Can 2 people with 2 licenses work on one photo library?

Report · Jun 01, 2018

I recently purchased Elements 2018 for Windows, and plan to store my photos on a NAS. If my wife buys Elements for Mac, will she be able to use / add to / edit the same library using her version of Elements 2018 for Mac?

We are trying to merge 2 large sets of photos from various sources into one curated library, and want to use a consistent structure and tags/ keywords. I realize we might have to set up the 2 copies of Elements to ensure they have the same default directories and keywords.

Thanks

Report · Jun 01, 2018

I believe you won't be able to share your catalog and library on a NAS. The catalog can't be stored in a NAS. Don't ask me why... but maybe try another sharing solution.

What is very common is to share the catalog and library if they reside on an external drive that you can plug in alternatively to two computers with the same Elements version. That works with two Windows computers, but I believe it should work with one Windows and one Mac computer. Maybe other users can confirm if that works (I have no Mac) but I would download the free trial version for the mac to check what happens. You do a backup on an external drive and restore on the final external drive. That puts both your library and the catalog on the final drive. Of course, you can't work simultaneously, but your work is immediately available for the other computer.

Merging catalogs is not easy in Elements, see:

Photoshop Elements 6/7/8 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Report · Jun 01, 2018

Understood.

As an alternative, if I use Elements on the Windows computer and back up to

the NAS, are the photos accessible to the Mac user as files with tags

independent of the catalog? I.e we share use of the Windows Machine to

organize and tag with Elements but we can select and print / share photos

from the NAS?

Report · Jun 01, 2018

andrewa42545395 wrote
Understood.
As an alternative, if I use Elements on the Windows computer and back up to
the NAS, are the photos accessible to the Mac user as files with tags
independent of the catalog?

I like the idea to manage the catalog on an external drive as described above, and to backup on the NAS.

For instance, I use Microsoft SyncToy to sync my library after each session to another drive. The advantage is that it's very fast compared with a backup from the Organizer. Of course, the library is available from all computers linked to the NAS; with the keywords if you 'write metadata to files', shortcut Ctrl W.