# Lightroom syncing across multiple computers



## jamie (Apr 28, 2015)

I have just gotten Lightroom 6 upgrade and want to sync it across my iMac, macbook pro and iPhone but my IT friend says I cannot do this.  The "marketing info" from Adobe says I can.  What am I missing-anyone have a link as to procedure to accomplish if it can be done.


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## clee01l (Apr 28, 2015)

Welcome to the forum.  Lightroom Mobile is an app running on your iDevice that will sync to Smart Previews stored in the Adobe Creative Cloud. These Smart Previews are generated from designated Collections in _one_ catalog located on one (real) computer.  Photos captured initially on the iDevice will be sync'd back to the cloud and to the host catalog.  And modifications made on the iDevice to the images sync'd to the iDevice are propagated back to the cloud and to the collections in the host catalog.  Images are limited on the iDevice to the storage available on the iDevice (usually only one or two SD/CF cards full of image files.)  So, you will never have enough storage on the iDevice to store all of the images in a typical catalog.

A  LR catalog must reside on a Local drive attached to a computer (iMac or MBP, etc.). Now that means that you can not share a single catalog between multiple  computers and _there is no LR Mobile app for the laptop._   A catalog on a laptop can operate disconnected from the master images stored on an external drive or a network drive if you generate Smart Previews and store these locally on the laptop.
You can exchange image information between computers and LR catalogs using the "Export as Catalog" function from the master catalog. This can be merged back into the master catalog using the "Import from another Catalog" function.

That in summary is Adobe's official position on sharing catalogs between "real" computers. You can store a common master LR catalog in a local folder that is sync'd by a service like iCloud, Dropbox, iDrive, Amazon Cloud Drive, Google Drive or even Creative Cloud.  To do this you will need to create [strike] an alias [/strike] a *symbolic link* to the Previews folder and the Smart Previews folder if you need to use that.  This is because it is consuming to store large amounts of Preview images data on the cloud.

The short answer is that "LR Mobile" is an app the will let you share image data between the master catalog and mobile devices such as an iPhone  the Master catalog must reside locally on one and only one computer.  Two computers can not access the same catalog at the same time.  They can however access local copies of a master catalog that is sync'd across the cloud provided that data integrity is maintained and the local copies will never overwrite the cloud copy of the changes made by other catalogs.


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## MayDad (Apr 4, 2016)

Thanks for the question and the answer!  I'm trying to fully wrap my head around this.  I have a perpetual license desktop version of LR installed on a Windows 10 machine at home. I also installed a LR CC trial at work on an iMAC. I've accumulated a pretty decent catalog at work and home. When the work trial ended, I decided to spring for the CC subscription hoping that i could access both catalogs on both machines. This is what I thought was possible when reading up on CC. I imagined that the benefit of viewing/accessing my photos wasn't only for mobile devices.

Anyhow, when trying to sync LR Mobile to my work system, I got the message in the screen shot attached. So I visited the forum and read the above conversation.

I'm interested in your solution: "You can store a common master LR catalog in a local folder that is sync'd by a service like iCloud, Dropbox, iDrive, Amazon Cloud Drive, Google Drive or even Creative Cloud. To do this you will need to alias the Previews folder and the Smart Previews folder if you need to use that."

Has anybody successfully done this?


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## tspear (Apr 4, 2016)

I do it, but I sync the catalog and the images under one master directory. This includes the previews folder, note: I do not use smart previews, since I have the images available. This is also with two Macs.


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 4, 2016)

The question about moving the previews out of the catalog folder and then placing a alias to it in the catalog folder pops up about once every two weeks. It does not work, at least not for Dropbox. Lightroom won't follow an alias, so you would need to use a symbolic link. Unfortunately however, the Dropbox app also follows symlinks, so your entire previews package still gets copied to the Dropbox servers if you use this option. I can't speak for other cloud services, but it's likely they have the same problem.


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