Lightroom with 2 computers (1 full use, 1 culling)?

[joptimus]

Lightroom Version Number

9.2.1 Classic CC

Operating System

1. macOS 10.15 Catalina

Hello,

I have a new MacBook incoming. My wife wants to keep the old MacBook Air for herself and so I'm wondering what is the best solution so we can both look at our pictures in LR Classic CC.

Me: Importing, developing, culling (my pictures)
Her: Browsing & Culling (her pictures).

Basically, I'm doing the majority of work on Lightroom, she is rather used to just browsing the pictures, organizing a little. Keywords (DAM) are a must for both of us.

I've read about copying catalogs, but to be honest, that seems cumbersome to me. What about Lightroom Web or Lightroom CC (Mobile)? Is there any way we can work together at the same time on our pictures?

P.S.
I have the AdobePhotography Plan with 20 GB storage.

 

[clee01l]

Hello,

I have a new MacBook incoming. My wife wants to keep the old MacBook Air for herself and so I'm wondering what is the best solution so we can both look at our pictures in LR Classic CC.

Me: Importing, developing, culling (my pictures)
Her: Browsing & Culling (her pictures).

Basically, I'm doing the majority of work on Lightroom, she is rather used to just browsing the pictures, organizing a little. Keywords (DAM) are a must for both of us.

I've read about copying catalogs, but to be honest, that seems cumbersome to me. What about Lightroom Web or Lightroom CC (Mobile)? Is there any way we can work together at the same time on our pictures?

P.S.
I have the AdobePhotography Plan with 20 GB storage.

As long as simple browsing organizing and key words are on the MBA, then I’d recommend installing Lightroom v3.2.1 (What used to be called LightroomCC) Sync any (all?) collections from Classic to Lightroom. Lightroom Classic will creat proxy Smart DNGs and send them to the cloud. Where they are available in Lightroom Web and in the Lightroom (cloudy) app on the MBA. Your wife can browse, cull, organize (collections are called Albums) and some develop edits. Her changes will be reflected back in Classic.
One Caveat: Keywords are treated differently in the two apps. Lightroom (cloudy) only supports a flat heirarchy. But this will be fine if you use a flat hierarchy in Classic.


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[Jim Wilde]

One Caveat: Keywords are treated differently in the two apps. Lightroom (cloudy) only supports a flat heirarchy. But this will be fine if you use a flat hierarchy in Classic.

The bigger caveat, of course, is that Keywords do not sync between Classic and Lightroom....which might be a deal-breaker if you want the ability to keyword in either app and have those keywords sync to the other.

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

Is her work on existing images or is her culling and organization only as they come into lightroom?

I ask because a lot of people front-end lightroom with Photo Mechanic. It's much faster for culling and initial review than Lightroom, it can code all metadata and lightroom will read it afterwards on ingestion.

Another possibility that is similar, if her work is only for inbound photos, is to use lightroom separately. Ingest in here's cull, code, etc., then export that as a catalog and import it into your master lightroom and delete from her's.

That last part is key -- it's not useful to continue editing and then import again, there lies all sorts of conflict possibilities. But as a staging process for ingestion, you can just use another copy of lightroom. I've done that on vacation -- I take a laptop, start the catalog empty, ingest periodically and review and cull, and when I get back I ingest that catalog in my desktop one.

Neither of these two are of any benefit if the desire is to have her continue editing older images already in your catalog.

 

[joptimus]

Is her work on existing images or is her culling and organization only as they come into lightroom?

I ask because a lot of people front-end lightroom with Photo Mechanic. It's much faster for culling and initial review than Lightroom, it can code all metadata and lightroom will read it afterwards on ingestion.

Another possibility that is similar, if her work is only for inbound photos, is to use lightroom separately. Ingest in here's cull, code, etc., then export that as a catalog and import it into your master lightroom and delete from her's.

That last part is key -- it's not useful to continue editing and then import again, there lies all sorts of conflict possibilities. But as a staging process for ingestion, you can just use another copy of lightroom. I've done that on vacation -- I take a laptop, start the catalog empty, ingest periodically and review and cull, and when I get back I ingest that catalog in my desktop one.

Neither of these two are of any benefit if the desire is to have her continue editing older images already in your catalog.

Thanks for all the answers!

Basically both our work concerns all of our images - old and new. For example if we're looking for putting new prints up, we would browse our keyworded pictures and chose a couple of them. So I'm afraid, going the route with separate catalogues or Photo mechanic doesn't provide the full benefit that we want.

I'm curious as to why Adobe doesn't improve the LR Cloud system so one can access the full catalogue from different computers with all the features.
Also I'd be great to be able to do this just via local network at home, not via the internet. Our internet connection upload is about 1% of our wifi bandwidth. Why do I have to go through that?

 

[clee01l]

Thanks for all the answers!

Basically both our work concerns all of our images - old and new. For example if we're looking for putting new prints up, we would browse our keyworded pictures and chose a couple of them. So I'm afraid, going the route with separate catalogues or Photo mechanic doesn't provide the full benefit that we want.

I'm curious as to why Adobe doesn't improve the LR Cloud system so one can access the full catalogue from different computers with all the features.
Also I'd be great to be able to do this just via local network at home, not via the internet. Our internet connection upload is about 1% of our wifi bandwidth. Why do I have to go through that?

The purpose of Lightroom (cloudy) is the make all images available everywhere. You can’t keep the images on a local network because the Adobe cloud is at Adobe and not on your local network. Lightroom Classic uses a single user database that by design can’t be on a network for data integrity Lightroom cloudy uses a robust industrial strength database designed for internet access. You can use one or the other. The integration of Lightroom Classic with Lightroom is a transition from Classic to the cloud. The integration can be used to your advantage, but there is no guarantee that the integration will continue or be improved


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[Linwood Ferguson]

The purpose of Lightroom (cloudy) is the make all images available everywhere. You can’t keep the images on a local network because the Adobe cloud is at Adobe and not on your local network. Lightroom Classic uses a single user database that by design can’t be on a network for data integrity Lightroom cloudy uses a robust industrial strength database designed for internet access. You can use one or the other. The integration of Lightroom Classic with Lightroom is a transition from Classic to the cloud. The integration can be used to your advantage, but there is no guarantee that the integration will continue or be improved

There's an ominous tone to the end of that which I think needs to be noted. I think many of us expect that over years Classic will wither on the vine and Cloudy will be the successor. But I think almost all of those also think that is years and years away. Adobe still invests in Classic. A very key aspect is that Classic and Cloudy share the same image rendering engine for raw conversion, so there appears to be zero risk in losing your edits if you one day decide to migrate. I think there will be plenty of time if there is ever a point at which migration is to become more, rather than less difficult.

Personally I tend to recommend you choose one - classic or cloudy -- and not try to use the mixture. Adobe did a (in my personal opinion) lousy job on the integration, whether on purpose or accidentally designing in a lot of quirks to trip up those who do not pay the closest of attention (and even some who do). Keywords and directional asymmetry are just two examples.

If you can't migrate to Cloudy (or do not want to, e.g. because of the whole "cloud" issue), you may be an exception who needs to capitalize on the limited integration that exists. I think there is plenty of good documentation on it (including here) that if you dive in you can avoid most of the pitfalls, and I really do not expect that integration to get worse in the moderate future. Too many customers still rely on it, not just for simultaneous use of both, but for migration -- and migration is what Adobe hopes for. To get you on their cloudy version. So they are not going to make that path harder.