Lightroom classic on two PCs and Synology NAS

Is this still the case with modern LrC? It feels extremely counter intuitive that a software suite like Adobe's is locked like this.

By @Mortis Angelus

As I posted in an earlier reply, other similar applications at similar price points have similar restrictions. If there was an app that was free of this while also being reasonably competent at editing and organzing, then everybody would have deserted this application for that one already. But it seems like no company has wanted to guarantee catalog compatibility with NAS at a consumer price point, it’s more of an enterprise level thing for whatever reason. (I’m not defending this, this is just how it is.)

Furthermore, the non-classic version can be synced between different devices, right?

By @Mortis Angelus

The non-classic version  is cloud-based Lightroom, and Adobe is very strict about that cloud aspect, so it does not solve the problem in this thread. Sure, it “can be synced,” but the way you want to think about it is, it is their syncing, not yours. They achieve sync by uploading every one of your originals to their server, and then the images are avalable to any of your devices that are signed into your account. But this is cloud syncing over the Internet, not syncing to a local NAS. In other words, the way thay do syncing also does not allow permanently storing images on an NAS, or any local folder, at your site. Any image you put into cloud Lightroom is sent to Adobe.

It’s important to understand the non-Classic syncing is not anything strange or exotic. It’s the same “cloud is truth” model that was already being used successfully by Google Photos, Apple Photos, and others, because it is so effective in a multi-device world for those who don’t want to become network administrators. (But again, I’m not really defending it, because I prefer to manage my photos locally in Lightroom Classic.)

So the non-Classic version can’t be used as a counter-argument because you do not have local control over the kind of syncing that it does.

Also: if you can't use multiple devices, how can I transfer and re-use my catalogue if I reinstall my entire computer. Doesn't the "import catalogue" solve this issue?

By @Mortis Angelus

That is not an actual problem, because there is no restriction on which computer or how many computers you have catalogs on. If my computer dies, I just restore the catalog and images from my backup to the new computer. No problem. Again…the restriction is specifcally about operating a catalog from an NAS…just that, and only that.

And Import Catalogue is not the recommended way to recover. Import Catalogue might help if the original catalog (or backup of it) got corrupted, but as I said above you can normally recover from a disaster simply restoring a copy of the catalog to any volume inside a computer or any external volume connected directly to the computer. Because DAS, or direct attached storage, is OK. Again, it’s specifically NAS that is not supported. Everything else works.

This may not be a 100% accurate explanation, but it’s how I understand the situation: Lightroom Classic uses a SQL database, and the version of SQL they use is not multi-user. Attempts to use it in a multi-user way may cause database corruption. Other comparable digital asset managers (DAMs), such as Apple Aperture, were built on the same SQL type of database and have the same limitations and restrictions.

There are DAMs out there that are built for multi-user and network access that you can look into, such as:

Daminion

Extensis Portfolio

Adobe Experience Manager Assets