Lightroom 2 on Mac via Parallels Desktop 4.0?

[divo]

<p>First off, let me say that I know that I can get a Mac version of Lightroom.</p>

<p>However, last week my PC laptop died. I replaced it with a 15" MacBook Pro, which leaves me with a bunch of software that I would like to run through Parallels Desktop 4.0 on a virtual Windows 7 RC Build 7600 platform because I still have a PC as my main desktop computer.</p>

<p>I installed Lightroom 2.0 through Parallels without incident, but when I launch it tells me that it can't create a new catalog (or run my old one) from a "network drive". I can only assume that this has something to do with how Parallels Desktop is set up. Does anyone know a workaround? Thanks for any help.</p>

[andylynn]

<p>So your library is on the PC desktop and you're trying to use it over the network, or is it on your Mac, on the Mac side of the hard drive, and Parallels (if it handles this the same way as VMWare) tricks Windows into thinking you documents and photos folders are network drives? If it's the first you will run into various issues but if it's the second I think you can get around this by using Map Network Drive in Windows to make the virtual Windows mount the share folders to drive letters.</p>

<p>BTW you really should go to the OSX version of Lightroom. It's so much faster that way and you don't need to split your ram. See if Adobe will sell you a platform-changing license (I forget the word for that but it exists)</p>

[divo]

<p>The catalog is in my <em>Pictures</em> folder locally on my notebook hard drive. However, when I try to access it, Lightroom says that it can't run a catalog on a "network drive" or "external drive". It seems to be confused by the way Parallels Desktop handles integrating the two file systems--Mac and PC. They both use the Mac's <em>Pictures</em> and <em>Documents</em> folders to access files, but I guess it views these as being on a different computer.(?)</p>

<p>Parallels designates the virtual machine as running on C drive, but the rest of the files are shared with the Mac. I've never tried designating a folder as a drive before. Do you think that would screw things up on the Mac side?</p>

[andylynn]

<p>Right, so the shared folders are handled by Parallels emulating a network shared drive, which Windows sees as a network folder. This is why Windows shows them as "share" folders. Parallels has told Windows that there are these network folders it can access called Pictures and Documents, and it uses its own rights as a Mac application to interface to those folders on your Mac hard drive.</p>

<p>This is a workaround Parallels uses because the Windows running in Parallels is running on a separate, though virtual, computer, and it is impossible to have two computers mount the same drive volume at the same time. Map Network Drive is a Windows function that tells Windows to emulate the presence of an actual drive by giving a drive letter to a network share. I'm not sure that it's called that in Windows 7 but I'm sure you can look it up. You can use it to give drive letters (start from the back - Z, Y, etc) to the Pictures and Documents shares.</p>

[howard_m]

<p>the lightroom license permits (and the CD/DVD contains) both versions. LR will not allow it's catalog to be placed on what it thinks is a network/shared drive.</p>

<p>I dont know if the catalogs are binary compatible but that is easy enough to check. copy the catalog from the Mac over to the C drive and launch (you may have to hold down option or cmd to get it to ask you what catalog to open</p>

[jackaldridge]

<p>Lightroom won't allow storage on Network Drives...has nothing to do with Parallels or Windows...</p>

[divo]

<p>Resolution: I had to move the catalog to the virtual C:/ drive. Then "find" the photos on the "other" drive. Seems to be up and running now. Thanks for the help.</p>

[andylynn]

<p>That's not much of a resolution. You're keeping duplicate copies on the two drives, using extra space and anything in the C drive alone is subject to data loss at a greater risk because either Windows (and as good as 7RC is, it's NOT a final release) or OSX (the C drive is a file in the Mac hard drive) can corrupt it, and the file will not be in your Time Machine archive. Also, you're using less than half your CPU potential and less than half your RAM.</p>

<p>I know you don't want to hear this, but I'm going to reiterate that this is a very poor solution and you would be far better served by doing all this under OSX instead of Windows. If you have a box for Lightroom for Windows and OSX, there is no compelling reason not to install it for OSX.</p>

[divo]

<p>@ Andrew Lynn: Yeah, that is a concern. How does Parallels divide up the CPU and memory allocation?</p>

<p>This was always a short-term solution for me. I need to look into it more, having just bought my first Mac late last week. I will, for the foreseeable future, be sticking with my desktop PC even though I replaced my PC notebook with a MacBook Pro because I am interested in learning about both systems.</p>

<p>Perhaps I missed what you were originally trying to say while I was focused on a specific problem. If I am using both PS CS3 and Lightroom on my desktop PC at home, can I use the same software under the same license on my MacBook Pro as well? I don't want to buy duplicates of all my software, and for now the MacBook will just be for travel and basic field edits.</p>

<p>How would I go about implementing your solution with my licensing concerns?</p>

[dbcooper]

<p>A LR license is good for installation on up to three computers, and the platform doesn't matter. I've got LR installed on a Win laptop and a Mac G5. The same key worked for both. I installed both via download from Adobe. OTOH, AFAIK, PS is platform-specific.</p>

[andylynn]

<p>Parallels uses "virtualization" for the CPU, meaning it has a wall (supported in hardware) between processing in the "virtual" box and processing in the "real" box. This is a really complicated thing, just know that it segregates what Windows does from what OSX does. This is much more efficient than the old way, when VirtualPC ran on a PowerPC Mac, but still you do not get the full CPU - the best case scenario is 80% but the real world scenario is way less.</p>

<p>The RAM splitting is just that. Parallels must take the total amount of RAM you have - say, 4GB - and divide it. 1GB for Windows, 3GB for OSX; 2GB each; whatever. But you can never access your total RAM and the whole thing is slower because of the CPU limitations. Then there's the hard drive - it's slowed down by the need to have Parallels pretend there's a whole other Windows hard drive, when what it actually has is a file on the OSX hard drive holding the contents of the simulated Windows drive. In fact, for every computer component, Parallels has to put a layer of simulation in - the video card, the CD dive, the keyboard, the audio, even the motherboard. All this simulation costs system resources.</p>

<p>As for the licenses... does one Windows Photoshop license allow 2 computers? If it does, and if it doesn't allow you to use it on Mac, maybe what you want to use is actually Boot Camp instead of Parallels. Boot Camp gives you the full system resources, but it makes you reboot when switching between Windows and OSX. This could be a dealbreaker. How much Photoshop do you do? Maybe you could devise a setup where Lightroom is in OSX and Photoshop is in Parallels...</p>

[leighmcmullen]

<p>As I think a number of other people said directly or indirectly.<br>

Go to adobe.com, download your adobe software and updates in Macintosh format, and use your existing license key to activate.<br>

for library management, move your old library to your mac, create a new library on your mac, and "import from external library", into your new one, and you should be good to go.</p>

 

[divo]

<p>I have had a bit more time to read up on the issue. From what I understand D.B. Cooper was correct. Lightroom is any 3 computers/platforms <em>but</em> Photoshop is platform specific. So, I could (and probably should) run Lightroom 2 on the Mac portion and just open Photoshop in Parallels Desktop on the few occasions I need more serious editing capabilities.</p>

<p>So, the last question I have is whether the two programs would still communicate with each other if they were installed across the virtual divide? Would I still be able to click "Edit in PS" in Lightroom and have the two programs sync? Does anyone know the answer to this from previous experience. My original assumption (being very unfamiliar with Macs and Parallels Desktop) was that they would not, which is why I installed both in virtual Windows 7. Any thoughts?</p>

<p>Having used Lightroom and CS3 in a virtual environment, I have to admit that it is pretty slow. This wouldn't be a problem in most cases as I will continue to do any serious editing on my desktop. On the other hand, there are those times when you travel that you have to do some quick edits on family portraits using layers and it would be nice to not have it perform too slowly.</p>