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Re: [OM] Musings - Re: setting up a photo database

Subject: Re: [OM] Musings - Re: setting up a photo database
From: "Piers Hemy" <piers@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2020 13:28:25 -0000
Perhaps more useful, though, is this from 8 November 2019:

Today's Question
I travel and also split extended time between two homes. I keep my photos and 
Lightroom Classic catalog on an external drive that I use between desktop 
computer at my main house and on a laptop when traveling and at the second 
house. I backup the catalog to the internal hard drive on both computers, and 
to a second external drive. About once a month I backup the two computers and 
the external drive to another external drive. Any concerns or better ways for 
me to handle this situation?
Tim's Quick Answer:
Overall I think this is a good solution to a multiple-location workflow. You 
might consider fine-tuning some of the details of your workflow to ensure 
optimal performance, or even consider whether the cloud-based version of 
Lightroom might be a good solution for your workflow.
More Detail:
The first thing I would consider is whether a laptop might serve you well as 
the only computer in your workflow. More than a decade ago I realized that I 
was traveling so much that it didn't seem to make sense to use a desktop 
computer at home and a laptop when traveling. Switching to using a laptop as my 
only computer no matter where I am has greatly streamlined my overall workflow. 
You could even use a full-size keyboard and additional monitor connected to 
your laptop so you have a more "desktop" type of experience when using the 
laptop at home. 
 
If you prefer to work with two separate computers so you have a more powerful 
desktop computer at your disposal at home, the key thing I would do is make 
sure you're using the fastest external hard drive possible. Having the 
Lightroom Classic catalog on an external hard drive can cause performance in 
Lightroom to be significantly degraded, unless that external hard drive is 
quite fast.
 
The only other concern I have based on the description of your workflow is that 
your backups don't seem to be happening very frequently. In my mind, backing up 
your hard drives once a month is not nearly frequent enough, unless you're 
really not updating the data on your master hard drives very frequently. I 
recommend, for example, backing up your hard drives after every download from a 
photo shoot, and anytime you have otherwise significantly updated your data.
 
Of course, the right frequency for backing up depends on how frequently you are 
adding or updating data in your workflow. Most photographers I talk to are 
updating quite a bit of data over the course of a month, and so backing up 
weekly (or even more frequently) may be more appropriate.

-----Original Message-----
From: Piers Hemy <piers@xxxxxxxx> 
Sent: 08 January 2020 13:24
To: 'Olympus Camera Discussion' <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [OM] Musings - Re: setting up a photo database

Here is what Tim had to say on 17 May 2017:

========================
Today's Question
I purchased a new laptop for travel and teaching. I want to use the same 
Lightroom catalog and images on both machines [laptop and desktop]. What do you 
recommend?
Tim's Quick Answer:
In this type of situation my recommendation would be to keep both your 
Lightroom catalog and your photos on the same external hard drive. You can then 
open the catalog from that external hard drive on whichever computer you're 
currently using to work with your images.
More Detail:
Lightroom does not offer a native solution for effectively working with your 
full catalog on more than one computer. That includes the inability to store 
your catalog on a network storage location, preventing you from being able to 
access the catalog from multiple computers on a network. 
 
Some photographers have employed an online synchronization service such as 
Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com) to make a catalog available on more than one 
computer. While this can most certainly be a workable solution, I do have 
concerns about the potential for synchronization failure, and of course this 
type of approach would require that you have access to an Internet connection 
in order to synchronize the actual files you're working with.
 
As a result of the various limitations related to working with a catalog across 
two computers, I recommend simply keeping the catalog itself on an external 
hard drive along with the photos being managed by that catalog. You can then 
connect the external hard drive to whichever computer you want to work with 
currently. Within Lightroom, you can then open the catalog directly from the 
external hard drive, so that you're always working with the actual catalog 
files (without the need for synchronization), and you always have your photos 
readily available as well.

The only potentially significant drawback to this approach of storing the 
Lightroom catalog on an external hard drive is degradation in performance. Most 
external hard drives are slower than a comparable internal hard drive, and 
there are also latency issues that can further degrade performance. For some 
photographers this reduction in performance is reason enough to work with only 
a single computer for Lightroom. For example, I keep my Lightroom catalog on my 
laptop, so that I always have access to the catalog whether I'm at home or 
traveling with my laptop.
========================

And on 12 December 2012:

========================
Today's Question: I have "snow-bird" issues concerning Lightroom, which I just 
bought and am beginning to learn. I live six months in Ohio and six months 
Florida with a desktop Mac in each state.

I've been keeping the photos I take while I'm in Ohio on the Ohio computer's 
internal hard drive and the photos I take while I'm in Florida on the Florida 
computer's internal hard drive. I carry three external hard drives with me 
between states [two of them representing backups, one for Ohio and one for 
Florida]. What is a reasonable workflow for working in Lightroom if I want 
access to all my photographs whether I'm in Ohio or Florida?
Tim's Answer: This is actually a very good example of when storing your 
Lightroom catalog on an external hard drive along with your photos makes 
perfect sense.

The first thing I would do is start using an external hard drive as your 
primary storage location for all photos, which might mean buying a new external 
hard drive that has enough space for all of the photos in both of your 
locations (Ohio and Florida). If you've not really gotten started with your 
Lightroom catalog you could simply create a new catalog on that external hard 
drive, transfer all of the images from both locations onto that hard drive, and 
then import using the "Add" option so that the catalog contains a reference to 
all of the images on that external hard drive. During that import you could 
simply choose the hard drive itself (not a folder on the hard drive) as the 
source of images to be imported, and turn on the Include All Subfolders 
checkbox so all photos on the drive get imported.

If you have already gotten started with your catalogs in each location, I would 
recommend a slightly different approach. Start by exporting as a catalog (File 
> Export as Catalog from the meu) to copy your first catalog to the external 
hard drive complete with all photos. Then connect that external hard drive to 
the other computer at the other location, and open the catalog in Lightroom 
from the external hard drive. Then choose File > Import from Another Catalog, 
select the "local" catalog that contained images only from that location, and 
use the Copy option to copy images from your internal drive to the external 
drive, adding them to the catalog in the process.

The result is all of your photos will be on a single external hard drive, and 
your single Lightroom catalog will also be on that external hard drive. This 
allows you to work with your Lightroom catalog on any computer in any location 
(provided that computer has Lightroom installed) by simply opening the catalog 
directly from the external hard drive.
========================

But I confess to not understanding "paying subscriber".

Piers


-----Original Message-----
From: olympus <olympus-bounces+piers.hemy=gmail.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On 
Behalf Of Jez Cunningham
Sent: 07 January 2020 23:10
To: Olympus Camera Discussion <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [OM] Musings - Re: setting up a photo database

Tim Grey has answered that question a few times - not sure how accessible
his q&a are if you’re not a paying subscriber though...
Jez

On Tue, 7 Jan 2020 at 21:49, Mike Gordon via olympus <
olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> So what is a good strategy to deal with 2 computers?
>
> Keeping all photos and the LR catalogue on external drive seems nuts with
> all the space I have on the new system.  Some keep a catalogued synced on 2
> systems, usually a laptop and tower with a laptop for travel.  That looks
> complex.
> It does not look like LR will accept having the catalogue on a network
> drive if I configured my current laptop C drive as such.   The catalogue by
> itself can be on an external drive and LR doesn't care which computer it is
> on.
> Perhaps just transfer the images to the new system as there is plenty of
> room and have two separate catalogues  (one on each)and add the images to
> the system where they were not processed. Both will be backed up and adds
> redundancy but is more work too.
>
> Trying to get sorted, Mike
>
> --
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