Apologies about the delay. I like your thinking but I fear that you are still dreaming ahead of the software. You might find Jeffery Friedl’s Folder / Collection Publisher plugins helpful too. See http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/folder-publisher

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David Marx

You are dreaming of a very sophisticated image storage system. I wish that I could help you build out all of these steps but unfortunately much of what you are seeking exceeds the current Adobe Photoshop Lightroom capabilities. May I suggest posting your request on an official Adobe Feature Request Form and on the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Forums? I would love to see much of what you want built into future versions of this program.

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David Marx

I work primarily with a laptop (mac) I use the laptop for other things. I find that often when the time/mood suits me, or that when the need to briefly access a photo arises it is inconvenient for me to go get the external drives and set up to access Lightroom. I have a vision for what my ideal setup would be but have a hard time wrapping my mind around how to work it out.

I would like to have the catalog and one rolling year of photos local on the laptop. Back up the laptop to Time Capsule, and have the remainder of my photos stored and backed up on the 2 external HDD either in a separate catalog, or more ideally referenced in the same local catalog but stored “off line”.

Other details- It would be nice If I could also keep a selection of photos that I designate through ratings or another method local as well regardless of time. It would be ideal if when I plug in one or both of the external HDD I could automate a process of rolling off the laptop photos older than a year, backing up the catalog/settings, and mirroring to the 2nd external if present. If it also backed up the current year that would be nice as well but that year should be backed up via time capsule and the cloud.

Sort of rambling and not quite clearly thought out, but…

Thoughts, suggestions?

Thank You.

Congratulations on the new drive. I love my OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro Mini. I leave the disk turned on most of the time but if I know that I am not going to do any photo editing I am not afraid to shut it down.

I edit video off a full-size OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro disk with no problems. I don’t think that you will have any trouble using the Mini unless you are working with multi-camera HD footage in a program like Final Cut or Premiere then this might be an issue. If you are working at this level of video then the laptop is the bigger problem… High end video requires high-end hardware with lots of RAM. Consumer grade stuff should work fine though.

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David Marx

Thanks!
Melanie

Dragging a thumbnail from Lightroom over to a folder that you created on your hard drive is not the way to get your edited images out of this program. Instead of dragging you need to use the Export Dialog. Export in Lightroom means to “make a copy of this file.” The copy can live in a new folder. It can have a new name and it can be in a completely different file format. Useful tutorials for you:

http://thelightroomlab.com/2008/12/understanding-lightrooms-non-destructive-image-enhancement-system/
http://thelightroomlab.com/2011/07/creating-email-ready-images-using-adobe-photoshop-lightrooms-export-dialog/
http://thelightroomlab.com/2011/10/prepare-files-for-printing-at-a-photo-lab-using-adobe-photoshop-lightrooms-export-module/
http://thelightroomlab.com/2011/08/how-to-create-a-second-copy-of-an-image-inside-adobe-photoshop-lightroom-v3/

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David Marx

If you add additional software to your Mac or your PC, or use a drive format like exFAT, then you can actually use the same external hard drive with both a Mac and a PC. It requires some extra effort or cost but it can be done. Our article on how to format an external hard drive discusses these options.

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David Marx