Advice: Team Collaboration using Lightroom

I am looking for a few suggestions to improve my photography workflow when collaborating with other people.

Basically what I am trying to accomplish is a way to export a photography job as a separate catalog onto an external HD and have my assistant do some culling and minor editing and then re-import it into my main catalog and reconnect the files with the new settings in which I will then be able to update/sync all of the photos to the ones on my publishing services.
If I export a folder as a catalog and then re-import it, will it accomplish this?
Does anyone have a different method or any suggestions to improve my current workflow?

Thanks

Sure, you can export as a catalog, your assistant opens the catalog, does whatever, then you re-open the catalog when your assistant is done.

The one alternative is to save editing metadata to a "sidecar" file, but as long as you have all the images as well as the catalog files on the external hard drive, well, then you just have to decide what works best for your workflow.

tonylong wrote in post #16202234
Sure, you can export as a catalog, your assistant opens the catalog, does whatever, then you re-open the catalog when your assistant is done.

The one alternative is to save editing metadata to a "sidecar" file, but as long as you have all the images as well as the catalog files on the external hard drive, well, then you just have to decide what works best for your workflow.

Thanks.
Will I be able to re-import the images into my main catalog and have them reconnect to the original images?

ChadAndreo wrote in post #16202479
Thanks.
Will I be able to re-import the images into my main catalog and have them reconnect to the original images?

You can perform an "File/Import from Another Catalog", and so yes, you should be able to use that to get things into your main catalog.

Something that will require some thought, though, is making sure that you are properly handling your image files and the resulting processes. For example, if you "keep" the images in your "main" catalog, and then try to re-import your assistant's catalog, well, who knows what will happen? So, when you do your initial Export to the catalog on the hard drive, you will likely want to remove the images from your "main" catalog so that you can cleanly re-import them!

When I say "remove the images", understand I mean to remove them from your catalog, not to delete them from the hard drive!

ChadAndreo wrote in post #16202146
If I export a folder as a catalog and then re-import it, will it accomplish this?

I'm sure there's a way to do this. If you have Lynda, Chris Orwig has a video tutorial on how to do exactly what you're describing.

You'll probably want your assistant to just mark the rejects as rejected, not to actually delete them - that way, when you re-import, they'll be marked as rejected so that you can delete them.

tonylong wrote in post #16202505
You can perform an "File/Import from Another Catalog", and so yes, you should be able to use that to get things into your main catalog.

Something that will require some thought, though, is making sure that you are properly handling your image files and the resulting processes. For example, if you "keep" the images in your "main" catalog, and then try to re-import your assistant's catalog, well, who knows what will happen? So, when you do your initial Export to the catalog on the hard drive, you will likely want to remove the images from your "main" catalog so that you can cleanly re-import them!

When I say "remove the images", understand I mean to remove them from your catalog, not to delete them from the hard drive!

You shouldn't have to do this, there is an option just to import metadata and settings for files already in the catalog.

I agree with Joel. It is not necessary to remove the images from your master catalog. When you import the revised catalog its metadata will replace the earlier metadata.

What edition of LR? Up to LR4 if the assistant is going to do editing (Develop module) he will nneed access to the photo files. With LR5 this is not necessary - using Smart Previews it is possible to edit the S.P. without being connected to the original, so you could just give him the exported catalog and a copy of the Smart Previews folder.

Thanks for the advice.
I am using LR5 and she is using LR4. I just tried to open the LR5 catalog in LR4 and LR4 is unable to open the catalog. I did not realize that LR catalogs were not backwards compatible.
Does anyone have any suggestions on a workaround?

ChadAndreo wrote in post #16205449
Thanks for the advice.
I am using LR5 and she is using LR4. I just tried to open the LR5 catalog in LR4 and LR4 is unable to open the catalog. I did not realize that LR catalogs were not backwards compatible.
Does anyone have any suggestions on a workaround?

Hmm, interesting, but I don't have LR5 so can't offer anything there!

Was your install of LR5 an upgrade? If so do you have your "old" install of LR4?

I still have LR4 on my cpu.

Another question
is there a way to sync photo mechanic metadata/xmp files?
Since we both have the same version of PM, I had her rate and organize the images in photo mechanic. IS there a way for her to send me the xmp files in which I could use to sync the photos on my cpu through PM?

ChadAndreo wrote in post #16242112
I still have LR4 on my cpu.

Another question
is there a way to sync photo mechanic metadata/xmp files?
Since we both have the same version of PM, I had her rate and organize the images in photo mechanic. IS there a way for her to send me the xmp files in which I could use to sync the photos on my cpu through PM?

I'm not familiar with Photo Mechanic, but does it save xmp files in the same folder as the photos? If so, I'd imagine that what you are asking would be a pretty simple operation...

I tried replacing the xmp files with the updated ones and it didnt work.

ChadAndreo wrote in post #16243270
I tried replacing the xmp files with the updated ones and it didnt work.

Did you try reading them into Photo Mechanic or into Lightroom? I'm sure that Lightroom would not read xmp files from Photo Mechanic!

Photo mechanics