Lightroom networks just fine

I’m now using lightroom after all

I originally poo-pooed lightroom because it didn’t offer any obvious way to share your library over a network, and I want to be able to edit photo’s upstairs on my iMac and be able to show people photo’s occasionally on my iBook downstairs.  It doesn’t let you open a library over a network either.

I’ve been using bridge for a while because it doesn’t use a central library.  But after a few weeks it becomes very very slow, beach balls all over the place. It doesn’t seem to have a very efficient cache, it ironically seems to make it slower rather than faster.

So I thought, well what now, and grudgingly gave lightroom another go. Turns out lightroom is freaking great and I was totally dumb not to realize how it can work perfectly over a network.

All you do is store the photo’s in a traditional folder layout on the HD, and alway import them without moving them to the catalogue.   Set a preference to always write changes to the files metadata and you’re away.  It’s even got a folder list, clever enough to have the parent of the most high level folder of a photo existing in your library.

So what you do is create a different catalogue on each comp and import the photo’s over the network without copying them.  Then each time you want to update lightroom on the other comp all you have to do is right click the folder in the folders panel and select “synchronise” it doesn’t take long at all and it works just great.

Also, for some reason it doesn’t seem to be affected by Adobe’s policy of ripping off people in europe.  RRP in the US is 299USD, in the UK it’s 205GBP including VAT.  Not only that, amazon.co.uk are selling it with 50 quid off!  Bargain!

I dunno if this makes even more angry that people are forced to import creative suite from america though.