DIY Photography

Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time

  • News
  • Inspiration
  • Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • DIY
  • Gear
Search

Submit A Story

Tips For Syncing A Lightroom Editing Laptop With A Work Station

Feb 2, 2014 by Udi Tirosh 26 Comments

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

When I bought a laptop a few weeks ago, it was for a specific purpose: being able to work on my photos while traveling. But my primary concern was to keep in sync my Lightroom catalogs between my laptop and my desktop computer at home. I’ve read about solutions that would require you to merge catalogues by importing and exporting catalogs from one computer to the other. I wasn’t quite happy with that process, so here’s the solution I came up with.

Tips For Syncing A Lightroom Editing Laptop With A Work Station

Before we start

A few things to note:

  • This is aimed at Windows users, but it should be simple enough to extrapolate to Mac OS users
  • I’m using Dropbox, but any other service/software which automatically synchronizes folders between several computers will work just as well.

Also, I made a few workflow decisions that had an impact on the solution I chose:

  • On the laptop, I am only interested in editing the photos taken while I’m away. I do not need to work on “old” photos, therefore I have no need to keep them in sync on the laptop.
  • I consider my laptop to be a temporary workstation. Once I’m back home, I want to transfer all the work to my desktop PC so I can carry on working on a big screen. And I want to do that as seamlessly as possible.

Syncing the catalog

This is the easy part. My initial idea was to use Dropbox to sync the catalog between the two computers. However, I didn’t want to sync all the RAW files as well, as they represent about 10 times the storage allowance I have on Dropbox. So I simply moved my .lrcat file (and this file only) to my Dropbox folder, and had Lightroom open it from there.

Job done. Provided your photos live in the same place on both computers (e.g. C:\Photos), Lightroom will find them and everything will just work. Every time you import photos into Lightroom on the laptop, Dropbox will sync the catalog for you (and provide an off-site backup in the process).

At the end of my trip, when I come back to my PC, Dropbox will fetch the latest version of the catalog, and all the edit work I’ve done on the laptop will magically appear on the PC. The new photos will be listed as offline until I move them from the laptop to the desktop in the appropriate location, but I won’t need to re-import them in Lightroom.

Tips For Syncing A Lightroom Editing Laptop With A Work Station

What if my photos live in different locations on the two computers?

That’s where the trick comes in. We’re going to make Lightroom believe the laptop photos live in the same location as on the desktop.

Consider the following example: on my desktop PC, my photos are stored in F:\Photography\Lightroom\Raws, so for the magic sync to work, I need to have an F:\Photography\Lightroom\Raws folder structure on my laptop. But I don’t have an F: drive on my laptop. Am I stuck? Not really.

There’s a neat and very easy to use tool called Visual Subst that will assign a drive letter to any folder you want. (If you are an old schooler, you can, of course, use subst from the cmd console : )

Tips For Syncing A Lightroom Editing Laptop With A Work Station

On the laptop, I’ve created the following folder structure: C:\work\photography\Lightroom\Raws. Then, I used Visual Subst to assign the letter F: to the folder C:\work. (Make sure to tick “Apply virtual drives on Windows startup” or you’ll have to do this every time you start the laptop). Now, when I look in Explorer, I have the proper folder structure.

Tips For Syncing A Lightroom Editing Laptop With A Work Station

As I’m using the exact same catalog as on PC, Lightroom on the laptop will be already set to import new photos to F:\Photography\Lightroom\Raws.

From that point on, the workflow is quite simple:

  1. Go on a trip
  2. Take photos and import them in Lightroom, edit them if you want to.
  3. Return home
  4. Move (or copy) your photos from your laptop to your desktop.
  5. Carry on working on your desktop PC.

I’m assuming you have internet access on the go. If you don’t, simply make sure Dropbox on the laptop has synced before you go and after you come back.

Word of caution: In Windows, when you delete something from a virtual drive, it doesn’t go in the recycle bin, it’s deleted forever, so be careful.

About the author

Cédric Hauteville is an England-based photographer and video game designer. You can follow him on Twitter, Flickr and check out his website.

FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Related posts:

GoPro Targeting VR Market with a Six-Camera Spherical Mount and Wireless Syncing Adobe Keynote Teaser; Adobe Unveils New Mobile Editing Apps, Optimizes Photoshop And Lightroom For Touchscreen Use Loupedeck vs Palette Gear Review: Faster Editing in Lightroom Lightroom will finally become faster as Adobe announces GPU-accelerated editing

Filed Under: Inspiration Tagged With: lightroom

About Udi Tirosh

Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

« True Tilt-Shift With Smartphones and CCTV Lenses
Duplicating And Scanning Slides – A Refined Tutorial »

Submit A Story

Get our FREE Lighting Book

DIYP lighting book cover

* download requires newsletter signup
DIYPhotography

Recent Comments

Free Resources

Advanced lighting book

Recent Posts

  • What motivates you to take photographs?
  • DPReview is shutting down in three weeks
  • Panasonic S1H II specs leak – 8K and phase detect AF
  • Adobe launches Firefly AI – no unlicensed photos for training
  • Photographer captures immense power of stunning Hawaii’s Banzai Pipeline waves

Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

Copyright © DIYPhotography 2006 - 2023 | About | Contact | Advertise | Write for DIYP | Full Disclosure | Privacy Policy