Syncing LR catalog from 2 computers

I am tired of keeping fiftyeleven Lightroom lightroom catalogs or my various computers and drives and trying to remeber to merge them to my "master catalog" as soon as I have worked on images on some other computer than TGM (The Great Mothership). So I am now trying to figure out a good solution for using the same Lightroom catalog on two or more computers (in my case TGM at home/ work desktop / laptop) without having to import catalogs manually or maintain separate catalogs or lugging around external drives.

My original idea was to place LR catalog in Dropbox, live sync/mesh or some similar cloud folder and use it from there. But then I read the issues with placing the catalog on a (regular/phyical) network store because of the potential of corruption if (accidenatlly or on purpose) attempting at access by multiple users simultaneously and that therefore networking has been crippled in LR to keep us "safe from ourselves". I see that there is an easy script to "uncripple" and allow placing catalog on a (mapped) drive on a network, yet of course the potential for corruption the remains. I don't know if/how any of this would translate to potential problems using something like Dropbox. I am thinking that since for example Dropbox uses bit level syncing and in effect you are only working on "one copy" of the file, perhaps there should be no problem, or?

So, I would be interested in knowing what clever solutions everyone has for being able to keep their catalog(s) in sync. Ideas?

Hi Marjo, I dont think I follow all your post!

But I keep all my photos AND my Catalogs all on a portable wired hard drive, and swap between my PC's, where LR is installed on the C drive, I originally tried on a network wireless drive but this wouldn't work

HTH

Yes, that is pretty much what I do now. But I want to accomplish is avoiding lugging lugging extrenal drives with me.

The typical scenario would be this:

I have approximately 5TB of images in the "main" images storage at home. I have no wish or need to bring all these image files with me anywhere outside of my home office.

When I am on the road shooting, I want to be able to offload new images to either an external small drive (or even onto the laptop, location doesn't matter and I can call it anything, give it the same name and drive letter as my regular storage).

But I want the changes to make to these new files in the Lightroom catalog to also happen to my regular catalog so that I won't have to create a yet new catalog and then merge it to the master when I get home (messy). I'd much rather just have one catalog, because I jump between computers so frequently.

My problem is that now I find myself maintaining several catalogs in different locations and I find that I go looking for a file "that I just worked on" and then get frustrated because I realize the changes are sitting on a catalog on some computer or drive that is sttinging in a bag back in the office or even in the computer next door in the hubby's mancave and regrettably there is a "dont even think of entering during sacred ballgame" situation going on. I'd like my one master catalog in one place, always accessible.

Not sure if it will work but why dont you have a memory stick drive to store your catalogs on, seperate from your photo drive?

Not sure if it will work but why dont you have a memory stick drive to store your catalogs on, seperate from your photo drive?

I have been thinking about doing that too. How well does that solution work with LR?

That is the mother ship has all the terrabytes of images + the LR catalog. Whenever using the lapatop, I get a snapshot of the main catalog, import images to that catalog and then moving images and catalog to the mother ship afterwards. The laptop will have the complete catalog, but only a fraction of the images.

The flaw here is that you must manually keep track of which copy of the catalog which is the current.

Well...hmm.. that's exactly what I am trying to avoid: having to remeber to lug some piece of equipment like a uSB key with me or having to manually keep track of what catalog is current and merging back and forth. I am merely looking for a way to keep one (1) catalog in some sort of cloud storage. I am fairly sure someone is doing this, or has some other clever solution to automatically keep catalogs in sync, or? If this is not possible with LR (due to the "multiuser problem"), then I think that is a major flaw in the application.

I might be talking out of my ass here, not tried any of this...but....if you press shift (I think) as you fire up LR it lets you choose your catalog address...I think? that way, you can locate to the flash drive/memory stick on each PC as you go along