Using dropbox to work on both desktop and laptop? (2024)

Can anyone walk me through moving my most recent catalogs onto dropbox to work from them on both my iMac and MBP? I do not need all my folders on there, only the ones I am currently editing so that I can work/edit from home and on the go.

I have tried a few things, but have been unsuccessful in seeing the changes in edits from one to the other.

Thanks so much!

Hi Amanda, welcome to the forum!

You'd need to pick up the catalog and move it into the Dropbox folder. I'd move the whole catalog rather than just part. How do I find and move or rename my catalog?

As far as the photos go, it depends how much you need to do. Using Smart Previews is the simplest option, but won't allow you to edit in PS or other external editors, and you won't be able to export full res without the originals. Normal Develop edits work fine though.

Victoria Bampton said:

Hi Amanda, welcome to the forum!

You'd need to pick up the catalog and move it into the Dropbox folder. I'd move the whole catalog rather than just part. How do I find and move or rename my catalog?

As far as the photos go, it depends how much you need to do. Using Smart Previews is the simplest option, but won't allow you to edit in PS or other external editors, and you won't be able to export full res without the originals. Normal Develop edits work fine though.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the help.
So if I only move the smart preview, my edits will be current on both computers, just no option to edit outside of LR or export at full res?
Also, what is the downfall to moving the image negative, slow speeds?
Thanks in advance!

tspear said:

Besides the space issue (Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive are lower cost solutions) you need to make sure that replication has finished BEFORE you switch machines.

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My thoughts too.

Has anyone tried this with Dropbox running? I'm just wondering about syncing the changes made to the catalog. From what I can see the catalog file and the journal are saved to disk each time any change is made. Is Dropbox going to get itself into a twist trying to keep up with changes? At best I suspect it will be spending the whole LR editing session trying to sync successive versions of the catalog.

And as Tim says I assume that unless a user is diligent in closing LR and allowing Dropbox to sync then the catalog (which may be, or grow to be, up to several hundred Mb) may get out of sync between devices (e.g. working on MBP, closing lid before sync completes, user opens other device with an old catalog version).

Those issues aside, it may be best to use selective syncing (Dropbox / Preferences / Account / Selective Sync) to exclude the lrcat-journal and lrcat.lock files from syncing so as not to cause conflicts. LR will need to be running when this is done.

So if this was my workflow I'd exclude the temp files as a one-off. Then for each session I'd pause syncing while using LR and restart when I'd finished. If my connection was going down (e.g. closing my lid) make sure syncing is completed first.

JohanElzenga said:

Dropbox only syncs what has been changed, and does so at the byte level

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Gosh, so it's using actual file deltas ... I didn't know that; thanks.

I have used the following cloud solutions:

• DropBox
• box.com
• OwnCloud
• Google Drive
• Microsoft One Drive

All of them work. DropBox and box.com were the fastest sync solutions by a fair margin. One the flip side, they cost a heck of a lot more. I setup OwnCloud on a free machine at Amazon Web Services, more because I could then any real requirement. I switched from Google to Microsoft when MS dropped prices to match Google and I needed a new version of Office. The Office 365 solution just made financial sense at that point.

Since I only switch computers for a few days at a time, after the initial sync I have not cared very much about the speed. I also have a really high speed connection, 150mbs up/down, so....

tspear said:

I also have a really high speed connection, 150mbs up/down

Click to expand...

All right for some

Victoria Bampton said:

Hi Amanda, welcome to the forum!

You'd need to pick up the catalog and move it into the Dropbox folder. I'd move the whole catalog rather than just part. How do I find and move or rename my catalog?

As far as the photos go, it depends how much you need to do. Using Smart Previews is the simplest option, but won't allow you to edit in PS or other external editors, and you won't be able to export full res without the originals. Normal Develop edits work fine though.

Click to expand...

For some reason I had it in my head you couldn't run LR from a server. Or was that Aperture? Anyway, I have a Mac OS X Server, could I put my LR catalogue etc on that and work between machines. Much the same as Dropbox etc - but cheaper!

I'm actually more concerned about having my files on a MacBook in case it get lost or stolen than syncing. (Yes, it is all backed up!)

I had my catalog on Dropbox and onedrive for a while to allow editing from a PC or on occasion a Laptop, the two biggest problems I encountered was that when I switched on the Laptop after a week or so, the Laptop chundled away for ages to sync up so I had to ensure that the sync was complete before I could edit, not a major problem, but something to keep in mind. My other problem was that my android device tried to sync the catalog as well and almost died before I stopped it lol, so ensure you don't share that folder with any of your other devices

Steve V

Hal P Anderson said:

You can't put your catalogue on a server. It has to be on a locally attached disk. Your images can be on your server, though.

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Is a Mac OS X Server attached disk "local" when mounted on my Mac? Yes, I already have my picture files on the server's drives.

I'm going to guess you can do this with Dropbox because the catalogue is always on all the Dropbox connected machines, not just at Dropbox. So wouldn't help from a security point of view.

Pollok Shields said:

Is a Mac OS X Server attached disk "local" when mounted on my Mac? Yes, I already have my picture files on the server's drives.

I'm going to guess you can do this with Dropbox because the catalogue is always on all the Dropbox connected machines, not just at Dropbox. So wouldn't help from a security point of view.

Click to expand...

Dropbox replicates everything locally. So Lr thinks the catalog is a local file and is not accessing the file over the network. When Lr closes, Dropbox pushes the changes to the cloud which are then downloaded to other subscribing computers.

tspear said:

Thinking about it further, I forgot the name but Apple does have the equivalent of MS Windows Roaming Profiles which does the same thing.

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You mean where you can login and access your Home directory from any Mac in an office without having an account on that machine? Can't remember the name either. Yes, I tried setting it up once and it didn't "just work". I'm not sure if it copies rather than just lets you work from the data on the server. But I'm sure it would look "local" to LR.

JohanElzenga said:

Your sync data are stored locally, in a different place. I don't know the exact place for Windows, but I'm sure you can find it if you Google for it. What may be possible is to move the sync data file from the default location on the main computer to Dropbox, and then place a symbolic link to this file in the default locations of both computers. I never tried it for sync data, but this works perfectly for other data such as presets.

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Thanks for the reply Johnan. The setting for the location of LR mobile images is in preferences > Lightroom Mobile. According to LR support, as you've stated that setting is local and not part of the catalog. So I specified a local folder on my laptop, which is of course, different from my desktop settings for LR mobile. I hoped that LR would simply sync the folders from the LR mobile cloud down to my laptop. I'm not sure what you are referring to as "the sync data file".

As an alternative, why not just network the two systems and use a directory/file differencing utility? I just discovered GoodSync, which is not free, but is far better than a freebie like FFS. File Sync & Backup Software | GoodSync

Phil

RalphS said:

Thanks for the reply Johnan. The setting for the location of LR mobile images is in preferences > Lightroom Mobile. According to LR support, as you've stated that setting is local and not part of the catalog. So I specified a local folder on my laptop, which is of course, different from my desktop settings for LR mobile. I hoped that LR would simply sync the folders from the LR mobile cloud down to my laptop. I'm not sure what you are referring to as "the sync data file".

Click to expand...

No, that is not what I mean. Lightroom saves a file called 'Sync.lrdata'. That is the file you may be able to share via Dropbox.