Lightroom -Sharing a Library across a Network

Well,

I got my laptop today and managed to get all the networking setup so now I am sat watching TV typing this knowing I can access all my image files on my main PC next door thru my wireless network. I can now even do my post processing in bed should I choose to !

However, am i destined to wait til LR 1.1 to get LR working efficiently or is there a way round?

I can't access my LR Library on my main PC from the laptop as LR does not allow you to access a Lib across a network drive

Sooo... I copied across my Library, but then its not associated with any of the files so I can't edit them!

So, how do I work it then? Do I have to copy across the files too?

Anyone any help/experience of this?

use remote desktop and run LR on the main system.
if the laptop screen is calibrated it works very well.

You can have files on a network share - just not the library itself.

My way around this is to put my files on a drive letter that's mapped to a network share on both my desktop and laptop. It doesn't matter that the network share is actually on my desktop - it still works. Using Offline Files (if you have that capability - for example, in Windows XP Professional) on the laptop can help out here, as changes in the files away from home get synchronised back to the desktop.

You can also point that drive letter to an external hard disk if necessary - either by setting it up as a network share and changing the network share mapping, or using the 'subst' command (which can be made a bit slicker using Visual Subst).


There's a variation on this idea here, though I can't get it to work in Windows outside Lightroom so I'm loath to try it inside Lightroom.


I hear strmrdr's idea, but I'm not sure that Lightroom will correctly apply the screen profile if you do that (I don't think Remote Desktop is a colour managed application) and Remote Desktop is hardly any good when you're away from home.

David

strmrdr wrote in post #3276256
use remote desktop and run LR on the main system.
if the laptop screen is calibrated it works very well.

Wait wait wait, WHAT? Doesn't remote desktop COMPRESS, and also remove the profiling? I'm curious to see how you get this to work without losing information.

jj1987 wrote in post #3277192
Wait wait wait, WHAT? Doesn't remote desktop COMPRESS, and also remove the profiling? I'm curious to see how you get this to work without losing information.

I used it for over a year doing PS work and it works fine.
It uses compressed bmp at 24bits on XP pro.
Worked fine using srgb as the color space.
Didn't test it with others.
As long as you have atleast a 2M/bit downstream connection it works great.
When used over slower connections it does downgrade a bit but I found it still pretty good over a 512k vpn connection.

DavidW wrote in post #3276871
I hear strmrdr's idea, but I'm not sure that Lightroom will correctly apply the screen profile if you do that (I don't think Remote Desktop is a colour managed application) and Remote Desktop is hardly any good when you're away from home.


David

rdp is srgb color space, using that as the color space in LR and it will be fine.
You can also run it over VPN or use port forwarding to access it over the net.

strmrdr wrote in post #3278056
I used it for over a year doing PS work and it works fine.
It uses compressed bmp at 24bits on XP pro.
Worked fine using srgb as the color space.
Didn't test it with others.
As long as you have atleast a 2M/bit downstream connection it works great.
When used over slower connections it does downgrade a bit but I found it still pretty good over a 512k vpn connection.

Interesting, I would have never thought it would of worked that well.

What program were you using for the remote desktop sharing?

jj1987 wrote in post #3278088
Interesting, I would have never thought it would of worked that well.

What program were you using for the remote desktop sharing?

xp pro w/ built in rdp server.
win98 with the latest rdp client on the remote machine.

Try this to share the library and photos across multiple machines.

On the machine where the library and photos are hosted do the following:

Make sure all the photos are located inside a root level folder such as

d:\photos
shoot1
shoot2
shoot3
etc

Now create a new .bat file with the line

subst p: d:\photos

save it and add it to your startup folder. On this machine you'll now have a virtual drive p: that goes straight to your photos. Finally copy the library file into the root of p:

On any other machine on the network map a network drive p: to \\mymainmachine\d\phot​os (which is shared)

Now on any machine on your network the library and photos will always be on p:

I've used the same technique for sharing work (w files across machines, etc.