I have a desktop computer with Lightroom. I also often go on location shoots with my MacBook Pro and lightroom. Having a calibrated monitor, I sometimes develop in my hotel room to get ahead of the game. But upon return I want to move all the physical photos and develop settings, all the catalog settings over to the main (desktop) computer. But in the past I've had all kinds of trouble, wasted a lot of time for what should be a simple task: Move photos and develop settings, history, etc. back to the main computer. The library would not know where the photos were, it was a mess.
First a little about me. I'm old fashioned, I like to have a physical hierarchy on disk, and not depend totally on keywords, collections and virtual folders to deal with. That way, if Lightroom dies or I can't get to it, I can find all my photos on my hard drive in the finder. I do use keywords, but not religiously.... I really don't want to waste my whole life keywording when I usually can find photos in the directory based on where I took them or who's the main person or group in the photo. That way I can look in the Finder when necessary, and often find my photos based on the place they were taken or the occasion. I can also manually copy files into the finder, then import them in place into lightroom and they land in the physical folder where I want to keep them.
Now back to the remote shoot and the transfer process. Upon return from the remote, the steps are as follows:
1) Open Lightroom on the source computer (the laptop). Select the root level folder containing all the photos you want to export. Or, select all the photos you want to export. File: Export as catalog. Do NOT check "export negative files". You can optionally check "include previews" and the other options. Do NOT choose "Export selected photos only" (unless that's relevant). Export and name this temporary catalog to a place on your source computer where you can find it again. You will end up with a .lrcat and a .lrdata file. This is your "temporary catalog". Your photos have NOT moved yet. All you have is a temporary catalog on the source computer with all the photos and previews.
2) Now we're going to turn the source computer into a "virtual drive" that you can connect to your desktop. We have two Macs that we can connect by thunderbolt. This method will also work if you have an external drive and want to use it for transfer, but Thunderbolt is much faster and you don't have to take any extra steps, intermediate or extra copies this way. You will make only one transfer and photos will end up in the right place where you want them.
3) Quit lightroom on the source computer (laptop). Connect thunderbolt cable between the source and the destination computer. Restart the source computer while holding down the "T" key. This turns your laptop into a slave.
4) Now find your laptop's hard drive mounted in the Finder on the destination computer. Navigate to your photos and copy them to the destination computer into your favorite comfortable location. I have folders named by location, date, subject's name, etc. Advice: Before performing the next steps --- If you have not made a catalog backup in a while, launch Lightroom on your main (destination) computer and for Murphy's law, make a catalog backup. Then quit lightroom.
5) Now comes the trick! Don't be afraid. This step is unintuitive but it will become clear in a moment. Find the temporary catalog you had exported in the source computer's hard drive that's mounted on your destination computer. Double-click on the temporary catalog. It's ok to leave it on the source computer, because it's only temporary. Lightroom opens using the temporary catalog. Now you'll see all the photos and development that you worked on back in your hotel room. But the catalog doesn't know where the images are. There are a bunch of ????? next to all the photos in the folders column. If you don't see the folder showing the ????, just right click on any photo and choose "Go To Folder in Library". Of course this folder is confused... it's the hierarchy inherited from the source computer's hard drive and doesn't have anything to do with the folder hierarchy on your destination computer. And you don't want that hanging around anymore anyway as you've successfully copied your photos to the destination anyway. So you are going to point this library folder which is full of ????? to the proper location on your destination computer's hard drive.
6) Right click on the root level folder and choose "locate missing folder". The ???? will go away. In some instances if you made a mistake at some point you could choose "update folder location". I use this feature frequently as I sometimes move physical folders around and reorganize them. This is frowned upon in Lightroom practice, but I'm more comfortable with "real" than virtual where you have no idea where anything is stored. As I said, I'm old fashioned. I like to know the physical place where my stuff is. But even if you are new fashioned and totally depend on keywording and virtual locations, this method will work.
7) Now that this temporary catalog knows the correct location for your photos on your destination computer, you can use it as a "merge catalog" with your main catalog. Check preferences/general and make sure that lightroom is set to open a named catalog (your main catalog). This is the catalog that you will want to import (merge) into in the next step. Then quit lightroom (no need to back up).
8) Now launch lightroom on your main (destination) computer. It opens with your main catalog as normal. Choose File/Import from another catalog. After it checks the catalog for integrity, normally you will check all the photos but you could choose a subset. You could also have copied the "temporary" catalog over from the source computer so you could unhook from it. Don't forget to EJECT the source computer's hard drive before disconnecting it. It's treated exactly as a connected hard drive.
9) Presto! When the import is done (it could take a while if you shot a lot of photos on location), the "temporary" catalog is merged with your main catalog and you are off to the races!
10) Hope you love this tip. I have battle scars from many wrong turns to get to this point.
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