Running two separate copies of lightroom, do files keep their changes?

Ok basically in a few weeks time I will have a Mac Pro and a Macbook Pro as my setup.

If in the field I add photos to the Macbook Pros library and edit them. When I copy these photos to my Mac Pro do they maintain the edits?

And no, the whole library is not coming with me

Is there some sync feature in Lightroom 2?

Cheers

You have a couple of options here. One is to write all changes to XMP. The other is to export the catalog from the Macbook and import into the MacPro each time you get back.

Write changes to XMP

If you go this route you have to make sure that you transfer not only your photos, but the sidecar XMP files to go along with it. This will also slow down the performance of LR as it has to write changes on the fly during editing.

Exporting the Catalog

If you go this route you can choose to have LR export both your images and the library for transfer, or use just the library and copy the images manually. I have used this several times, typically when I go on vacation. It works well and is pretty straight forward.

Regardless of which method you choose the one thing I would also do is to export your keywords from your main library and make sure they are on the Macbook. You want to use the same nomenclature. Same thing goes for any metadata templates and presets.

To avoid the sidecar issue, you can also use DNG files (convert to DNG on import). LR will write the information inside the DNGs instead of creating an additional XMP. It's an additional step either way, but I wanted to throw it out there as an option.

Something else to keep in mind is that if you do labeling on one machine, and expect the same labels to carry over to the second, you need to make sure that both the color and text description are identical. Two images with a "red" label won't necessarily be seen as having a "red" label if the descriptive text associated with each is not identical. I learned this through trial and error (ok -- mostly error).

If you rely on flags, LR will not write that information to XMP (or DNG). In that case, you need to do some sort of variation on export to catalog. I don't remember if the same applies to collections off hand, but I think that it does.

In the end, depending on exactly how you work and what features you use, you may need to approach a two machine solution in different ways. My suggestion is to make sure you do some preliminary testing using your workflow in a small scale, and include a checklist of things you want to make sure carry over.