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barbaras81920612
Participant
February 22, 2019
Answered

Using Lightroom across two computers with external HDD.

  • February 22, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 6359 views

Hi, I am also relatively new to Lightroom Classic CC, but I have been using an external hard drive when traveling as I, too, need to edit photos across on two computers, an iMac and a Macbook Pro. So I have loaded all my library photos onto my Seagate external drive and it works very nicely with my Macbook Pro while traveling. But I thought since I only have one account with Adobe, and that when I sign on to LR on Mac desktop, LR should recognize the Seagate external drive. It turned out my LR has no inkling of the existence of the photo library on Seagate, and the only way my desktop LR can have access to the photo library on the external hard drive is to import them once more, as I already did onto to laptop, to the LR on my desktop. While is this repetitious importation necessary?

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    Correct answer Just Shoot Me

    You need to place the LR catalog file, the one that has all the images imported into it, on that same external drive and open it, Use that catalog, on both computers when moving the external drive.

    2 replies

    JP Hess
    JP Hess
    Inspiring
    February 22, 2019

    The catalog can remain on the external hard drive and reference the images that are on that drive.

    B
    barbaras81920612Author
    Participant
    February 22, 2019

    Thank you for your reply. I did exactly that. I was hoping to find a way that enable automatic sync without having to import every time when I plug in the external hard drive. But I guess that is what I have to do.

    Rob_Cullen
    Community Expert
    Rob_CullenCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 23, 2019

    barbaras81920612  wrote

    Thank you for your reply. I did exactly that. I was hoping to find a way that enable automatic sync without having to import every time when I plug in the external hard drive. But I guess that is what I have to do.

    The post from JimHess​ does not suggest "Import every time". You do NOT import every time. There is NO syncing involved at all.

    You simply swap the external drive to a computer and 'Open' the catalog (.LRCAT) that is on the external drive that also has your image files.

    [I know windows computers may show external drives with differing letters ( E: F: G: etc) when moved from one computer to another, that causes a "missing" problem, but there is an easy way to re-link image folders in the catalog to fix this. I do not know if  Mac systems have this problem.]

    Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.3, Photoshop 27.5, ACR 18.3, Lightroom 9.3, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.3 .
    Just Shoot Me
    Just Shoot MeCorrect answer
    Legend
    February 22, 2019

    You need to place the LR catalog file, the one that has all the images imported into it, on that same external drive and open it, Use that catalog, on both computers when moving the external drive.

    B
    barbaras81920612Author
    Participant
    February 22, 2019

    Thanks for your reply. That is exactly what I have done.

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