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Family B
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February 16, 2017
Question

Best way for a family to share one large set of photo/movie files in Elements?

  • February 16, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 303 views

I couldn't find an exact answer to this in the forum, so I'm posting as a fresh question. Many apologies if I'm repeating what I couldn't find elsewhere!

My wife and I want to do different things with the large (~400GB) collection of family photos and movies that we have. I am reasonably techie but my wife isn't. My wife wants to make hard copy photo-books from the collection - one for each year and encompassing everything we do as a family of three plus dog. I just want to easily be able to add photos into the collection (from our 2x iPhones, 3x iPads, 1x DSLR), and be confident in the knowledge that my non-techie 'click it and see what happens' wife can't accidentally mess up/delete the originals. We're working from a MacBook 12" retina (me) and a 13" MacBook Air (my wife), and  everything else is apple except for a Synology DS215j NAS attached to the airport extreme and a GoPro session we're just starting to play with.

I want to know whether if we put all the media (currently organised out of iPhoto into 6 month folders) onto the NAS, we can each run a different Elements Organizer catalogue on each of our own machines without difficulty (or wifi latency). Or whether it makes more sense to hold all the files and the catalogue on a portable USB drive that we swap between us as required (and which we then have to manually back up to the NAS every so often).

Software wise we have the Photoshop/Premiere Elements bundle that I understand we can host on two machines providing we only run one at a time. We also have a subscription to the Photoshop/Lightroom CC bundle, but I'd rather get rid of that - we're not pros, don't need/want to share photos, and would prefer to keep everything simple, under one umbrella, and without additional cost. (I personally hate the subscription model, but there you go). The inclusion of Premiere in the Elements bundle also future-proofs doing more stuff with the GoPro as kids get more adventurous.

I'd love to hear people's thoughts, experiences, and suggestions, including anything I've not considered here.

Many thanks

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    MichelBParis
    MichelBParis
    Legend
    February 16, 2017
    ChamFan74  wrote
     Or whether it makes more sense to hold all the files and the catalogue on a portable USB drive that we swap between us as required (and which we then have to manually back up to the NAS every so often).

    That would be my choice. I am sure that will work.

    For the backup to the NAS, I would look for a synching utility which should offer two big advantages:

    - much faster than a full backup

    - the library is fully accessible to all computers on the network even if the catalog is not.

    A full organizer backup from time to time could be done in a night job.

    99jon
    99jon
    Legend
    February 16, 2017

    Lightroom CC is really the best option in my opinion as you can easily sync collections to all of your devices using a single catalog and single Adobe ID. You can also set up the PSE15 Editor in LR preferences for external editing from the LR Library.  You also get the LR Mobile web interface which is great for sharing with families and friends.

    Log-in here with your Adobe ID

    https://lightroom.adobe.com/

    However, given your dislike for subscriptions I would suggest two separate installations of PSE15 using separate catalogs unless you are confident that you could share a catalog and files on an external hard drive without accidentally overwriting something.

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