P: Allow Catalog to be stored on a networked drive.

[bcdavis1975]

I'd love to make LR more multi-computer friendly. I have no doubt that there's probably database architecture issues and a host of other barriers... But I have to believe that the need for either multi-user or at at lease multi-computer use is widely desired. And yes, I know you can do the catalog import export thing but I find this less than ideal.

[Sean Phillips]

The Adobe folks are very aware of this one as a request, but i sure hope they're working on it...

[bcdavis1975]

Yeah, I know. I just wanted to get it out there in this shiny new facebook feedback forum since they seem to be paying attention to it.

[Lee_Jay]

What's a "facebook feedback forum"? I'm viewing this here:

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

[bcdavis1975]

Intersting. They must be linked. Check out Lightroom's Fan page and go to Feedback. That's how I've been accessing these comments. It's new (the Facebook part) so that may explain why you see a bunch of re-hashed suggestions. That's admittedly a little confusing.

[Sean Phillips]

Yep, they've embedded the get satisfaction forum into their facebook page. Interesting...

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Agreed, the more people that vote for this the better.

It would likely help if you could explain the problems you're hitting as a result of the current setup, as it could affect the implementation and give more weight to your request. How would it work best for you?

[J453]

That's correct. Last week we embedded a widget in the Photoshop and Lightroom Facebook pages. Although the interfaces are slightly different and reside on different sites, they share a common backend which allows users to see and rate the same content.

[Brett N]

The best way to make Lightroom Multi-computer is to use an external hard drive. On this drive store your image files and your Lightroom catalog file. Then you have Lightroom installed on each of your computers, and just plug-in the Lightroom hard drive to use. This prevents issues with file locations, syncing edits between computers, and any other multi-computer issues that might arise.

[Gary_Rowe]

I would like to see the ability to 'move' the LR 'system' to another location, such as an external drive, to be able to make this work (to make your LR system truly portable). Because, if you just copy the images and catalogue to an external drive you leave behind your presets and various other little bits'n'pieces needed to give you your full system.

And even with that, you still need to synchronise your plugin and webengine installations etc. It still requires too much 'tinkering and fiddling' to get it to work the same on multiple machines, and until networking is available I'd love to see this simplified.

[Sean Phillips]

This is definitely A way to do it, but I completely disagree that it's the best way.

The best way would be for multiple computers to be able to access the same catalog and image files over a network, with file and/or database locking to prevent problems with multiple users at the same time. Unfortunately this isn't available at the same time.

The second best way (for me) is multiple computers that access the same files over a network using a catalog that gets automatically synced on a regular basis. This method definitely runs the risk of issues due to the catalogs being out of sync, but for a low number of users (or for a very rigorous workflow) it works quite well.

Another method would be to use a portable hard drive, which is just plain annoying to have to transfer from computer to computer. This method is a distant third in my books...

[PECourtejoie]

Lee Jay, there is now a tab on the photoshop facebook page, that acts as an interface to this site. See: http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotco...

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

You can also use the 'Store Presets with Catalog' checkbox in preferences to store the presets on the external, and you can install your plug-ins located on the external too.

I do agree though, all of the current options are workarounds, and hardly ideal. Externals are also generally slower, and more risky as they can become detached, corrupting the catalog. It's not a great solution. It needs work, because more and more people are using multiple computers and home networks.

[areohbee]

I think Brett meant "the best way today" ;-}

[Arne_Keller]

II would like to be able to have my files in a database or other file system on a NAS or a server.
That could be backed up centrally.
I would also like to be able to export a part of the database to a laptop and work on it and then later re import the pictures back into the database.
Likewise I would like to be able to be on location and download pictures from my camera to my laptop, when I return back home I would like to be able to add these to the database.

[john beardsworth]

Do you know about File > Export as Catalog, and File > Import from Catalog ? These do what you are asking for.

[john beardsworth]

Do you know about File > Export as Catalog, and File > Import from Catalog ? These are what you are asking for.

[S_Beller]

I agree that there is a need for a catalog setup that can be used on at least a desktop and a laptop.
Currently I use a "master" setup on my desktop, and a copy of the catalog on an external hard drive which only has access to the previews (not the originals). This I use mostly on a laptop. Apart from the fact that Lr it is much slower than on an internal drive I have the problem of keeping the previews on both computers up to date. I have a feeling that Lr not always detects all photos that need a preview refresh when choosing the menu command "Previews - Render standard size". After developing some photos on my desktop, copying the catalog to the external drive and rendering the previews from there I do get some "grey cells" (instead of previews) later when I have disconnected from the originals indicating that also the previews are missing.
Does anyone have any experience with that?

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Sven, drop by one of the Lightroom Forums www.lightroomforums.net or http://forums.adobe.com/community/lig... and we'll look at that in more detail. There are a few possibilities that I have in mind, a corrupted preview cache being one, although you could be right about it not updating the previews correctly. It'd be worth investigating separately anyway.

[S_Beller]

Hi Victoria, thanks for your suggestion. I've posted the topic here:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/851835
Hope that helps.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

We are a media department at a community college that uses Adobe products. We would love to be able to use Lightroom as a department with centralized catalog(s) on a network drive. Benefits are concurrent use, ability for all staff to search the catalog, inclusion in IT-driven backup, redundancy and recovery and ease of use. Non-IT Individuals responsible for database maintenance is not the best way to safeguard our college's photo collection.

[Arne_Keller]

Thanks John, i will have to try that out again, but that only solves part of my problem (getting pictures on and off the laptop).
Having the database on a server to be used in more than one PC at the same time vould be helpfull and allow for better backup and security for the pictures. If the database was on a server it could be on a expandable disksystem (eg. iSCSI or SAN) that would allow the database to grow as pictures are added.

[Babar_e]

I used to do so until it corrupted my database for some unknown reason.
I still have the catalog if you wish.
concerning the network option, you could simply use a lock mecanism. It is very effective.
Just log an entry in the DB or a file for the first user that opens it. As long as his session remains open that entry locks the catalog, any other user can view it but not modify anything in it.
during a session or if there is a crash, the user should be able to release the lock. In this case he looses the possibility to edit the database until he re-launch lightroom. In the meantime anyone that would open the catalog would of course lock it, unless you add an otpion to open in read only mode.
regards

PS : I just read a bug on jpeg and metadata. If you think this is not related do not hesitate to ask me more detail, I will be happy to help. Menwhile I will check all of my jpegs.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

FWIW, there is a current workaround that fools LR to believe that a catalogue on a shared network drive appears to be on a local drive.

One can, for instance, make a drive letter substitution using the Windows command shell, e.g., "subst A: N:\Lightroom" which would make any catalogues on the network drive "N:" in folder "Lightroom" available through drive "A:".

An alternative uses a symbolic link.

Of course, performance will suffer and only one user can use one catalogue at a time. Accidental concurrent access might even be automatically excluded by LR's use of a "lock" file.

Use at your own peril.

[areohbee]

I know several people who've tried this and said it worked, but none I know have reported performance benchmarks nor if any problems had been encountered after using it this way for a long time. I'm still wondering how much peril there might be, and what kind of performance hit there might be - networks can be pretty zippy these days... If anybody tries this, *please* report your experience to the rest of us...

[John R Ellis]

Lightroom uses the SQLite database engine. A couple of years ago, I investigated the issue of running SQLite with database files residing on network volumes, and I found numerous people advising not to do it. The advice all seems to originate from this paragraph at the SQLite site:

http://www.sqlite.org/lockingv3.html
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"SQLite uses POSIX advisory locks to implement locking on Unix. On Windows it uses the LockFile(), LockFileEx(), and UnlockFile() system calls. SQLite assumes that these system calls all work as advertised. If that is not the case, then database corruption can result. One should note that POSIX advisory locking is known to be buggy or even unimplemented on many NFS implementations (including recent versions of Mac OS X) and that there are reports of locking problems for network filesystems under Windows. Your best defense is to not use SQLite for files on a network filesystem."
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But I didn't find any seemingly reliable reports of anyone who actually experienced corruption that could be definitively attributed to a Windows file server. That doesn't mean there aren't any, of course.