I've been lurking for a few days trying to get acquainted with LR (coming from photoshop, not a power user by any means) and I have a similar predicament. I'll outline it the best I can and I'd love it if you guys could give a best recommendation. I'll have several questions, so bear with me.
I have two computers I'll be working in LR regularly. My own personal computer--don't know if it matters but it's a windows 10 machine--and my work computer, a macbook air. I am storing my originals on an external drive, and back them up to google drive. Primarily I'd like to be able to work on images on my work computer without having to carry around my external drive, and without having to constantly import/export catalogs. Ideally I'd like to be able to work on images on both computers without the drive attached--in other words, do an initial import, most likely on my personal computer, and then be able to work on either computer and have the catalog sync across each.
I'm confused as to how collections and smart previews work--when I read adobe's material on each, it sounds like collections allow you to work on things across multiple platforms, but when I tried this today I was unable to see my collections on one of the computers. From what I understand about smart previews, they are basically just smaller versions of previews that take up less space.
What is the best way to go about this? Is it even possible?
Where should I be storing my master catalog? On my personal computer or on the external drive with the originals? Again, either place it will be backed up.
Does google drive accept catalog files?
I'll probably have more questions as the discussion continues. I appreciate you guys helping this newbie out!
The program doesn't work the way you are thinking about it. Importing your photos into LR from the external drive doesn't actually put the photos themselves on your computer. Once you detach the external drive, those photos will be missing in LR (you'll see a ? next to each folder in the folder list). In order to work on the photos without attaching your external drive, you'd have to download them to your computer and point LR to the place they are found (usually the computer's Pictures folder, but you could put them anywhere). I do not have this option, because my new laptop's memory is too small to accommodate my photos--thus the external drive. My original, now secondary, laptop does have all the photos on its own hard drive, so I don't have to move the external drive back and forth. However, see "BUT" in next paragraph.
If you have enough space on both your computers' hard drives, you could download your photos to both computers and still back them up to Google Drive. BUT, you will have the bigger problem of keeping these two computers in sync. Backing up LR is only backing up the data base; it isn't what you work on when you open LR. I.e., it will not make the changes to a second computer unless you use the backups to restore your photos--something I wouldn't want to have to do except in an emergency.
Obviously, I don't know how many photos you have or what your workflow is like. You could keep all your photos on one computer (or external drive) and copy to a thumb drive just those you want to deal with on the second computer. But then you'd have to copy the changed photos back to your main computer (or external drive) when you get home so that they replace the un-worked-on ones there. This would work, perhaps, but only if you don't need to have everything available all the time in both places.
Truly, as far as I can work it out, the most practical way to work on two computers and to keep everything up to date is to keep the photos on a little external drive, attaching it to whichever computer you are working on at the time. Then you are always working only on one master set of your photos, no matter which computer is being used. Maybe somebody has a better idea, but I'm not aware of it. Anyway, it doesn't seem much different from carrying a second cell phone in your briefcase.
Don't think I've solved your issues, but I hope it's helped some.
Gail