# Still no practical multi-user solution?



## New Daddy (Jan 2, 2013)

My situation is very similar to the one elaborated in this thread. 

My family too stores photos on an NAS, and I have my own computer and so does my wife. Is there still no way of doing a practical collaboration among multiple users other than accessing the same catalog from multiple ends pretending to be the same user, as suggested in the above thread? It would be really nice if my wife can leave comments (e.g., "Please develop this.", "More exposure", etc.) or even special "symbols" that I can pick up on during developing.


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## Tony Jay (Jan 2, 2013)

On solution to try is to use smart collections with control keywords that both you and your wife understand as the same thing.
The smart collections will corrall images that need the work that you are referring to.
Once the work is done remove that control keyword from the image and, hey presto, the image drops out of that corresponding smart collection.

There may also be other solutions to this.

Tony Jay


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## Replytoken (Jan 3, 2013)

If you are the primary person doing the editing (and others are just providing feedback), you could export jpegs to a common folder where your wife and/or family members can view the images.  They could then give you comments, you can make the adjustments, and then re-export the updated image(s).  If the images are fine, they can use them as needed.  Yes, it is not a multi-user solution, but you may be waiting a long time for a multi-user version of LR.  IIRC, LR's databse architecture is not really designed for multiple users.

--Ken


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## New Daddy (Jan 3, 2013)

While we are on this topic, is there a post-processing system that has collaboration function? 

In this age of online publishing and excessive social networking, it seems somewhat Luddite that the best PP software is not providing any tool for pre-publishing collaboration.


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## Replytoken (Jan 3, 2013)

IIRC, iView Media Pro had a run-time catalog function, but that was before they were bought and sold by Microsoft.  Its an often requested feature, but I am not certain as to how this need is best addressed.

Good luck,

--Ken


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## Tony Jay (Jan 3, 2013)

The issue with Lightroom is the catalog.
Catalog = database.
The SQLite database is used.
Perhaps someone with more recent SQL programming experience than me can comment but my information is that designing the database to handle multiple simultaneous users is technically prohibitive (the cost if they succeeded would also be prohibitive).

Tony Jay


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## Brad Snyder (Jan 3, 2013)

Yep, there are numerous professional/corporate products. Generally, they're enterprise products and can be quite expensive, with per seat licensing, and generally require ongoing maintenance/support contracts, database administrators and the like. There are also open source products as well. Just to get you started, look here: http://digitalassetmanagementnews.org/dam-vendors/


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## New Daddy (Jan 3, 2013)

I'm not a programmer, so I don't know much. But intuitively speaking, since LR does non-destructive editing, I thought accommodating multiple users would be easier. The original photo files will remain intact, and  the post processes will be recorded for each user. And a separate space in the database will be assigned for comments/collaboration across multiple users. I'm just thinking out loud..


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## Replytoken (Jan 3, 2013)

New Daddy said:


> I'm not a programmer, so I don't know much. But intuitively speaking, since LR does non-destructive editing, I thought accommodating multiple users would be easier. The original photo files will remain intact, and  the post processes will be recorded for each user. And a separate space in the database will be assigned for comments/collaboration across multiple users. I'm just thinking out loud..



I suppose that if you never wrote to your files, and never modified them once they were located where you wanted them to reside, you could run two separate catalogs, one on each machine, that read from this common "pool" of files.  I suspect that eventually something would cause havoc, but it might be possible.

--Ken


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## Tony Jay (Jan 3, 2013)

New Daddy said:


> I'm not a programmer, so I don't know much. But intuitively speaking, since LR does non-destructive editing, I thought accommodating multiple users would be easier. The original photo files will remain intact, and  the post processes will be recorded for each user. And a separate space in the database will be assigned for comments/collaboration across multiple users. I'm just thinking out loud..



Nothing to do with non-destructive editing.
Everything to do with preventing catalog corruption from simultaneous access to identical data items.
The design complexity goes up hugely just because of this one issue.

Tony Jay


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## johnbeardy (Jan 3, 2013)

New Daddy said:


> I'm not a programmer, so I don't know much. But intuitively speaking, since LR does non-destructive editing, I thought accommodating multiple users would be easier. The original photo files will remain intact, and  the post processes will be recorded for each user. And a separate space in the database will be assigned for comments/collaboration across multiple users. I'm just thinking out loud..



It should be, but there's a lot more to it. You'd have to put LR on a different database back end which wouldn't be as vulnerable to corruption, and I'm not sure  programmers with multi-user database design experience are naturally  attracted to working for Adobe. Recruiting takes time/cost and may demand more than one iteration. But which database? Would mySQL have any appeal to the enterprise market? SQL Server or Oracle then? Choose Oracle and you lose SQL Server houses, and vice versa. And would small studios or Apple houses  have the technical nous to manage these? Offer it as an online service, maybe via Creative Cloud? Might work. The likely customers can't afford downtime, so you'd have to make the online offering robust and add fallback for when the web is down.

Just as importantly, once you go down the multi-user access route, you have to add stuff like record-locking to prevent users simultaneously editing the same picture, and in LR's case you'd have to scale that up to editing multiple pictures simultaneously. You would also probably need to add user level permissions. 

So you're adding a lot of expense - for how big a market?

It's interesting to see how Capture One handles this need. In C1 version 7 they've introduced a catalogue and included some ideas from iView MediaPro, which they bought from Microsoft a year or so ago. You can have the catalogue on the network and allow other users to access it in read-only mode. I'm not sure that's enough, but it's a step in the right direction.

John


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 3, 2013)

Mosaic View could end up being an interesting option for sharing a catalog - it's not a 2 way, so your wife would have to give you a list, but it'll be interesting to see where it goes.  http://www.mosaicarchive.com/lightroom-ipad-web-app-mosaic-view/


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## AlisonTB (Jan 3, 2013)

The solution I've come up with is very close to what he says above. I'm the primary editor; I work on the catalog and then place it on a server where my boss can use it when I'm not in the office (i.e not on LR). He leaves stars, or colored flags, to alert me to his edits so when I next come to the office, I make his changes. Then I upload to a passworded website (I'm using Smug Mug) and my main clients lift JPEGS from there. Also, the entire catalog on the server can be accessed (copied/downloaded to their local machines) by my other clients, but only by viewing the thumbnails... there is no connection to the images themselves. They then identify and request images from me, and I update the catalog every week or so to keep them current. This way the catalog is used by two people and viewable by many, with no risk of helpful people making mistakes; and the web site makes the completed JPEG images available to anyone I give the password to.  
I'm in the process of testing this system out.. wish me luck!

Alison


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## erro (Jan 3, 2013)

I guess a multi-user-solution would also require some sort of server functionality. Just placing the catalog (database) on a network drive and running two individual instances of LR on two separate computers in practice means running two databases, both using the same database file. In order for both users to actually work on the same data (same database) would probably require the catalog to be located on some kind of server, where a real database engine can handle it, and the two users can log in to the database and so on. Just storing the database file on a network drive is no more than that: just storage. It is not database handling.


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## New Daddy (Jan 4, 2013)

AlisonTB said:


> The solution I've come up with is very close to what he says above. I'm the primary editor; I work on the catalog and then place it on a server where my boss can use it when I'm not in the office (i.e not on LR). He leaves stars, or colored flags, to alert me to his edits so when I next come to the office, I make his changes. Then I upload to a passworded website (I'm using Smug Mug) and my main clients lift JPEGS from there. Also, the entire catalog on the server can be accessed (copied/downloaded to their local machines) by my other clients, but only by viewing the thumbnails... there is no connection to the images themselves. They then identify and request images from me, and I update the catalog every week or so to keep them current. This way the catalog is used by two people and viewable by many, with no risk of helpful people making mistakes; and the web site makes the completed JPEG images available to anyone I give the password to.
> I'm in the process of testing this system out.. wish me luck!
> 
> Alison



Best of luck! Keep us posted.


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## New Daddy (Jan 4, 2013)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Mosaic View could end up being an interesting option for sharing a catalog - it's not a 2 way, so your wife would have to give you a list, but it'll be interesting to see where it goes.  http://www.mosaicarchive.com/lightroom-ipad-web-app-mosaic-view/



It sounds like a very interesting solution. Like you said, it's not a 2-way, but I wouldn't be getting a true two-way collaboration anyway if my wife directly accessed LR.  

Thanks for the info!

EDIT: Bummer... Mosaic is currently for Mac only.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 4, 2013)

Keep an eye on it New Daddy - they're making progress quickly.


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## AlisonTB (Jan 4, 2013)

ok so I tried out my system- took the catalog from one computer to another and it opened just fine and all the text etc is there (keywords and the like) but no thumbnails are showing. Just grey squares. Any ideas why? It's not useful if you can't see the images!


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## erro (Jan 4, 2013)

Do you have the previews?

Do you have the original image files in their original folders?


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## AlisonTB (Jan 4, 2013)

I have solved the problem with the help of a co-worker. Export the catalog, but be sure to check ONLY the thumbnails option. Works great!!
Also, my boss asked me to post this comment:

I work for the National Park Service. We are currently establishing a Digital Repository of images collected by our Volunteer Photographers. The greatest issue we face is not being able to share the collection in a multi-user interface. We are working with various park partners (over 200) as well as users on both PC/Mac. We use the images for publications, exhibits, interpretive panels, websites, media requests, and anything else that requires use of the images. The Digital Repository we currently are responsible for contains over 14,000 images and it continues to grow, and at some point we may end up including our digital archives of historic images as well. 

From what I've seen, this multi user issue not only affects individual users, but the private sector as well as the public sector. So how do we express the need to get this feature migrated up to a level that will be recognized as a priority?


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## erro (Jan 4, 2013)

If you have both previews and images you should see them in LR. Are they in the correct location?


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## AlisonTB (Jan 5, 2013)

Hi-

when i copied my LR catalog and started lightroom with it on another computer with it, it shows me everything but the thumbnails (grey squares). Any ideas why? I want to be able to copy the catalogs with ONLY the thumbnails for my clients to use as a library....
thanks!


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## erro (Jan 5, 2013)

Did you copy only the lrcat-file? That is only the catalog (the database). To see the thumbnails you also have to copy the previews folder. Did you do that?


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## AlisonTB (Jan 7, 2013)

yes i have the copied previews folder right next to the copied cat folder... but if I open the cat folder it doesn't find the previews? How do I help it find them?
THANKS
A


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## Jim Wilde (Jan 7, 2013)

AlisonTB said:


> yes i have the copied previews folder right next to the copied cat *folder*...



Did you really mean this, i.e. you have a *folder *containing the catalog, and the previews *folder *is *alongside *the catalog folder? The previews folder needs to be *inside* the folder that contains the catalog (i.e. it's a sub-folder of the main catalog folder, not a peer folder).

Also, of course, ensure the naming conventions are correct....the previews folder should have the same name as the catalog (but not the .lrcat extension) and should end with "Previews.lrdata".....so a catalog called "Lightroom 4 Catalog.lrcat" would have a previews folder called "Lightroom 4 Catalog Previews.lrdata"


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## New Daddy (Jan 2, 2013)

My situation is very similar to the one elaborated in this thread. 

My family too stores photos on an NAS, and I have my own computer and so does my wife. Is there still no way of doing a practical collaboration among multiple users other than accessing the same catalog from multiple ends pretending to be the same user, as suggested in the above thread? It would be really nice if my wife can leave comments (e.g., "Please develop this.", "More exposure", etc.) or even special "symbols" that I can pick up on during developing.


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## Mark Sirota (Jan 8, 2013)

This is also sometimes caused by corrupt monitor profiles -- recalibrating may fix it. Or if you don't have a way to calibrate that system, try installing sRGB as the monitor profile (as a diagnostic test, not a solution -- sRGB is not actually a monitor profile). If that works, then it demonstrates that the monitor profile was corrupt and you need a new one.

I'm more inclined to guess that there's a naming or permissions problem with the Previews database, though.


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## New Daddy (Jul 18, 2013)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Keep an eye on it New Daddy - they're making progress quickly.



They now have Masaic for Windows! I'm definitely giving it a try.


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## sizzlingbadger (Jul 19, 2013)

johnbeardy said:


> It should be, but there's a lot more to it. You'd have to put LR on a different database back end which wouldn't be as vulnerable to corruption, and I'm not sure  programmers with multi-user database design experience are naturally  attracted to working for Adobe. Recruiting takes time/cost and may demand more than one iteration. But which database? Would mySQL have any appeal to the enterprise market? SQL Server or Oracle then? Choose Oracle and you lose SQL Server houses, and vice versa. And would small studios or Apple houses  have the technical nous to manage these? Offer it as an online service, maybe via Creative Cloud? Might work. The likely customers can't afford downtime, so you'd have to make the online offering robust and add fallback for when the web is down.
> 
> Just as importantly, once you go down the multi-user access route, you have to add stuff like record-locking to prevent users simultaneously editing the same picture, and in LR's case you'd have to scale that up to editing multiple pictures simultaneously. You would also probably need to add user level permissions.
> 
> ...




SQL Server and Oracle are too complex and their footprint is massive. MySQL and PostgeSQL would be ideal candidates. Both are small enough to be treated as "embedded" databases. Actually moving from Sqlite to either of these would be a major change though. From a sql perspective it would be fairly easy as the locking (transaction) is built into the database engines (which is why we use them in the first place) but from a user management / software package perspective it would take a lot of thought and design work.

You would have run the database as a server and then LR clients would connect. This again is fairly easy across a local network and performance shouldn't be too much of an issue if the work is done on the client and updates just sent back to the server. Large imports would have to be done on the server (or at least the images would have to be on the server first) to keep them efficient.

However...  the interaction of several people on the database updating the same group of photos would be pretty frustrating in real life. You would be forever getting a messages that the photo(s) are in use by another user, or waiting for them to commit their changes to free up the locks for your changes to take effect. Programmatically this can be minimised if done correctly.

I have often thought it would be a good little project to move a LR catalog from sqlite to Postgres though 

Another option would be some sort of shared service online like a "Creative Cloud" but people don't seem to be ready for it at present 

I'm a Senior Oracle / PostgreSQL DBA in my day job.


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## Denis de Gannes (Jul 19, 2013)

Jim Wilde said:


> Did you really mean this, i.e. you have a *folder *containing the catalog, and the previews *folder *is *alongside *the catalog folder? The previews folder needs to be *inside* the folder that contains the catalog (i.e. it's a sub-folder of the main catalog folder, not a peer folder).
> 
> Also, of course, ensure the naming conventions are correct....the previews folder should have the same name as the catalog (but not the .lrcat extension) and should end with "Previews.lrdata".....so a catalog called "Lightroom 4 Catalog.lrcat" would have a previews folder called "Lightroom 4 Catalog Previews.lrdata"






The above image capture shows how the Lightroom sub-folder should look by default on a Win 7 64 bit Home Premium OS. At the top of the image you will see the location of the Lightroom Sub- Folder. This folder contains a LR4 catalog FILE and a LR5 catalog FILE they are files not folders. There is also a FOLDER that contains the previews and it is adequately named so it can be identified. So the part where you say  "(i.e. it's a sub-folder of the main catalog folder, not a peer folder)" is not accurate. The previews Folder and the LR Catalog Files are inside the same sub-folder called Lightroom.


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## Jim Wilde (Jul 20, 2013)

Thank you, Denis....but I really do know that the catalog is a file, not a folder. That apart, I'm not quite sure why you would think that my comment was not accurate. Perhaps you didn't understand the point I was making in relation to the OP's comment that "the previews folder was* alongside *the catalog *folder". *Perhaps if I translate my comment into the context of your particular setup, it would go something like this:

_The previews folder "Lightroom 5 Catalog-2 Previews.lrdata" needs to be *inside *the folder "C:\Users\Denis\My Pictures\Lightroom" that contains the catalog "Lightroom 5 Catalog-2.lrcat" (i.e. it's a *sub-folder* of the main catalog *folder* [thus C:\Users\Denis\My Pictures\Lightroom\Lightroom 5 Catalog-2 Previews.lrdata], not a peer folder, i.e. not "C:\Users\Denis\My Pictures\Lightroom 5 Catalog-s Previews.lrdata")._

Does that now make more sense to you?


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## Denis de Gannes (Jul 20, 2013)

The way I see it is as follows.
Have a look at the screenshot I posted.
The Previews Folder i.e. "Lightroom 5Catalog-2 Preview.lrdata
and The Lightroom File i.e. Lightroom 5 Catalog-2 (with the large LR logo) are located in the same sub folder i.e. C:\Users\Denis\My Pictures\Lightroom\

Are they not alongside each other?


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## Jim Wilde (Jul 20, 2013)

Sorry Denis, you are totally misunderstanding the point I made. I can see perfectly well that your previews folder is alongside your catalog *file*, but that is *NOT *what I have been talking about. I'll try one more time:

The OP said "_i have the copied previews folder right next to the copied cat* folder*..._ ", so I simply asked her to confirm that she really meant "cat folder" and I pointed out that the previews folder had to be *inside* the "cat folder". Now if she meant catalog *file, *not catalog *folder*, there is no issue, but if she truly meant catalog *folder* then she's put the previews folder in the wrong place. I just sought clarification of her actual meaning, and in doing so I made a completely accurate comment that the previews folder needs to be "_.....__a sub-folder of the main catalog folder, not a peer folder_", which for some reason you have decided to take issue with. 

You can continue to take issue if you like, I'm now done with this.


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## Denis de Gannes (Jul 20, 2013)

Sorry for any confusion I caused. I am confused by what you refer to as "the main catalog folder" do you mean the sub-folder where the Catalog file resides? i.e In my screen shot the sub folder named Lightroom


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## Jim Wilde (Jul 20, 2013)

Yes, that is correct. You call it a sub-folder, though it doesn't have to be, it can be a root-level folder.....the point is it's the folder that contains the catalog file and the previews sub-folder.


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