Workflow advice for laptop

[jimbouk]

Good morning,
new here so here goes,
Been using lightroom for my images for a year or so mainly on my desktop pc.
However i now aim to do most of my initial editing / proofing on my laptop before moving images to an external hard drive for storage , and removing them from my laptop to save space.
Would appreciate advice on a workflow to enable me to achieve this. Would i still have to import images to the laptop and again import them to the hard drive for final storage ?
Thanks in advance

Jim

 

[Chad]

Jim,
I'm rather new on the forums myself. I have a thought about your question and another related question.

First, I don't think you would have to import the images to the laptop again, you should probably be able to either export them to the hard drive as JPG's if you were interested in doing that. Or another option would be to export all your images as a catalog. A 'catalog' refers to a collection of images referenced for use in Lightroom (when you open Lightroom and see all your images, they are organized in your default catalog.) Select the photos you want and then choose 'Export as Catalog' (On my mac it is under the file menu). This should allow you to use lightroom on the laptop to manage the files on the external drive.


Questions:
You didn't say if your laptop is a pc or a mac. (They suggest in the forums that you put the type of equipment [cameras, computers] you are using in your signature, so that people can give you more specific and accurate responses).

This is a question for someone else. If Jim is using a mac laptop and exports the images to a catalog from a pc, would the laptop be able to read the file?

If that worked, then you could use Lighrroom as normal on your laptop to edit images. When you are done with them, then you could open up the catalog on the external hard drive and from there use the 'Import images from catalog' feature to copy them from your laptop's catalog. This way you would keep all of the organizational tools that Lightroom makes available for the images on your external drive. (I've not used the import from Catalog feature very much, but I think it would work).

So that's what I'm thinking. I'm still new in the forum, and would love for someone with more experience to take a look at this to verify it's a good idea. I'm looking at implementing a similar workflow myself (getting an external drive soon), and would love to hear others' thoughts on it.

 

[jimbouk]

Thanks for that,
Just to clarify i am using a pc laptop, nikon dslr camera and import images via my laptops card reader and sd card from the camera.
My ideal workflow would be to import images , view and initial proof , delete ,rate keyword etc , export to hard drive as RAW or TIFF and delete the original imports from my laptop.

 

[Brad Snyder]

Jim, there's about a million threads here on that subject, (okay I'm exaggerating ), and there are numerous ways to approach the task.

I'm still not entirely clear on your proposed workflow.

1. Import raw files from card to LR on laptop. (Raw only ?)
2. Sort, select, refine, rate, keyword, adjust, discard etc. with LR on laptop.

Just so we can steer you in the right direction,

3. Then what?
Are you interested in saving all your raw files, or only the keepers, or none?
Will you be exporting derivative (JPG, TIFF, PSD) files? For what purpose?
What files exactly will be on the external drive? Before or after processing?
Does the old desktop have anything to do with it? Do you want access to the files there as well? (The default license allows two installations, just for this situation). Backups?

Not trying to be troublesome, but there are a number of ways to proceed here, and the answers to these questions are quite important.

In the meantime, welcome aboard. A little more info, and we'll get you straightened out.