sounds like what you're doing is the right approach. Just dedicate one big drive to images and the LR database and files, clone from workstation drive to workstation drive. The more clones you have, the more redundancies in terms of backup and, a good clone software product will only update new changes to each and should be rather fast. </p>

I agree with mr. Andrew and also suggest you get and study a copy of "The DAM Book" by Peter Krogh. You can buy it

through his site, http://www.thedambook.com

 

I also strngly recommend another one of Peter's book / eBooks "The DAM Book Guide to Organizing Your Photos with Lightroom

5".

 

For making the most of Lightroom's or Adobe Camera Raw's processing controls, Jeff Schewe's "The Digital Negative"

is very hard to beat.

<p>Thank you for the advise Andrew .....it looks like I was imagining potential problems with the library structure.</p>

<p>Ellis, I will check out the book's you mention. The trouble I have encountered is lightroom experts give diametrical advise on using the DAM function. </p>

<p>Cheers</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Ideally I would like to keyword and import images, at any location with Lightroom to save time later. But I am not sure how I keep the library up to date on both Workstations?</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br /> You're not alone and Lr makes it easy. You sound like a candidate for working with a master catalog and importing smaller/newer catalogs to your master. Julieanne Kost and Adobe tv have a great intro to the common practice of importing into master catalogs. Video tutorial here, <a href="http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-evangelists-julieanne-kost/lr3-merging-individual-lightroom-catalogs-into-a-master-catalog-/">LR3 - Merging Individual Lightroom Catalogs into a “Master” Catalog</a><br /> <br /> Another consideration, if you're almost always working at an internet connection, is that you can store your catalog file in a dropbox folder and have your various computers that run Lightroom, all point to that one single dropbox folder with that Lr library file. I'd also set Lightroom to "Automatically write changes to XMP" so that your editing efforts travel safely with the images and not just relying on them being in the Lr library file</p>

Peter Krogh is "the" undisputed expert on DAM for photographers, especially regarding bridge and LIGHTROOM.

 

http://thedambook.com/about/

<blockquote>

<p>it looks like I was imagining potential problems with the library structure.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>No, you'll be using one at a time as you have to. Keeping everything on one drive and cloning it means you'll have the latest catalog backed up and redundant and you might also want to consider using a DNG workflow where a lot of that data ends up <strong>inside</strong> the raws themselves. Belt and suspenders in terms of backup plus if you use say Custom DNG camera profiles as an example, that all travels <strong>with</strong> the images themselves. The more "<em>stuff</em>" you can place in the images themselves, the more backup redundancies you have and less individual items you have to clone that may not be stored within the catalog. You do want to set your preferences to "<em>Store presets with catalog</em>" otherwise that important data resides outside that drive, deep in the system folder. That would also include lens profiles as well as DNG camera profiles and presets. Yes, a backup will take a bit longer because you are copying the entire DNG but avoiding a cloud, doing this with a big fast drive (which can all happen while you sleep!) is far faster and efficient.<br>

Peter's book goes into DNG workflows and more, a must read. </p>

<p>One has to be careful, Anthony. Seems we're off to rough start instead of your question being addressed. There is no reason in believing in "potential problems with the library structure". I hope you come back and read the updates instead of that being your conclusion about library structure. Yes, you're perfectly fine carrying on with your multiple hard drives; you don't have to use one massive drive and tote it everywhere like it was suggested above. And if you're not doing DNG, it is completely unnecessary and horrible advice with the amount of cloning you are doing. It will only add time to your work load, double your physical files, lock you out of software you may wish to use, and all with no safety benefits. Converting to dng is a dying practice because of those points. </p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>But I am not sure how I keep the library up to date on both Workstations?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You'll find working and importing with master catalogs easy once you do it a few times. It's a very common practice. If you're on an IPhone/iPad etc, you can even use Lr Mobile to do edits, ranking, keywording etc. It's handy, apparently. But I'm on Android and can't speak from first hand experience on this.</p>

<p>Anthony, in terms of implementing <strong>any</strong> kind of DNG workflow, be sure to read what an industry export on the subject has to say, that being Peter Krogh. Again, his books and insight on working with DAM's and DNG's is invaluable. In terms of <em>when</em> to backup a DNG, he's got sound advise. He doesn't have to say so, neither should I, but sitting in front of a computer while it's backing up a DNG's or anything else, doing nothing but waiting for that task, is a stupid waste of anyone's time. Few of us do so and complain about it anyway, we <strong>can</strong> multitask. </p>

<p>Eric,<br /> Thank you .....I will watch the Julieanne Kost video later. My workstations only go online for software updates.<br /> I use a Windows tablet (not iPad) and will have Lightroom 5 loaded. My workflow is RAW/TIFF/JPEG and I have no interest in DNG files presently.</p>

<p>Ellis,<br /> I accept Peter Krogh is "the undisputed expert" but other Lightroom evangelists like Tim Grey, give alternative advise that is also compelling.</p>

<p>Andrew,<br /> I understand the advantages of a DNG workflow in an all Adobe environment. But I also use other non Adobe RAW converters.</p>

<p>Cheers</p>

<p>I also like Tim Grey. He's new school, alright. I've posted his "intro to Lr 5" B&H video more than a few times on the Facebook Photoshop and Lightroom group when Lr newcomers ask about the best approach to getting started with Lr. It's amazing that the Facebook group has tripled in size to 95,000 people since the adobe $9/mnth subscription plan was introduced a couple years ago.</p>

<p>Here's a handy link I keep from The Lightroom Queen that you might be interested in, Anthony. If not familiar, she's a great resource as well. This link gives the explorer folder locations of all the personal stuff in Lr that you will want to back up and take with you to your different work stations. http://www.lightroomqueen.com/backup-lightroom-files/ I make desktop shortcuts so I have easy access to them when dragging and dropping etc.</p>

<p>Instead of using hard drives like yourself, I use an usb3 flash drive, 128gb...lots of room. I also rename my Lr catalog with the date, and sometimes an "am" or "pm" if I know it will be a short period of time when going back and forth between workstation and laptop. I'm not sure on your extent of Lr knowledge/experience, but as I suggested before, set your Lightroom to "Automatically write changes to XMP" as it's been a life saver not having your edits otherwise trapped in Lrs' proprietary database. And before you exit your Lr session, right click on the folder of your images and "synchronize folder". When you do exit and shut down Lr, back up the catalog.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Eric,<br>

My present file structure is the same as Tim Grey's which makes his approach (Location) appealing. But I see the advantage of using date folders within lightroom. No doubt Peter Krogh is "the undisputed expert on DAM for photographers".</p>

<p>I will have a look at "lightroomqueen.com/backup-lightroom-files" later. Except her name has me humming that dreadful song, which is off putting <strong>:-) </strong><br>

<strong> </strong><br>

<strong><br /></strong>Thank you for the extra tips.</p>

<p>Cheers</p>