Transfer setting between computers?

[MikeCaine]

I currently shoot RAW photos, ingest them using ImageIngesterPro (renaming the files to "shooters-initials_yyyy-mm-dd_original-file-name"), then catalog them in iView Media Pro. I currently have about 3',''' RAW files. The ones that I wast to print of upload to a web site get processed in PS CS2.

I'm going away to Paris and London over Christmas and New Year and I'll be taking my 4'D, my laptop with Lightroom installed, and a couple of Lightroom books. My intention is to get used to Lightroom and see if I can use that as my main DAM program and for most of my processing for print or web.

My main question is if I get my laptop copy of Lightroom all set up how I like it can I then somehow transfer those settings over to my desktop copy, or do I have to re enter them all over again? I'm thinking of settings like custome import renaming, templates, etc.

Also, for the first time, I might try converting mt RAW files to DNG on import and use them as I understand that keywords and settings can be saved out to the DNG file. This would be handy for me as I may still then import the photos into IVMP and I'm a bit reluctant to let go of my IVMP catalogs altogether.

Another question is how could I get all the info from IVMP into Lightroom. I understand that I could write my data to the RAW file, but I'm reluctant to do that in case of file corruption. Is there someway I could used sidecar files (which I hate) to hold the data temporarily until I import the files into Lightroom, then convert them to DNG and then write to data to the DNG?

I see Lightroom as the future of my photo DAM and processing but I'm not too sure how to change horses from IVMP to Lightroom and also change my current workflow to Lightroom.

Thanks for any pointers

Mike

 

[Sean McCormack]

You can copy the new templates/presets across manually.
John Beardsworth is the iVMP expert, maybe he can help.
Personally I would just 'Sync Annotations' and go from there. I'm not sure about iVMP using sidecars. FWIW all the metadata from Lightroom saves into sidecar files when dealing with RAW. DNG is the solution that avoids this.

 

[MikeCaine]

You can copy the new templates/presets across manually.

Great news, that's excellent

John Beardsworth is the iVMP expert, maybe he can help.

I've heard his name on the iVMP forums and possibly on the DAMbook forum, I'll see if he has covered this before.

FWIW all the metadata from Lightroom saves into sidecar files when dealing with RAW. DNG is the solution that avoids this.

This is what I'm coming to realize. I think DNG may well be the best way to go for me. I'm assuming that most people don't embed the original RAW file in the DNG and either trash it or archive it separately?

Thanks

Mike

 

[DonRicklin]

John is a Member here so you may well hear from him.



Don

 

[Kiwigeoff]

Mike, I convert all my NEF files to DNG without the raw embedded and archive the NEFs, this works well for me.