Lightroom Classic on vacation

[BarryJones]

Lightroom Version Number

11.3.1

Operating System

1. macOS 12 Monterey

Great guidance both in the main book and also the free eBook for using Lightroom Classic on a laptop on vacation - thank you. The only practical issue I find is that after merging the 'travel' catalog back onto the main computer (copying the photos to to the main library in the process) subsequent 'normal' import sessions on the main computer from the folders containing the current year's photographs don't recognise the photos as already being in the catalog and I have to deselect them to avoid then being imported a second time. My workaround is to 'bury' the already imported photos from vacations in a sub-folder.
Am I missing a trick somewhere please? Thanks.

 

[wtremmel]

Here is how I do it, which is a bit a different approach and might not suit everybody:

• I keep my Mac Mini with Lightroom Classic open running at home
• I have configured an auto-import folder inside iCloud Drive
• Each evening I put all my vacation shots into that iCloud Drive folder on my laptop
• The folder is synced to home automatically by iCloud
• Lightroom Classic at home pulls the images out of the iCloud Drive folder and imports them into a Collections, which is then shared via Adobe Cloud
• I use the Cloud version or the Web version of Lightroom to make first selections or adjustments
• When at home everybody is already in place.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

I thought they’d fixed the image hash going missing when using import from catalog, but it sounds like maybe not. Might reformatting the memory card after importing work around it for you? Or take a copy of your main catalog with you on vacation, and import straight into it rather than using a temporary catalog?

 

[BarryJones]

Yes that would be quite a workable solution - I’ve run a small catalog directly off a fast Samsung T7 external SSD but not larger ones.
As for reformatting the memory card my workflow is to rename files (Bridge) before import into Lightroom so that I have the original RAWs and JPGs in a separate structured file system as a backup. I still copy them into the catalog so use twice the storage but this keeps a version safely out of any proprietary database/file system - quite paranoid I know! So I probably help to create my problem.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Ah that might explain it… the duplicate detection uses the filename among other things, so it would be comparing the bridge filename rather than the one on the card

 

[BarryJones]

Possibly - although after that initial renaming long before LR import the filename is never touched. But I note that LR seems to keep track of ‘legacy’ file properties. At some point I’ll do an experiment with some original camera files and report back!
Thanks.