P: Allow Catalog to be stored on a networked drive.

stuart, I don't know who the question was intended to but I will respond no. Not at this point at least. Because the advantages of using LR still outweighs the disadvantages. This does not prevent me from wanting more...

My question now: why do you categorically refuse to talk about improvements? Why do you so badly want to prevent LR from moving forward with collaborative features? (aside from your previous arguments about stability, focus of the dev team on other things than image related feature)?

I guess the question is: Is the tiny part you hate about it a deal breaker?

PS Elements?

True, although better an underworked Elephant than an over worked Mouse, right? 🙂

"Master files are stored on shared storage yeah, as far as speed... As i said, how much money do you have to throw at it, sure I can get some dark fiber in, two isilon servers running failover, but that's £200k for the storage alone."

To my point, storing the master file locally is still the best and cheapest option. I was just trying to point out one weakness in your solution. Starting from the principle that a local copy is best and I need a centralized archive, why not think about a way that the push/pull of the master file is done by LR and not manually? But we can put that part aside and concentrate on the metadata...

"To what, facilitate a sub £90 piece of software, that's just perverse my friend."

I never suggested that the collaborative features we are trying to talk about here would not come at a price. I am taling about a collaborative environment for LR and potentially all components of the Creative Suite. Let's just put the price tag aside for the sake of the discussion. And perverse how? Define perverse? I use cheaper software that do a lot. The price is not a function of what the software does but the market for it. It's Adobe's job to figure the tolerance of the market. If they offer such features for a price that I can deal with, I might very well go for it.

"The problem here is that you fail to see the 80% positives and concentrate on the 20% negative. I'm pragmatic, I have to be when I'm in at clients doing this stuff, the aim is to deliver, that's the overriding factor, sure there are niggles that need to be overcome, but again its all down to budget."

Not at all, I am just trying to brainstorm on potential improvement to LR, not trying to find workarounds to the lack of collaborative features. The 20% you are referring to is exactly why we are having this discussion in the first place. I told you your workaround is smart but that is not the point of this thread, to find workarounds. We are trying to propose enhancements so we do NOT have to do workarounds.

"There are myriad DAM, MAM and PAM services out there that run on SQL, some cheap, some not so cheap. Given our chats over the past few days I can only recommend you seriously think about ditching LR and look at a MAM that has the network SQL cross platform, cross pollination you require."

I want to use LR and PS and have a collaborative environment. Not an extra piece of software to maintain. There are not a lot of pieces missing in the puzzle, why not brainstorm on which ones would make our "Adobe" life easier. This does not mean I am not looking elsewhere but that does not prevent me from wanting more from Adobe.

"By tagging your collections with both colour and rating, sharing the filter over your users, each person can create local collections based on the same criteria"

Not very efficient. The collection info is already in the catalog. Just allow me to share it more effectively and the job is done. Why force everybody to recreate the whole thing when it is already there in catalog?

Axiom came with a better example and I thank him for that. But essentially, it is the same as mine. A bunch of teams members needing to share data quickly and efficiently. The current incarnation of LR, or the whole CS for that matter, does not offer that. There are other solutions on the market but I like LR. What can Adobe do for me better than workarounds? Isin't that the whole point of the "Ideas" forum? If not, tell why we are having this discussion here and not on some generic forum about photography and workflow?

"This goes back to your idea of combing bridge and LR, Brightroom. "

This is a funny, yet strange idea. Just because LR and Bridge share almost everything in common except the catalog concept. The catalog is just XMP data + some more info in an SQL lite database. There is no need for Brightroom, Lightroom is there. Just unleash the database in LR and the job is done! Why fight against it?

ah... that's the kicker - let's pretend we are NOT using PS.
Here's why : it's an elephant when you only need a mouse.

OLD workflow was to import into bridge - then use gimp/ps as required - or even in some cases just exported from bridge - sometimes photographers take the perfect shot no edits required but "sizing".

So to have copies of PS on all machines is not always affordable.
Plus all the features LR has that BR doesn't also come into play - and InDesign - no - no check in and out - it's all placed files with "refresh changes" when an "original" is altered

So the work flow is as stated - LR does what we need - EXCEPT - allow multi user. Fits the bill "perfectly" - edit, crop, fast retouch, colour, filter - no need at all for PS.

Remember here, it's just a photo for an article - not rebranding a company logo/special effect.

Additionally - you're a mac user on the unix and mac flavours of file systems - we cannot access lcats on ntfs drives via a network - at best it's local lcat pointed to a network folder. We also cannot change OS'es to suit development - especially when production is primarily PC (ie the printing machines and software to run them are always PC) and there issues with using a mac ai file on a windows ai machine - there's almost always a subtle "change".
Especially with fonts.

So lightroom fits all the easy "point and click search bills" that it's promoted to do - it's why we love it - and hate it for being a one person at a time piece of kit.

Axion.

Great, A real world scenario, this is what I was really after.

I would say from the quick few reads Ive given it, that most of that workflow doesn't even have to touch LR. If at all if you use PS.

• Centralised ingest via multiple cards, that's a given. Photo Mechanic can do this at the same time. Just plug up multiple Lexar card readers and you can ingest multiple cards to multiple different shared repository

Have you considered using Adobe drive, editing in Photoshop with Bridge. Check in and check out via indesign is possible?

Gives you multi user access to a single file store using versioning and tagging. That's something I have put in at graphic houses and although they may not be 'press' they still have the need to work collaboratively on the same files using
shared resource.

I did try to alias the lcat on shared storage, and although it works with shared storage, ie every path the same. It also means you need to SMB to each shared LR user, which can only lead to all kinds of problems

This goes back to your idea of combing bridge and LR, Brightroom.
Or if I can add my idea of 'Lightbridge' as the title 🙂

Master files are stored on shared storage yeah, as far as speed... As i said, how much money do you have to throw at it, sure I can get some dark fiber in, two isilon servers running failover, but that's £200k for the storage alone.

To what, facilitate a sub £90 piece of software, that's just perverse my friend.

The problem here is that you fail to see the 80% positives and concentrate on the 20% negative. I'm pragmatic, I have to be when I'm in at clients doing this stuff, the aim is to deliver, that's the overriding factor, sure there are niggles that need to be overcome, but again its all down to budget.

There are myriad DAM, MAM and PAM services out there that run on SQL, some cheap, some not so cheap. Given our chats over the past few days I can only recommend you seriously think about ditching LR and look at a MAM that has the network SQL cross platform, cross pollination you require.

By tagging your collections with both colour and rating, sharing the filter over your users, each person can create local collections based on the same criteria

Nice to chat to you Andre 🙂

okay, credit where it's due!

Nifty implementation, but, it has the remaining flaw of not being "collaborative" and I'll expand - and try to answer your earlier question of "environments" where a shared lightroom would be needed - and its workflow. (though I did this earlier) but who wants to look right? lol

Okay.
5 photographers submit their sd cards for their photoshoots.
One person imports them into lightroom on one computer.
The IMPORT path goes to the central photo repository on a basic file server.

Now then, I'll keep this very simple simple :
these five photoshoots are for five separate articles in the same monthly publication. Three journalists are using InDesign to make the articles, and require edited photos from these shoots.

- the current solution is to have them get up and go to the machine with the lightroom lcat
- then they browse through the related shoot.
- they then edit and export the images they need for their article, and put the exported image into a "resources" folder where their .ind article is.
- the originals of course remain on the file server.
- only one lcat is ever modified, and therefore always the "up to date"

Issue 1 : only one person can use lightroom to find the images and edit and export at one time

Issue 2 : if lightroom lcat is local to the journalist's computer, they do not see alterations on the file server without "syncronizing" each time or alerting the team : "hey Jen, I just made a change, hit 'sync'"

Issue 3 : syncronizing only detects file changes, not preferences or settings or filters - sometimes sidecar helps metadata but nothing further.

Issue 4 : If you need to check archival shoots, the time is increased exponentially.

issue 5 : having a meeting, and using a laptop in the meeting causes the same delays, always resyncing.

issue 6 : you cannot "syncronize" your collections and playlists easily.

So, the solution is to have multiple LR's on all computers, linked to one lcat, and one photo repository, pulling data and caches also from the same "location"

Check in check out required.

-------------------------
This can be applied to single users, with a desktop / laptop - no check in / out required, but in the same proximity on the same network

- once you leave the office with your laptop, you cannot access the lcat without a VPN or you have to use remote desktops.

So I'm not concerning myself with "remote access" as that is a whole other kettle of fish - just accessing the same lcat to save oodles of time from multiple internal sources.

::: addendum :
I use a method like this for iTunes
- when opening it on one machine, I "force" it once to read the iTunes prefs file on my file server, which also has iTunes installed. (it remembers from then on out)
This allows for generic music storage on my file server
- now this already works as "shared media" in iTunes - sure - BUT
- you can IMPORT/delete, mod, change from each computer that has iTunes set up this way to the file server and have all the iTunes see the changes as if they are one, because they are all using the same prefs files.

Caveat is that you can only have one iTunes running at once. So it's fine for single user use, but you must exit the iTunes on one machine to open it on another.

yes, collections 😉