# New CC user, struggling to understand catalogues and mobile sync



## Moto Shepherd (Sep 7, 2017)

Hi All, 

Newbie to the forum here, be gentle  I hope this is the right part of the forum for this question. 

Long term LR user, who's just upgraded to LR CC. Primarily because I like the mobile app functionality, and it's purported integration with the desktop app. 

I have two things I'm struggling with, one may be related to the other. 

I have LR on my Mac with personal photo's, and my travel/wedding shots. I have LR on my work (day job) Windows Laptop, with images related to work. After the initial installation, when I booted my Mac, it said 'LR is currently syncing with another catalogue...do you want to sync with this one instead?' So, I assume it's talking about the catalogue file on the PC.

Both the Mac and the Windows machine have the default catalogue name. So what I'm struggling to understand, is how can you run LRCC on two different machines, if it thinks each one is a different catalogue file? (I know technically they are different files on different machines). How can the two machine strategy work if this is the case?

I understand that it's possible to have separate images on the different machines, with just the specified collections syncing between the two and mobile clients, but why does my subscription think each machine is a different catalogue? What am I missing. 

(I'm going to leave problem two until I get an answer to this one  )

Thanks
Moto


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## Linwood Ferguson (Sep 7, 2017)

Lightroom CC, unfortunately, is not designed to sync two Lightroom CC catalogs, only one with mobile.

There are many workarounds  for sync'ing to LR desktop installations, but no good ones, and Adobe doesn't support it.  The only thing Adobe supports that is close is one way mergers with export and import of catalogs.  E.g. you can export all or a portion of your catalog to another machine, then change it and import back and it will do a reasonable job of merging together (though it is one way -- you best not change the same image on the source while changing it on the destination).  It is also very manual, you need to handle the movement to/from, or establish a network path, etc. You also have to handle all the paths (e.g. if the path on export is different from the path during remote use, and different still at import time).  

There are just no pretty, magic solutions.

Now the Mobile sync is pretty magic for seeing the smart preview on the mobile device, changing, bringing it back, etc.  Just not another desktop.


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## Moto Shepherd (Sep 7, 2017)

Hi Ferguson,

I don't really want to sync two catalogues. But, is your understanding that LRCC treats the two desktop installations as two separate catalogues? So really all you can do is sync one LRCC desktop install with LR mobile? 

I don't mind the second machine not syncing its local images, but if you click 'no' to the warning message about catalogues, it doesn't sync the mobile collection images either.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Sep 7, 2017)

Yes, if you have two desktops and install lightroom on each, they have separate catalogs even if they began life identically.  LR thinks they are separate, and operates on each independently.

I do not sync with mobile/cloud so hopefully someone will check my answer, but I believe you must pick one (max) of those two to sync with LR Mobile.


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## Jim Wilde (Sep 8, 2017)

Yes, only one catalog can be synced at a time. So if you reply "no" to the "do you want to switch" message, that means that sync is not enabled, and so existing stuff on LRm cannot sync.


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## Moto Shepherd (Sep 8, 2017)

Jim Wilde said:


> Yes, only one catalog can be synced at a time. So if you reply "no" to the "do you want to switch" message, that means that sync is not enabled, and so existing stuff on LRm cannot sync.


Thanks Jim. I just downgraded my subscription. It's seems kind of pointless having a two machine licence if you can't use it on two machines. 

As a workaround, I'm importing images I want on both devices to a Dropbox location and syncing to both. I also save and load my catalogue files there. Seems to be working ok so far ;o)


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