As a matter of course I brought my laptop with me on my recent family trip. It gives me an opportunity to play with imagery as I travel and occasionally check stuff online. WiFi access was sparse at best, but it was good to still be able to get a little editing done while on the road.
Getting home means moving everything off the laptop and onto the desktop. There are a couple of approaches that you can take. As I keep images stored on a date basis, the easiest way to get images across with edits in place is to save XMP on the laptop by selecting all the images from the trip and saving with Command/Control S. Next I can access the laptop a number of ways: With Target Disk Mode, I can directly import the images, from their dated folders on the laptop drive, to the main desktop. I can also go via my home network, but that is not particularly quick. I could also copy the files to an external disk and then onto the main hard drive.
Another option is to choose the folders and files from the trip and use File>Export as Catalog to create a copy of the settings, previews and negatives. This can then be imported with the Import from Catalog command. This is useful if you’ve created a series of Collections, which are not saved with the XMP.
3 thoughts on “From tour to home.”
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
I'd prefer not to have that much to lose, along with the ensuing headache of restoring from backup, along with having lost whatever shots I had from the the trip.
After a good bit of headache, I've given up on this process completely. I currently keep all of my photos and Lightroom DB on a WD Passport and keep it with my when I go on trips. Its incredibly convenient to be able to just plug it in whenever you want to access your full lightroom DB on any of your computers.
Just be sure to backup regularly if you go this route.
Recently, I've gone with the later. It's smooth, efficient, accurate, and works (most importantly) – it also creates a de-facto backup of everything until I choose to delete it.