Laptop - workstation workflow

[PeterTaylor]

Hello,


This is my second question relating to Lightroom. I am a Motorsport photographer and thus sometime (more often than not) have process some images at the circuit for clients and news publications. I can see that using light room will not be a problem for this; in fact it will be a huge benefit. My question is two part and relates to c catalogue s as a present I am using iView as my main cataloguing tool.


I have seen a couple for other threads on this subject but nothing that was helpful on first read.

With my current workflow when at the circuit I use my Laptop and normally download my images to a series of folders specific to that event and I edit, caption and process the images as needed. When I return home I copy the folder structure for that event to the relevant folder on the hard drive of my workstation and also make a copy on a external hard drive (1.6TB RAID 5 NAS). If any extra work needs to be done or these images or I have not yet finished working on them then this is now completed on the workstation and then the workstation and back drive are synchronised and once I am happy the files are deleted from the laptop. At the end of the year (usually January/February) just before the start of the racing season all the previous year’s images are removed from the workstation hard drive to make space to the coming years work.

These are my questions.

1 Which is the best method of copying or moving the catalogue from the laptop the workstation?

2. On the workstation I have a catalogue for my Motorsport this is on drive E: and a catalogue for all other work this is on drive F: . This keeps my work spate form my own stuff. (There is no crossover of work or potential for crossover because Motorsport mags will not be looking at wildlife images and vice versa. The next question is which would be the best method of keeping the changes made to images on the workstation when they are copied to the external hard drive system, and how should I go about cataloguing the external hard drive.

I know my workflow and procedures will need to change, this is not a problem, I just want to make sure that I have a clear idea of what I am doing before I start.



Peter

 

[Gene McCullagh]

Peter,

The best way to move images is to import / export catalogs. Matt Kloskowski gave a good overview of this on his site at Lightroom Killer Tips.

By doing it this way you can preserve any work already done while in the field.

 

[johnbeardy]

I routinely move stuff from my Mac laptop to my main PC desktop (I typically download a shoot onto the laptop and do my first edits there). While there's obviously more than one way to do it, the way I find easiest is to attach a portable hard drive (Epson P2''') to the laptop and do an Export from Catalog, including negatives and previews. I then attach the PHD to the PC, open the workstation's catalogue, and do an Import from Catalog, pointing to the catalogue on the PHD and leaving the pictures where they are, for a moment. Lastly in LR I move the folders from the PHD to their final location on the main PC. The advantage of this method is that at no stage are any of these folders "uncontrolled" or "unmanaged" by Lightroom ie showing in red - the catalogue on the PHD knows where the pictures are, as does my main catalogue once the Import from Catalog process is done.

Clearly I can avoid the laptop's Export from Catalog step if my laptop catalogue only contains pictures I want to transfer. OTOH it means more manual effort, finding and copying over the pictures, and fixing missing folders.

John

 

[johnbeardy]

As for your question 2, I would suggest using Lightroom, not Explorer, to move the images onto the backup drive and keeping one work catalogue with access to all your work images, wherever they are, and another for the rest, wherever they are. Why break up any further the management of your picture collection? Just imagine you want all your 5 star sports shots - you'll only have to search one catalogue. Anything more than a couple of catalogues matched to clear physical entities (your drives) starts to complicate things, which always leads to inefficiencies and to human errors. Lightroom can cope with large numbers of pictures.

John

 

[davidmknoble]

I think in all cases the key is to develop a workflow in which only ONE catalog is the catalog used to make adjustments and edits and ONE remains the final catalog (or catalogs).

That way you know where to go to get the most up to date image.

PS: I also use a laptop, but in reverse. I keep the main catalog on a desktop with RAID storage for the work images. Then I export a catalog with the images I want to use for web publishing or other work to my laptop and take them with me. I feel better about the master catalog being in a safe place.

Good luck!

 

[PeterTaylor]

Thanks for all the help.

Thanks John I can now see the solution, this had been getting me a little puzzled.

 

[Bruce J]

Another question

I routinely move stuff from my Mac laptop to my main PC desktop (I typically download a shoot onto the laptop and do my first edits there). While there's obviously more than one way to do it, the way I find easiest is to attach a portable hard drive (Epson P2''') to the laptop and do an Export from Catalog, including negatives and previews. I then attach the PHD to the PC, open the workstation's catalogue, and do an Import from Catalog, pointing to the catalogue on the PHD and leaving the pictures where they are, for a moment. Lastly in LR I move the folders from the PHD to their final location on the main PC. The advantage of this method is that at no stage are any of these folders "uncontrolled" or "unmanaged" by Lightroom ie showing in red - the catalogue on the PHD knows where the pictures are, as does my main catalogue once the Import from Catalog process is done

John

John,

I really like your system, and sometimes use something like it, but I have an additional question. When I'm working in my working catalog, I sometimes need to add a new keyword to my keyword list. That's fine for the working catalog, but when I export a catalog w/ the current working images and then import the catalog to my archive catalog, how do I get the new keywords to show up in the keyword list for the archive catalog? Do I have to remember that I've created new keywords and then export and import keyword lists? I hope there's a more reliable solution than that, as my memory is certainly not that good, particularly when I've been working on a set of images for a week or more. Thanks,

 

[johnbeardy]

Bruce,

If you assign your new keyword to an image, it'll ride into the archive catalogue just fine. Otherwise, I'd go the export/import route.

Actually, I got into a real mess with keyword hierarchies differing on my various systems. It was such a mess that I finally wiped out all hierarchical elements and don't plan to go back that way (I'm using smart collections instead). What made it more irritating was that I knew my control was loose.

I'd also add that keeping keywords in sync (eg spelling, singular or plural) is one reason I give for minimizing the number of catalogues.

John

 

[Bruce J]

Bruce,

If you assign your new keyword to an image, it'll ride into the archive catalogue just fine. Otherwise, I'd go the export/import route.

Actually, I got into a real mess with keyword hierarchies differing on my various systems. It was such a mess that I finally wiped out all hierarchical elements and don't plan to go back that way (I'm using smart collections instead). What made it more irritating was that I knew my control was loose.

I'd also add that keeping keywords in sync (eg spelling, singular or plural) is one reason I give for minimizing the number of catalogues.

John

Thanks John,

Guess I'll have to do some experimenting. If I understand correctly, the new keyword will go into the archive catalog OK, but will not maintain it's hierarchical position correctly. That doesn't work for me as I make extensive use of keyword hierarchies. Exporting and importing the keyword list works fine, if you can remember that it needs to be done. Oh well, nothing's perfect, I guess.

 

[johnbeardy]

Maybe I shouldn't have confused things by adding my comments about hierarchical keywords. Do experiment, but the key point was in that first sentence - if a keyword is assigned to an image, it and its hierarchy will ride on the image and be carried into the main catalogue. If it isn't assigned to an image included in export as catalog, then that keyword won't be taken over and you'd have to do the export/import keyword method.

My issue was that the hierarchies weren't the same on two machines. So I might have Travel / Italy on one and Travel / Europe / Italy on the other. The result is that you soon have related images in one or both hierarchies. Of course, I always knew that this would happen if I didn't keep tight control.

It strikes me that hierarchical keywords have two purposes - maximizing the number of keywords you can assign in the time available, and then finding pictures via a tree structure. I don't think they stand up to well in a multi computer setting, let alone if you're working with more than one app, and certainly not if you're continually experimenting as I do. But the first problem alone can cause things to break.
I'm now much happier after flattening the hierarchy in keywords, and switched to using synonyms and more keywords sets to maximize data entry, and to smart collections to build a tree structure for organizing and finding pictures.

John

 

[Brad Snyder]

I'm now much happier after flattening the hierarchy in keywords, and switched to using synonyms and more keywords sets to maximize data entry, and to smart collections to build a tree structure for organizing and finding pictures.

John

John, would you provide a simple example illuminating this, particularly the smart collection bit?

 

[johnbeardy]

Hard to say without checking every detail of the LR2 public beta.... But a typical example might be for weddings where in my flat keywords list are "wedding" and "candid" and I might have one smart collection such as "keywords contains wedding and rating greater than 3". In the same tree might also be "keywords contains wedding and keywords contains candid and rating greater than 3". And so on.

I now have a simple flat keywords list - candid is there once and not hidden down one or two keyword trees. I can define my smart collections to allow for my catalogue not being fully keyworded - eg "keywords contains wedding or filename contains wedding or caption contains wedding" (here I'd be using the SC to scoop everything up and would then add the wedding keyword). It's simpler with multiple computers, and applications. And I can build up my organizational hierarchy any way I want, mixing dumb and smart collections, and not have to worry what these groupings might do to my keyword list, which is left to do its job of describing the images and not pretending to organize them.

John

 

[stasber]

Workflow that I've started using between laptop and desktop (both Macs) is to have the same catalog on both, and synchronize it. Snapshots, metadata and keywords are synced including colour labels and star ratings, but collections and virtual copies are not.

Synchronizing folders gives me the option to show the import dialog, and with that I can choose the regular import options, such as import at current location or copy to new location, etc.

In the catalog I have essentially two folders (there are more but trying to keep the illustration simple here); one folder is the set of folders on the local machine, and the other is the set of folders on the other machine, so I can synchronize each separately.

Though I've not tried it yet, I should also be able to move files & folders within the catalog; so moving them from the local machine to the other within the folder hierarchy should be possible. Then just synchronize folders on the target machine so that it picks up the changes. Will be trying this soon.