I’m a bit confused by these statements from Adobe:

Can I store a catalog on a network?

No, you can’t store catalogs on a network but you can store your photos on a network. Smart Previews let you edit your photos in Lightroom even when you are disconnected from the network or when your computer is disconnected from the drive that contains your photos.

How do I use my catalog on multiple computers, such as a laptop and a desktop?

The easiest way to use Lightroom on more than one computer is to keep your catalog and photos together on an external drive. Then, in preferences, tell Lightroom to open that catalog by default.

(from here:Lightroom Catalogue FAQ)

They don’t specifically state this, but for the second scenario, I’m assuming that the user would have to unplug the external hard drive from computer A and plug it into computer B, so it can’t actually be ‘shared’

I have two computers and a NAS.
Ideally, I’d like to be able to access Lightroom on either computer and have the (ONE) same catalogue and photo folders/files. The first Adobe answer suggests this isn’t possible so, periodically, a copy over the entire folder structure and catalogue file from computer A to computer B (or vice versa if the latest updates are on computer B). I’ve been careful to make sure the folder structure and names are the same on both computers. It works, sort of, but IS not ideal.

I’m using Lightroom 5.7 FWIW

Any other ideas?

It’s a bit vague, but I think the advice against storing the catalog on the network is to avoid problems if both computers open it at once. I think another issue would be the different paths the source photos may appear under each machine (which is why they encourage you to keep catalog and photos together on the same external drive). For example, you may have your NAS mapped to N:\ on one machine (Windows) and /Volumes/nas on the other (Mac).

Here’s what I do, which may or may not help you:

* choose one computer as the master, in my case it’s my desktop
* if I’m on holiday with my laptop and want to start tweaking photos I create a new catalog on the laptop
* when I get home, I merge the catalog from the laptop into the catalog on the desktop – Lightroom is pretty good at merging catalogs and makes it easy to bulk change paths of the source photos.
* I just use the NAS for backing up the desktop (and laptop).

That works for me, because generally I don’t need or want old photos on my laptop.

Thinking about it… it’s probably more the both computers using it at once reason (or some weird file locking thing) than the different paths, as you’d have the same problem with a USB drive.

🙂

I think it’s a shame that Adobe’s cloud offering doesn’t do more of this for you (or that they provide integration with Google Drive or S3).

It’s just the catalogue that isn’t really meant to stay on the Nas. The original photo files can sit on the Nas though.

The catalogue file is fairly small, hundreds of megs rather than gigs. It’s the previews stored by Lightroom that takes up gigs of space… But you can control that. So it’s possible to have just the catalogue file on a USB and then open it on each pc. When you do so, it may lose track of the directory, so you just right click on the library folder in Lightroom on the left hand side and then select the option to point to the correct directory on the Nas. It’ll will then take a few moments to resync and should work fine after that.

Hmmm, I’m not using the subscription version (and don’t even know whether that is relevant)
File locking shouldn’t be an issue as Lightroom won’t be used on both at the same time (and I would ensure LR was shut down one one PC before opening on the other)
They’re both Windows PCs and I made sure both use the same drive letter for the NAS…

I’ve never tried merging catalogues so maybe I’ll try that instead…
Thanks!

The Lightroom catalog is just a SQLite database – you can even download one of the many SQLite viewers and open it to examine the data tables. SQLite doesnt have support for concurrent access hence the restriction. I keep mine on an external USB disk drive so I can move it between computers…..

You can have your photos on the NAS and have a catalog file on an external drive which you swap between computers. If you have the NAS assigned to the same drive letter on both computers then LR will work seamlessly without having to point the catalog at different directories every time you swap computers. Make sure you backup the catalog to your NAS and/or computer regularly though!

My current set up is to have the catalog and photos on an external HDD, which I can then plug into e.g. a work computer and I have everything with me. I backup the photos as catalog to my NAS semi-regularly. Works fine for me at the moment, although I’m about to run out of space on the external HDD!

Hmmm, so “catalogue on a stick” may be the easiest solution.
Thanks