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

With some scripting knowledge and http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-good...

You can export as catalog, yes not exactly a shared workflow but with identical catalogs and 'shared storage' then you get round the issue. Media can happily sit on ethernet storage

All I know is that this functionality is something that almost all other software has and it is nothing more than a decision by Adobe to not include this in their products. Because of the decision by Adobe, I have been forced to make the decision that I will not purchase any further upgrades until such time as this basic functionality is included. If enough of us refuse to purchase upgrades unless they include this feature that we have been asking for since day 1, then maybe the hurt to their bottom line will be enough that they will get the hint. It is apparent that we must hurt them where they live. Let them take a loss on the next version without networking ability and maybe the stock holders will put some pressure on them to get off their arses and get serious about this feature.

Reminder: having catalog on a thumb drive (or a retired camera card...) and passing it around is an awefully easy work-around for the mean time (keep previews separately). - no need for dropbox, unless of course you have a distributed "office"... I don't mean to diss the desire for true network support (and obviously this doesn't help with the multi-user aspect), but it may be a path of less resistance for now, instead of a big honken USB drive and cable required...

In general, I agree that having LR access a catalog over a network hasn't been rigorously tested and that there's some risk of data loss (a risk that I personally wouldn't want to take).

But a technical clarification for those considering the solution above: The experiments that Dan Tull reported in this thread were for a much different configuration -- LR on Windows XP accessing the catalog via the SMB file protocol on a Mac server. The configuration described above, placing the catalog on a Mac disk image that is accessed via a different network protocol, is much different than that tested by Dan, with a likely different risk. Unfortunately, we have no recent, authoritative, rigorous testing of either configuration.

(And I too have voted for the request.)

So Adobe would rather that the users be forced to use a system such as dropbox to make the lrcat file functional over a network? Seems to me to be a very bad approach to design. Wouldn't it be better if the designers kept control of the network tools? Don't kid yourself, many people are using workaround to make LR a functional software.

Without wishing to put a damper on things, it should be noted that this 'solution' is discouraged by the engineers who built it, as it's potentially a data-loss situation if the connection drops at the wrong moment. Anyone who chooses to try it obviously does so at their own risk.

(And yes, I've voted on the request too!)

Dear community.

I'd like to mention that it is very much possible to run a Lightroom catalogue over (even a slow) network shared HD on at least OS X.

Simply create a sparse disk-image on some server share and pop the catalogue in there and then mount it from your remote machine. 🙂 I've done it a couple thousand (maybe tens of thousands) times. I even did it in a pinch over a fiber internet connection many thousands of miles away once.

Make sure to keep the preview folder and lock db in the same sparse disk image.

What is not possible yet (and everyone is rightfully frustrated about this I think) is a professional multi-user approach. Even if this was implemented as file-system level access with versioned (invisible?) sidecars and basic user-land locking with almost ZERO programming on LR's part it would be a huge benefit to the professional community and like any first foot forward, Adobe would probably reap the benefits in as-of-yet untold ways.

>> I'm thinking if Bridge just merged w/ LR. Something people have talked about for years now.

But for individual networked stored Lightroom catalogues, I've been doing it since v1. http://theagnosticprint.org/how-to-ne...

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Why is this important? Well, because when Lightroom supports files from forty-grand backs the users who are pumping files through LR are working on collaborative high-pressure, high-speed environments with a lot of moving parts. Watching LR be single-machine only is like seeing a 90 year old walk into the middle of a rave. I apologize to the 90 year olds on this list. You all rock and would probably dance the pants off everyone else.

Best,
Walker

Martijn,

Are you familiar with Extensis Portfolio Server? (http://www.extensis.com/portfolio-ser...)

Canto Cumulus? (http://www.canto.com/en/docs/flash/si..., http://www.canto.com/en/products/web-...)

PhotoMechanic? (http://www.camerabits.com/products/ca...)

This is not an outrageous request, and as others have pointed out, you don't have your facts straight.

Martijn, ironically we are able to read your comment because for this web site, Adobe DID dive into proper databases and networking. Imagine if you had to visit their data center in person and log in to the physical web server machine to be able to see this page. Ridiculous right? Yet there were times where this was the only way, and people who insisted that that is the only way and introducing network into the solution will make it very slow and will be VERY HARD. In this day and age it is not. It is ridiculous that I can put my 36MP RAW files and HD videos on the network (and have Lightroom deal with that just fine) but not Lightroom catalog data for that image - which is not even a kilobyte.

Adobe could make it accessible across the network drives / shares or across the web / cloud.

WTF?

Firstly, you can't share a lightroom catalog no matter where it is, which is why we're complaining - they built on SQLite. Nor can you use multi user either.

Secondly, you can most definitely share a mySQL database over any network.
It's the second reason they were built, the first being - to store data. So you are incorrect.

Thirdly, my catalog is no where near my "user" folder, I could care less about how my OS wants me to organize things, it's on a separate drive altogether.

Additionally, your user profile folder is most definitely NOT sharable as "default" in any operating system, it's why there are separate user folders and not "everyone's all in a mess folders". And even the root user folder complains of being shared, so again, you are incorrect.

Fourthly, you can most definitely have a gigabit network transfer data faster than a single IDE or even sata hard drive depending on what the drive is doing simultaneously.

Finally, you most definitely can limit the amount of users that can access the catalog either at the developer or use level depending on the options the developer dictates, and Adobe only supports TWO kind of operating systems - mac and windows, and limits backwards compatibility with it's software so that you have to at least be in a range of acceptable OS versions in order to even use the software...

So yes Adobe knows "to a very well educated degree" as to what type of network their software can be expected to encounter.

The fact that lightroom does not support shared nuthin is because it's poorly coded, on a weak database implementation. Period.