Participant

Question

Allowing another person to use my Lightroom catalogue

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
July 27, 2020
3 replies
310 views

Hi,

I have many RAW images on an external hard drive. 1000's of images, typically each file/image is 24MB. Those which have been edited have been identified by a flag in Lightroom.

I want to give the full set of images to a colleague and also for her to have the same 'view' in Lightroom of the images as I have, ie with the 'flags' and also so she can see the files 'as edited'.

Adobe support are telling me this is not possible, however, this seems to be such a 'basic' requirement that there must be a solution.

Can anyone help?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Rob_Cullen

Community Expert

I agree with Jim for his suggestion-

choose the option to export as a catalog and choose to include the negatives.

With one modification!

Export as a catalog and choose to include only Smart Previews.

The Smart Previews will be significantly smaller than the full-size files (~2 or 3MB each). Far less to send/supply with the catalog.

You collegue will simply open your exporteed catalog by a [Double-click] and be able to View all your photos, edit all your photos. Limitations are that they will not be able to Edit in Photoshop, or export full-size versions. (the Smart Previews are only 2560pixels long edge).

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 .

M

MNathanAuthor

Participant

Hi

Many thanks for your suggestion however, my colleague needs access to:

1. the original RAW files,

2. the 'view' in lightroom showing the edits I have done to the RAW files and..

3, the 'flags' which have been applied to selected images.

ie my colleague needs 100% the same information that I have, however, we do not need my lightroom 'database' synchronised with hers - we just need an initial transfer of files which is good. From what you say, this will not give this information?

Any other advice?

Rob_Cullen

Community Expert

OK, so Jim's advice still stands.

Select all Photographs (in the Catalog panel- All Photographs)

Menu: Export as a Catalog. Have a large disk drive connected to hold all the photo files & Catalog.

Two things 'missing' will be all your Preset files and Publish Services

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 .

JP Hess

Inspiring

Doing it the way you are suggesting I think complicates things a little if proceeding with my suggestion. Probably a different approach would be preferred. Perhaps going to the library module, all photographs, Ctrl/A to highlight them all and choose the option to export as a catalog and choose to include the negatives. Then I would suggest that your friend just create a new catalog and in that catalog choose the option to import from another catalog and import everything from the one that you give that person. That way your images would be kept separate. Something to think about.

JP Hess

Inspiring

If, as you say, you have thousands of images on an external hard drive, the easiest way to do this would be for you to copy the entire external hard drive to another EHD to give to your colleague along with a copy of your catalog. Then she would be able to open that catalog and point it to that EHD on her computer and would be able to see everything you have done.

M

MNathanAuthor

Participant

Jim

this is a big help and makes sense. Looking at the catalogue, could you advise exactly which file(s) I need, there is:

...helper.lrdata

...previews.lrdata

...Smart Previews.lrdata

...sync.lrdata

....lrcat

...lrcat.wal

...lrcat.lock

assuming I am in the right place?

( Adobe support said doing this would 'unlink' the catalogue)...I presume there is no problem copying all my images and the catalogue and putting them on my colleagues' computer - rather than on an external drive?

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