Lightroom woes

I have used Photoshop since starting with version 7 and I like using it since it accomplishes most of what I want to do. I, like many photographers have many-many photos and I presently keep them on a server running Microsoft Server 2008 R2 with no issues, except for occasionally trying to locate one of them and having issues searching. I decided to try Adobe Lightroom as a cataloger and a way of searching. I have made some simple observations that I would like for someone to rhyme in on and help me understand some of the aspects and points of Lightroom.

First, why does Lightroom not support server/network use? Why must the photos be on the computer with Lightroom? I know some folks out there keep their photos on external hard drives but for those who have servers and lots of space and use a laptop to edit, would it not be better to have the ability to house photos on their storage machine?

My next issue with Lightroom is the ability to do some editing with the software. If as a photographer you already own Photoshop are you not paying for another program to edit your photos? Does Lightroom offer different tools that are better for editing?

I simply started out looking for a tool to setup my photos in a database that I could do simple searches through keywords, dates, and title to find what I am looking for. I have not really found anything that is dependable or that has any type of scalability. I am not trying to discriminate against Lightroom or take anything away from it. I am simple trying to figure out the purpose for something that is not network-able and edits as if there was nothing else out there.

Lightroom does support placement of photos on network drives. However, the Catalog within Lightroom is best kept on an internal harddrive, as is the software for Lightroom, for reasons of speed (network access for both is relatively slow compared to internal data transfers). For that reason, my Lightroom configuration is set up so that current year photos are on the internal harddrive, previous years' photos are on my network drive, and at the end of the year I use Lightrooom to move this year's photos to the network drive where I do not need to access them with the greatest speed.

Makes me wonder how hard you've actually looked. IDImager Pro SQL Server is certainly scalable. And there are enterprise level tools like Extensis Portfolio and Canto Cumulus that are also available; but at enterprise-level prices too.

PixelMagic wrote in post #11535343
Makes me wonder how hard you've actually looked. IDImager Pro SQL Server is certainly scalable. And there are enterprise level tools like Extensis Portfolio and Canto Cumulus that are also available; but at enterprise-level prices too.

I did take a look at these but since I felt more comfortable with Adobe products I wanted to stick with them. I just wanted to be able to store my catologs on my server and have access to them from any computer on my network. The editing issue gives me less concern than the network access.

mdaddyrabbit wrote in post #11535043
why does Lightroom not support server/network use? Why must the photos be on the computer with Lightroom?

Because LR's built around an SQLite database and SQLite isn't suitable for network use. They could have (and still could in future) use SQL but the cost would be higher. SQLite has a lot of benefits for this kind of setup, but feel free to put in a Official Feature Request/Bug Report Form

Photos can be stored anywhere - it's only the catalog that can't be used across the network.