# Temporary Lightroom editing while travelling



## avkaji (Jun 28, 2018)

This is kind of a convoluted question. 

I'm between desktops right now so I am using LR on a laptpop with external HD (pics on HD, catalog on laptop)

Went to Galapagos two weeks ago and am bout to start editing photos.

Dont want to take my HD on vacation this coming week when I will be away from home, but still want to edit and maybe even post results, but without taking my HD.

Also want any work I do to seamlessly merge back into my existing structure when I return home.

I have already made Smart Previews, so I know I'll be able to do lots of editing on those photos without accessing originals (except for 1:1 in Develop module)

I have copied the orginal folder of RAW negatives onto my laptop SSD (carbon copy of the original folder on external HD)

If I want to export JPEGS of my edited work or otherwise use the original RAW files, my assumption is I can just update folder location for that folder to point to the laptop SSD folder which I will have. All the edits I perform on vacation are saved in the catalog, so when I go home all I have to do is update the folder location again to point to the same folder on the external HD. Since Lightroom doesn't modify the existing RAW images, everything should be hunky dory.

Is there a mistaken assumption or fallacy in this plan?


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## Victoria Bampton (Jun 29, 2018)

Hi avkaji, welcome to the forum!

Since you already have smart previews, I would simply copy the entire catalog and its previews and smart previews onto the internal drive, use it while you're away, and then move it back to the external drive when you get home. 

But yes, if you think you're going to need the originals, copying the originals onto the laptop and updating the folder location will do fine.


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