# Star and Flag on two computers via Synced Collections



## braver (Jul 12, 2015)

I'd love to assign stars and set/unset flag/reject on newly ingested collections on my laptop, while my home desktop hosts the permanent setup.  I've read both LR5 and LR6 FAQ book chapters on it, and LR6 doesn't seem to consider a new option of LR Mobile.  Here's my setup and proposal.

I use a single main catalog, upgrading it since February 2007, 1-beta, introduced to it by Peter Krogh in his first Santa Fe DAM course.  At 165K pics the catalog it above 900GB, with

-- 3GB catalog itself
-- 170 GB Smart Previews (for all pics)
-- 710 GB Previews (with Full Size previews for all pics)
-- 35 GB Mobile Uploads (syncing family iPhones to desktop constantly, hence desktop always up and at home as the mothership)

Here's my ingestion process:  I use ImageIngester and create a folder for each SD card I ingest.  I use 16GB cards deliberately so that they are ingested often.  Once a new card is ingested, I immediately create a synced collection for it.  The mothership being a desktop, it soon uploads it, so I can see it from all iOS devices next day.

I just got a very small portable 1TB SSD and am wondering about the following idea.

What if I sync the catalog to that portable drive regularly, carry it with me, connect to the laptop when I feel like star ranking and flagging pics.  Since the portable catalog is an exact mirror of the mothership after sync, synced collections are the same.  I'd expect that stars and flags will get into Adobe Cloud and from there will be pulled back on the mothership.

An alternative is to keep the catalog and Smart Previews on DropBox (with full previews excluded from sync) and do same starring/flagging.  Presumably the synced collections will do the same but I'm not sure about both laptop and mothership catalogs being effectively synced via LR Mobile and DropBox.  With a separate laptop mirror I know that at least it's initiating the cloud sync via LR Mobile only.

What do you guys think before I go try it out?

A+ (Alexy)


----------



## tspear (Jul 12, 2015)

Alexy,

I use Microsoft OneDrive, (previous used Dropbox and Google Drive) to sync my catalog, images, presets... between computers.
Works great with a single caveat. Lr can only be open on one computer at a time. In fact both computers must have finished syncing before I open Lr on the second computer.
So with that said, go for it. Not sure it will do what you want though.
One last point, be aware of differences in volume names between machines.


Tim


----------



## johnbeardy (Jul 12, 2015)

Instead of using a catalogue on the laptop, have you looked at Lightroom Web? After syncing the photos from your main machine, on your laptop you open a web browser and go to your lightroom.adobe.com account. You can then do ratings and flags (keyboard shortcuts 1-5, PUX, G are the same as in Lr) and the results will go via the cloud to your main catalogue.

I do it all the time and find it's ideal after a long weekend when I return home with enough energy to load my 32gb cards onto my main desktop. But I don't want to sit at my desk so I just sync the new photos and then go downstairs, and review new pictures on the laptop or iPad. If ratings and flags are all you want to do, it's quite an effortless way to do it.

John


----------



## tspear (Jul 13, 2015)

John,

Can you give a little more details on Lr Web? I have never heard of it. This sounds interesting.

Tim


----------



## braver (Jul 13, 2015)

John -- thanks for the idea, and good to see you here!  Is this pretty much the place for LR gurus now, as opposed to TheDamBook of yore?  I'm still curious about my method as it allows much faster LR client, full app on a Mac.  Despite all my hard work to like LR Mobile starring, it's still slower than the original.  Also, by carrying a 1TB with Full Previews, I get instant access to everything I need to see on the Mac.

A+


----------



## johnbeardy (Jul 13, 2015)

tspear said:


> Can you give a little more details on Lr Web? I have never heard of it. This sounds interesting.



Tim, 

I'm not sure Lightroom Web is an official name, but a few of us are using it to apply to the web browser sibling of LrMobile. So it's only available if you've a subscription. That said...

You probably understand that when you sync pictures to LrMobile they are initially uploaded to Adobe's servers. Adobe can then serve the pictures to:


LrMobile apps on iOS and Android 
Web browsers - ie Lightroom Web 
Other mobile apps like Adobe's Slate and Comp and from 3rd parties such as Storehouse 
 So for Lightroom Web, let's assume I have a main desktop and am using a laptop, which might not even have Lr installed. In a web browser on the laptop I can then log into my account at https://lightroom.adobe.com/ and see all my synced collections. You must be logged in to:


View images in a colour managed environment, if enabled in the browser 
Apply ratings and flags with buttons or using the same 0-5 and P U X keyboard shortcuts. I recently saw a caption interface which looked like something they were developing but had accidentally enabled in the public site. 
Upload images directly into Mobile (I might have a photo on the laptop, drag it from Finder/Explorer and drop it in the browser winder, making it upload to LrMobile and appear later in my main catalogue) 
Share the collection on Facebook etc 
Share the collection (eg http://adobe.ly/1NyPw1X)  with other people who can review pictures in their browsers and (if they have an Adobe account) can mark favourites and make comments, even download a large version if you've enabled that feature. 
 I don't think I've forgotten anything important, but that should be enough to get you going. LrWeb is not as hyped as the mobile apps, but I think it's interesting and useful in other ways.

John

PS The shared collection (above) is a collection of images I assembled to debunk the idea of using Dehaze to detect more dust spots. So read the "tips" as highly ironic - if you use the spotting tool's built-in visualisation tools properly, I don't think one should switch to PV2010 and add 700% clarity to find dust spots!


----------



## Jim Wilde (Jul 13, 2015)

braver said:


> John -- thanks for the idea, and good to see you here!  Is this pretty much the place for LR gurus now, as opposed to TheDamBook of yore?  I'm still curious about my method as it allows much faster LR client, full app on a Mac.  Despite all my hard work to like LR Mobile starring, it's still slower than the original.  Also, by carrying a 1TB with Full Previews, I get instant access to everything I need to see on the Mac.
> 
> A+



I'm not 100% sure that your method will work, and I'd certainly be running some small tests before going all in. The issue is that only one catalog can be synced with LRmobile, and attempting to sync a different catalog would result in a warning message to that effect, and that continuing would result in all currently synced data being deleted....i.e. all currently synced collections would be removed from the Adobe servers and thus from any synced iDevices.

Being a "mirror" of the desktop catalog, it "should" be OK, but it would mean that the "mothership" would have to be shutdown before attempting to fire up the mirror copy on your laptop. I did do some testing of this a long time ago, and to be honest I did run into some odd problems which may have been related to the way that I had setup the test....hence my advice to test it for yourself first.


----------



## johnbeardy (Jul 13, 2015)

braver said:


> John -- thanks for the idea, and good to see you here!  Is this pretty much the place for LR gurus now, as opposed to TheDamBook of yore?  I'm still curious about my method as it allows much faster LR client, full app on a Mac.  Despite all my hard work to like LR Mobile starring, it's still slower than the original.  Also, by carrying a 1TB with Full Previews, I get instant access to everything I need to see on the Mac.
> 
> A+



I suppose the disadvantage of your method, Alexy, is if you are often syncing the catalogue to the portable drive. Time consuming, tiresome? I do something similar, but only when I go away for more than a couple of days, and on the portable drive I have my main catalogue and smart previews, not full ones. So in those circumstances I have access to everything and without needing web access.

TheDamBook needed Peter to participate too, but a few of us have migrated over here!

John


----------



## johnbeardy (Jul 13, 2015)

Jim Wilde said:


> I'm not 100% sure that your method will work, and I'd certainly be running some small tests before going all in. The issue is that only one catalog can be synced with LRmobile, and attempting to sync a different catalog would result in a warning message to that effect, and that continuing would result in all currently synced data being deleted....i.e. all currently synced collections would be removed from the Adobe servers and thus from any synced iDevices.
> 
> Being a "mirror" of the desktop catalog, it "should" be OK, but it would mean that the "mothership" would have to be shutdown before attempting to fire up the mirror copy on your laptop. I did do some testing of this a long time ago, and to be honest I did run into some odd problems which may have been related to the way that I had setup the test....hence my advice to test it for yourself first.



It may be that I've misunderstood Alexy's method, and you're right about only one catalogue syncing. One can certainly run into trouble if the synced catalogue file is opened on another computer and if you try to sync it. As you know, I've done this and successfully confused the sync mechanism!

John


----------



## tspear (Jul 13, 2015)

John,

Thanks.
Very interesting.

Tim


----------



## braver (Jul 13, 2015)

Jim -- you're confirming my suspicions.  Logically, it would follow that *nobody* should open LR catalog that sync so LR Mobile on DropBox or other such storage from another machine while the primary is up!  Basically, it means that keeping a catalog with synced collections on a syncing drive is a *bad idea* _a priori_!

A+


----------



## Jim Wilde (Jul 13, 2015)

I'm not saying it can't/won't work, I'm just saying that I ran into some problems, as did John. Sure, you can't have both catalogs up at the same time, but that applies regardless of using LRmobile or not....it's just a fact of life when using a sync mechanism such as Dropbox, i.e. you have to make sure the catalog is closed on one system, then ensure it has properly synced to the second system before you can open it on that second system. LRmobile is just another complication when syncing the catalog.

I'll see if Victoria has a view on this, as I know that she does/did sync her catalog between a couple of Macs via Dropbox.


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Jul 13, 2015)

Jim Wilde said:


> I'll see if Victoria has a view on this, as I know that she does/did sync her catalog between a couple of Macs via Dropbox.



Yup, still do.  Works fine as long as you make sure let it fully sync before switching computers.  Using LR Sync with multiple desktops was buggy at first, but they seem to have worked out the issues there now.  I quite happily open my catalog on either computer and it syncs with LR mobile.  Only thing to watch out for is photos added on the mobile device may end up on one or the other computer, so I have to remember to move them to my main photo storage.

If all you want to do is flag/star them, I'd be inclined to use LR web on the laptop as John suggested.


----------



## tspear (Jul 13, 2015)

I also do it between two Macs.
Works just fine. Note: I very rarely am I on the two macs in Lr in the same day. Generally I am either working on my laptop or my desktop. I do not switch back and forth for Lr. This helps make sure the sync is complete.

Tim


----------



## braver (Jul 14, 2015)

Thanks Victoria!  Appreciate your great work.


----------

