# Laptop Use



## Merrill Mack (Mar 18, 2016)

Can I use Lightroom Mobile to sync to my Laptop.   I am travelling and want to be able to work on my images on my laptop with images syncing back to my desktop.

Or, is Lightroom Mobile only for tablets and phones?


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## Victoria Bampton (Mar 18, 2016)

Lightroom mobile is currently only for tablets and phones, although there is a web interface at Adobe Photoshop Lightroom that would allow you to edit them on your laptop if you have internet access.

There are other possible options for working on the laptop while you're away, but we'd need to know which photos (e.g. new ones or existing ones) you want to work on, so we can give you the best advice.


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## RogerB (Mar 18, 2016)

Unfortunately the LR Mobile App is only for tablets and phones. If your laptop is powerful enough to run LR desktop then you can always use that to work on your images whilst travelling and import them into your desktop catalogue when you return.

If you have access to a fast internet connection whilst travelling another thing you could consider is Lightroom Web, the "cloud" based portion of the mobile synchronisation package. With a suitable browser it's possible to edit your raw files over the Internet and have them sync back to your desktop, but the data volumes might make it impractical when travelling.


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## Roelof Moorlag (Mar 18, 2016)

When you want to shoot on location and work on your images there too you could consider using Lightroom on your laptop to. Making a 'travel' catalog that you can import into your maincatalog when you coming home. With your CC desciption this should be possible without extra costs.


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## clee01l (Mar 18, 2016)

Roelof Moorlag said:


> When you want to shoot on location and work on your images there too you could consider using Lightroom on your laptop to. Making a 'travel' catalog that you can import into your maincatalog when you coming home. With your CC desciption this should be possible without extra costs.


This is the method that I use too.  However, the tablet/computer lines are blurred and I think Adobe needs to wake up to this. What's the difference between an Apple iPad Pro and a Microsoft Surface Pro?  They are designed to  compete for the same user set. One runs iOS and the other runs Win10.  LR Mobile runs on the iPad Pro but not on the Surface Pro. Sure, you can run LR on the Surface Pro but not the iPad Pro.  With the iPad Pro, you can add photos to the Adobe Cloud collection that are sync'd with your Master LR catalog. However, even though you can run a full LR on the SurfacePro, you can not sync that catalog to the Adobe Cloud collection without erasing the Adobe Cloud collection from your Master catalog.


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## pumphouse (Mar 19, 2016)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Lightroom mobile is currently only for tablets and phones, although there is a web interface at Adobe Photoshop Lightroom that would allow you to edit them on your laptop if you have internet access.
> 
> There are other possible options for working on the laptop while you're away, but we'd need to know which photos (e.g. new ones or existing ones) you want to work on, so we can give you the best advice.


I have a related question about Lightroom Web.   (My free trial to the Mobile features expired some time ago so I can't try this on my own. I can't seem to find an answer on the web.)   

My wife and I are working on a large number of vacation photos, I manage them in Lightroom 6.5 perpetual license.   It would be great if I could put my one star rated picks in a collection and "share" that collection.   She could log into Lightroom Web on her PC and proceed to whittle the collection down by removing photos.  Finally, she might resequence them to make a better flow.

We do this workflow now by sharing my PC.   Could it (or something like it) be done in Lightroom Web?


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## clee01l (Mar 19, 2016)

pumphouse said:


> I have a related question about Lightroom Web...if I could put my one star rated picks in a collection and "share" that collection...
> We do this workflow now by sharing my PC.   Could it (or something like it) be done in Lightroom Web?


Yes, Lightroom Web would work for this. Everything stays in the master catalog on the PC.  A Sync'd collection is shared to the Web and any modifications made to the Web Images are then sync'd back to the master catalog.


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## pumphouse (Mar 19, 2016)

clee01l said:


> Yes, Lightroom Web would work for this. Everything stays in the master catalog on the PC.  A Sync'd collection is shared to the Web and any modifications made to the Web Images are then sync'd back to the master catalog.


Thank you!  I now have a motivation to upgrade to CC.


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## Merrill Mack (Mar 20, 2016)

Victoria and Roger:
Thanks for your response.  
The pictures are not new and reside on my desktop.  Since I am taking a "vacation" I thought it would be a good time to edit my images using my laptop.  After reading about Lightroom Web I realize that this won't work as it won't give me FULL editing capabilities.  My thoughts then are to copy 200 images to an external hard drive and import them onto my laptop and Edit them while I am away keeping them on the external drive. Then, the issue becomes how to import them back on to the desktop when I get home.  I understand I will have to rename them as Lightroom won't import duplicate file names.  Then I will have to delete the unedited files and replace with the edited ones.

Any suggestion to my supposed method?


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## Victoria Bampton (Mar 20, 2016)

When you say it won't give you full editing capabilities, are there specific ones you're missing?

But yes, if you want to take the originals on an external hard drive, your simplest option is to use File menu > Export as Catalog and when you get back, use File menu > Import from Another Catalog.  That's what it's built for, and it works pretty well.


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## RogerB (Mar 20, 2016)

Victoria's suggestion of import/export as catalog sounds like it will be the best choice, but depending on the circumstances there might be a way of utilising Smart Previews. That would give you all of the editing capabilities but not require you to put all of the original files on your laptop. If you have time before your vacation it might be worth experimenting and testing out what you are going to do to make sure you are comfortable with the process.


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## Merrill Mack (Mar 20, 2016)

Victoria Bampton said:


> When you say it won't give you full editing capabilities, are there specific ones you're missing?
> 
> But yes, if you want to take the originals on an external hard drive, your simplest option is to use File menu > Export as Catalog and when you get back, use File menu > Import from Another Catalog.  That's what it's built for, and it works pretty well.



I didn't see that the Lightroom Web option would allow me to use the adjustment brushes  capabilities.

On the second option, since the originals are in the catalog on my desktop will I be able to Import from another Catalog since the files names will be the same?


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## Merrill Mack (Mar 20, 2016)

RogerB said:


> Victoria's suggestion of import/export as catalog sounds like it will be the best choice, but depending on the circumstances there might be a way of utilising Smart Previews. That would give you all of the editing capabilities but not require you to put all of the original files on your laptop. If you have time before your vacation it might be worth experimenting and testing out what you are going to do to make sure you are comfortable with the process.



I am not familiar with how Smart Previews work.   I will look into it.

Thanks for your response.


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## Roelof Moorlag (Mar 20, 2016)

Merrill Mack said:


> On the second option, since the originals are in the catalog on my desktop will I be able to Import from another Catalog since the files names will be the same?


Yes, Lightroom will recognize these and merge them. In a situation where you changed the original too LR will make a virtual copy so you can decide yourself aftwards what to do.


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## Merrill Mack (Mar 20, 2016)

Roelof Moorlag said:


> Yes, Lightroom will recognize these and merge them. In a situation where you changed the original too LR will make a virtual copy so you can decide yourself aftwards what to do.


Thank you.   I think this will be the way to go.


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## Merrill Mack (Mar 21, 2016)

Will I need to make a new catalog of the pictures I want to work on while I am out of town.   I do not want to export my whole catalog just 200 recent images.    Should I put them in a new catalog and how to do that?


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## Victoria Bampton (Mar 21, 2016)

You can add your newly shot photos to the exported catalog of 200, and when you return, they'll all be pulled back into your home catalog together.


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## taigamehp (Mar 21, 2016)

Lightroom now as I know only supports tablets and phones of you. Lightroom also hope more improvements coming hours to laptops to fit more users!


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## Merrill Mack (Mar 23, 2016)

taigamehp said:


> Lightroom now as I know only supports tablets and phones of you. Lightroom also hope more improvements coming hours to laptops to fit more users!


Thank you for your help


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## jeech (Apr 27, 2016)

I've been lurking for a few days trying to get acquainted with LR (coming from photoshop, not a power user by any means) and I have a similar predicament. I'll outline it the best I can and I'd love it if you guys could give a best recommendation. I'll have several questions, so bear with me.

I have two computers I'll be working in LR regularly. My own personal computer--don't know if it matters but it's a windows 10 machine--and my work computer, a macbook air. I am storing my originals on an external drive, and back them up to google drive. Primarily I'd like to be able to work on images on my work computer without having to carry around my external drive, and without having to constantly import/export catalogs. Ideally I'd like to be able to work on images on both computers without the drive attached--in other words, do an initial import, most likely on my personal computer, and then be able to work on either computer and have the catalog sync across each. 

I'm confused as to how collections and smart previews work--when I read adobe's material on each, it sounds like collections allow you to work on things across multiple platforms, but when I tried this today I was unable to see my collections on one of the computers. From what I understand about smart previews, they are basically just smaller versions of previews that take up less space. 

What is the best way to go about this? Is it even possible?
Where should I be storing my master catalog? On my personal computer or on the external drive with the originals? Again, either place it will be backed up.
Does google drive accept catalog files?

I'll probably have more questions as the discussion continues. I appreciate you guys helping this newbie out!


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## goodyarn (Apr 27, 2016)

jeech said:


> I've been lurking for a few days trying to get acquainted with LR (coming from photoshop, not a power user by any means) and I have a similar predicament. I'll outline it the best I can and I'd love it if you guys could give a best recommendation. I'll have several questions, so bear with me.
> 
> I have two computers I'll be working in LR regularly. My own personal computer--don't know if it matters but it's a windows 10 machine--and my work computer, a macbook air. I am storing my originals on an external drive, and back them up to google drive. Primarily I'd like to be able to work on images on my work computer without having to carry around my external drive, and without having to constantly import/export catalogs. Ideally I'd like to be able to work on images on both computers without the drive attached--in other words, do an initial import, most likely on my personal computer, and then be able to work on either computer and have the catalog sync across each.
> 
> ...




The program doesn't work the way you are thinking about it.  Importing your photos into LR from the external drive doesn't actually put the photos themselves on your computer.  Once you detach the external drive, those photos will be missing in LR (you'll see a ? next to each folder in the folder list).  In order to work on the photos without attaching your external drive, you'd have to download them to your computer and point LR to the place they are found (usually the computer's Pictures folder, but you could put them anywhere).  I do not have this option, because my new laptop's memory is too small to accommodate my photos--thus the external drive.   My original, now secondary, laptop does have all the photos on its own hard drive, so I don't have to move the external drive back and forth.  However, see "BUT" in next paragraph.

If you have enough space on both your computers' hard drives, you could download your photos to both computers and still back them up to Google Drive.  BUT, you will have the bigger problem of keeping these two computers in sync.  Backing up LR is only backing up the data base; it isn't what you work on when you open LR.  I.e., it will not make the changes to a second computer unless you use the backups to restore your photos--something I wouldn't want to have to do except in an emergency. 

Obviously, I don't know how many photos you have or what your workflow is like.  You could keep all your photos on one computer (or external drive) and copy to a thumb drive just those you want to deal with on the second computer.  But then you'd have to copy the changed photos back to your main computer (or external drive) when you get home so that they replace the un-worked-on ones there.  This would work, perhaps, but only if you don't need to have everything available all the time in both places.  

Truly, as far as I can work it out, the most practical way to work on two computers and to keep everything up to date is to keep the photos on a little external drive, attaching it to whichever computer you are working on at the time.  Then you are always working only on one master set of your photos, no matter which computer is being used.  Maybe somebody has a better idea, but I'm not aware of it.  Anyway, it doesn't seem much different from carrying a second cell phone in your briefcase.

Don't think I've solved your issues, but I hope it's helped some.

Gail


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## jeech (Apr 27, 2016)

I guess I misunderstood above. It sounded like people were talking about syncing collections:


clee01l said:


> Yes, Lightroom Web would work for this. Everything stays in the master catalog on the PC.  A Sync'd collection is shared to the Web and any modifications made to the Web Images are then sync'd back to the master catalog.



Also, why does this tutorial say you can see and edit your photos anywhere? Am I missing something?

I also don't have the option to sync collections with lightroom mobile when I create new collections. Why is that?

And when importing some of the images on my external drive, I can't choose to just add to the catalog at the top--I can only copy. Any ideas?


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## clee01l (Apr 27, 2016)

Welcome to the forum.  Lets focus on getting your images cataloged on the personal computer.  Then we can talk about places to store the original image files. When you import in LR you create a catalog reference to a location for each image imported.  The catalog file resides by default on the local primary drive .  This is generally a good location as this allows for optimum performance wrt file i/o.  
When you import, you choose a source location for the images (a camera card or a folder on an attached drive). More importantly, you choose a destination.  This is where LR will copy the images and this path is referenced in the LR catalog database file.  If you choose ADD instead of COPY, LR will not copy or relocate the image but reference them in place. This is a good choice if your images are already on your computer and not on the card that came from the camera. 
This destination location can be anywhere. By default, the location is in your pictures folder near your catalog file. It can be on an external drive or even a Network file server (NAS) where they are available to any computer on that network.  
The catalog file can not be on a NAS, but must be on a locally attached disk drive (internal or external) There are ways around that which are non standard and not supported by Adobe.  We can get to that later. 

If you want to share the LR catalog between different operating systems, there are restrictions that need to be observed.   First, the absolute path stored in the catalog contains driver letters (E:\) in the Windows OS.  Drive letters are a foreign concept to OS X and LR will report your files as missing UNLESS the relative path field is resolvable. If the catalog is on drive C:\ and the image files are on drive E:\ er relative path field in indeterminate.  However if the catalog file is in a folder on Drive E and the image files are in a subfolder of the folder containing then catalog file, then the relative path field is resolvable and this catalog can work on both Windows and OS X with out losing the location to the image files themselves. 
The other restriction to be observed is the filesystem.  Windows uses NTFS and OS X uses HFS+  The Windows OS cannot read or write to an HFS+ formatted drive and while OS X can read an NTFS formatted drive, it can't easily write to it.  If an external drive is formatted using the exFAT filesystem (the same on used for your camera cards) both Windows and OS X can read and write to it.   So if you want to share everything on an external drive between Windows and OS X, the catalog and the images need to be all on that drive and the drive formatted exFAT.

As to the practicality of running LR on a MBA, the performance will suffer and be limited by the dual cores and the maximum of 8GB of RAM.  I would suggest setting up LR as I described above using an external drive formatted as exFAT and housing both the catalog file and the master image files.  At that point it would be a simple task to install LR on the MBA and connect the EHD and open your catalog and observe the performance on the MBA.  If you are happy with how LR runs on the MBA, we can look into options to eliminate the EHD from your workflow.


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## clee01l (Apr 27, 2016)

jeech said:


> ...Also, why does this tutorial say you can see and edit your photos anywhere? Am I missing something?


 Anywhere is between ONE master catalog on one real computer and an assortment of mobile devices.  *Anywhere* does not include other real computers or other catalogs. If you want to see your sync'd collections on another "real" computer you need to open your browser and access your collections that are stored in the cloud. 





> I also don't have the option to sync collections with lightroom mobile when I create new collections. Why is that?


You need to designate a collection (in the collection panel) as one to be sync'd with LR Mobile. It must be a static collection and not a smart collection.  Just check the box when creating the collection or right click on an existing collection and choose "Sync with Lightroom Mobile" in the context menu.  You can only sync collections from one catalog. 





> And when importing some of the images on my external drive, I can't choose to just add to the catalog at the top--I can only copy. Any ideas?


If your OS thinks the external drive is a removable drive LR won't unlock the "ADD" option. Are you really running LR on WindowsXP??


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## tspear (Apr 27, 2016)

I point I would make is that exFAT is not the most reliable format. As such, even though what Cletus stated is true, I would hesitate to do this.
I would limit the "work" edits to tasks that can be accomplished via the Lr web interface to the synced collection.
(Note: I am in the IT field, and have a slight paranoia about data integrity and recovery)


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## Merrill Mack (Mar 18, 2016)

Can I use Lightroom Mobile to sync to my Laptop.   I am travelling and want to be able to work on my images on my laptop with images syncing back to my desktop.

Or, is Lightroom Mobile only for tablets and phones?


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## clee01l (Apr 27, 2016)

tspear said:


> I point I would make is that exFAT is not the most reliable format. As such, even though what Cletus stated is true, I would hesitate to do this.
> I would limit the "work" edits to tasks that can be accomplished via the Lr web interface to the synced collection.
> (Note: I am in the IT field, and have a slight paranoia about data integrity and recovery)


I think exFAT is just as reliable as NTFS, HFS+ or XFS.  It does not offer user security which is why it can be used freely with different operating systems. 
(And I have an IT background too).


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## jeech (Apr 27, 2016)

clee01l said:


> Welcome to the forum.  Lets focus on getting your images cataloged on the personal computer.  Then we can talk about places to store the original image files. When you import in LR you create a catalog reference to a location for each image imported.  The catalog file resides by default on the local primary drive .  This is generally a good location as this allows for optimum performance wrt file i/o.
> When you import, you choose a source location for the images (a camera card or a folder on an attached drive). More importantly, you choose a destination.  This is where LR will copy the images and this path is referenced in the LR catalog database file.  If you choose ADD instead of COPY, LR will not copy or relocate the image but reference them in place. This is a good choice if your images are already on your computer and not on the card that came from the camera.
> This destination location can be anywhere. By default, the location is in your pictures folder near your catalog file. It can be on an external drive or even a Network file server (NAS) where they are available to any computer on that network.
> The catalog file can not be on a NAS, but must be on a locally attached disk drive (internal or external) There are ways around that which are non standard and not supported by Adobe.  We can get to that later.
> ...



I'm not sure what was happening, but I tried restarting LR and was able to add rather than copy. That issue is solved. I have the images cataloged on my personal computer, though currently the catalog resides on the external drive (with a copy in pictures/lightroom). I have LR set to read the catalog on the external drive right now.

I just tried using that catalog on the MBA and it did could not use it, I'm assuming because of the formatting issue that you brought up. I'm not terribly keen on reformatting my drive (I share tspear's POV on data integrity), so if we can explore options to eliminate the EHD that would be great. I'm pretty happy with the performance of LR on the MBA currently, and I should note that the specs on that machine are a 2.2 GHz Core i7 processor with 4GB RAM. Not ideal RAM-wise, but it's working right now.



clee01l said:


> Anywhere is between ONE master catalog on one real computer and an assortment of mobile devices.  *Anywhere* does not include other real computers or other catalogs. If you want to see your sync'd collections on another "real" computer you need to open your browser and access your collections that are stored in the cloud. You need to designate a collection (in the collection panel) as one to be sync'd with LR Mobile. It must be a static collection and not a smart collection.  Just check the box when creating the collection or right click on an existing collection and choose "Sync with Lightroom Mobile" in the context menu.  You can only sync collections from one catalog.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Thanks for clearing up what they mean by "anywhere." No, I'm running on Windows 10 on the Windows machine. I understand this is how to sync your collection, but I do not even have this option when I create a collection (yep, I'm creating a static collection, not a smart one). This workflow doesn't sound terrible to me, provided I can get collections syncing. I haven't checked out the web interface, but I think it'll allow me to do enough when I'm away from my personal computer.

Currently, on my personal computer, I only have 128GB of SSD. I'm waiting for SanDisk to put the 1TB SSD for my machine onto the market. This is why I am keeping images on an external drive. I'm trying to think of the best way to be able to edit images when I don't have the external drive handy or it is inconvenient (I'm thinking bus trips between Boston and NYC). Is the only option to move the originals and catalog to the internal SSD?

Sorry this conversation is all over the place, but I really appreciate you guys helping me understand the workflows a bit better.


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## tspear (Apr 27, 2016)

clee01l said:


> I think exFAT is just as reliable as NTFS, HFS+ or XFS.  It does not offer user security which is why it can be used freely with different operating systems.
> (And I have an IT background too).


 Cool, then this will make sense 
exfat = Extended FAT; which took FAT32 and added a few new features. Specifically meta-data tags representing a few hash values to determine if there is data corruption.
By reliable, I was referencing the journal which is included and hidden in NTFS, EXT4, HFS+ and XFS. The journal, although it increases the amount of data reads/writes adds a level of ACID transactional integrity to the file system which minimizes file corruption at the OS level. Now, the application can still cause corruption by not completing a task, but the OS and/or hardware reduce the chance of corruption through the journal.

As a result, I would hesitate to run the catalog on a exfat partition since the chance of improper system shutdown, incomplete writes, buffered failures are increased in proportion with the exfat file system.

Tim


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## Roelof Moorlag (Apr 27, 2016)

tspear said:


> I point I would make is that exFAT is not the most reliable format


What's wrong with exFAT? 
It's the most easy way to work on files both on mac and windows


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## tspear (Apr 27, 2016)

Roelof Moorlag said:


> What's wrong with exFAT?
> It's the most easy way to work on files both on mac and windows



No transaction journal, so if there are any hickups in the writing process to the media, you may get an unrecoverable error.
I am willing to risk this on individual images. But on the catalog, with the high intensity number of read/write operations on a single file. The risk is significantly increased.


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## jeech (Apr 28, 2016)

Anyone know why I still don't have the option to sync collections to LR mobile?


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## clee01l (Apr 28, 2016)

jeech said:


> Anyone know why I still don't have the option to sync collections to LR mobile?
> View attachment 7597


Are you running a creative cloud version of LR?  On the LR {Help} menu item, click on the submenu item {System info}.  Copy the contents of the dialog that opens and paste it into a reply. 

Also Click on the ▼ to the right of your identity plate.  In the menu that opens, look for the menu item that reads {Sync with Lightroom Mobile) and make sure it is active and that you are logged in  with your Adobe ID.


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## jeech (Apr 28, 2016)

Thanks Cletus! It was the option under the identity plate to sync with mobile that was not active.


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