Lightroom beginner

Hi,

Hope somebody can help me here

I've got Lightroom on my Vista and also on my Macbook Air and also "unfortunately" have a Network Drive (Buffalo Linkstation Live) so I have tried a few ways to get it to think my network drive is a wired external hard drive that I found on the net by going thru a shell/CMD window but none seem to work, could anyone happen to know the right way to get round it?

I have tried variations of typing subst "P://netwrok name/network volume" but none were recognised, can someone help with the correct method?

Secondly, what would be the best way to name the RAW files, do you use the date to name them and/or do you store them in another folder, or any other suggestions for the right way would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Woody

Why do you need to try "a few ways to get it to think my network drive is a wired external hard drive"?

As to naming - it doesn't really matter ... I just import them with the same name as the camera gives them ...

Organized folders are nice, but as long as you have good meta-data ... dates, keywords, EXIF ... folder structure is only important if you want to go looking for photo files OUTSIDE of lightroom - something I almost never do now that I use LR.

That said, I'm kinda anal and do try to keep the folders organized ... but I don't bother worrying about file names.

I believe you can assign a drive letter to your NAS or to a folder on your NAS. Would that help? I had to do that to get my backup software to work.

Cheers

James

I believe you can assign a drive letter to your NAS or to a folder on your NAS. Would that help? I had to do that to get my backup software to work.

 

Cheers

James

You can definitely mount a NAS as a "lettered" drive in Vista ... but that won't "fool" the OS into thinking it is a hard-wired external.

I now understand the question ... you want to put the Catalog on the network ... and you can't, unfortunately. You can have the library on the network, but not the catalog ... the catalog has to be local to the install of the application.

You can make it work on the mac, but I don't now how to fool vista...

I'm using lightroom on 2 macs with only 1 catalog on a network drive.

(you can't use the catalog on the same time though...)

-Make a diskimage on the networkdrive.

-Open the diskimage on the mac. (now it looks like a 'local' drive to the mac... and lightroom)

-Open lightroom and make a new catalogfile on the diskimage

-Import the photos (also copy them to the networkdrive so both mac's can use them)

Now if you want to use lightroom, first thing you have to do is activate the diskimage

and then open lightroom, otherwise lightroom won't be able to find the catalog...

This is how can use lightroom on my laptop and on my workstation.

hope this helps.

Sorry for the delay, I've read, but not had time to reply!

Why do you need to try "a few ways to get it to think my network drive is a wired external hard drive"?

Hi Jeremy

As there have been a few I found on the net and all the text to type in is slightly different

As to naming - it doesn't really matter ... I just import them with the same name as the camera gives them ...

 

Organized folders are nice, but as long as you have good meta-data ... dates, keywords, EXIF ... folder structure is only important if you want to go looking for photo files OUTSIDE of lightroom - something I almost never do now that I use LR.

 

That said, I'm kinda anal and do try to keep the folders organized ... but I don't bother worrying about file names.

I thought the way to do it was keep all the photos in one folder/directory and just use metadata to organise any collections? doing it the way you suggest would give repetitive names as I have now with (2) after the filename, the way I suggest I guess would eliminate the chance of you overwriting a file?

Hi James

I believe you can assign a drive letter to your NAS or to a folder on your NAS. Would that help? I had to do that to get my backup software to work.

I've already done that thanks James, there is another line of text to use instead of the above to direct it to the drive letter instead of the address but that never worked either.

I now understand the question ... you want to put the Catalog on the network ... and you can't, unfortunately. You can have the library on the network, but not the catalog ... the catalog has to be local to the install of the application.

I'm not fully familiar yet Jeremy but I think the catalog would be ok to be local, the catalogue stores the changes doesnt it?If I wanted to work on the same editted photo on the other computer I guess I could transfer the catalog thru the network? and the library stores the RAW/originals? Thats the one that needs to be on the NAS?

You can make it work on the mac, but I don't now how to fool vista...

 

I'm using lightroom on 2 macs with only 1 catalog on a network drive.

(you can't use the catalog on the same time though...)

 

-Make a diskimage on the networkdrive.

-Open the diskimage on the mac. (now it looks like a 'local' drive to the mac... and lightroom)

-Open lightroom and make a new catalogfile on the diskimage

-Import the photos (also copy them to the networkdrive so both mac's can use them)

 

Now if you want to use lightroom, first thing you have to do is activate the diskimage

and then open lightroom, otherwise lightroom won't be able to find the catalog...

 

This is how can use lightroom on my laptop and on my workstation.

 

hope this helps.

Hi Pieter

I'm not familiar with diskimage? Would this be read and writeable from the NAS on my Vista PC?

I mainly want to store them on my macbook then transfer them onto my NAS, and then work on them on my PC if it helps!?

Thanks guys, could anyone else help me?

Well ... one thing you can do ...

If you set LR to write all edits to the XMP, you can open these files on another machine using ACR and start with the LR edit and save changes that will be visible to LR when you go back to the other machine.