Just the video I needed as my wife and I travel to Vietnam to visit her family on Saturday and have been researching how to back up on the road. Thanks Hudson! Great video and super helpful!
@HudsonHenryPhoto if you'd ever need a translator or help along the way just let me know! It's one of my favorite destinations to go to as the country is very beautiful!
Hey Hudson excellent video and topic ! Question I’ve been creating a new Catalogue on my external portable drive for my trips and then merging it with my main catalogue on my external 40 tb hard drive at home . My catalogue at home is now huge do you think it is still worth taking the whole huge catalogue with me on trips ( realizing I really can’t do anything without actual images files only previews ???
@@artiedoc I think you're well served moving the catalog to as fast a dedicated external ssd as you can afford and keeping it thoroughly backed up. It should be seperate for increased performance. I prefer to work in a single catalog for simplicity, but your system is fine if it works for you.
It’s great to hear you’re going to release a course on organization :) Have a couple questions that may be easier to cover in office hours. I’m not sure I fully understand the benefit of having the LR Catalog on a separate drive. Is that so you can use multiple devices to access your LR catalog, ie laptops on the road but then plug into your Mac Studio when at home? If that’s the goal is there another path to having a synced LR Catalog on all your devices to avoid having an extra drive? On the laptop vs tablet for when on the road. I was thinking of using an iPad Pro on the road due to the weight. I think it can work w usb c drives for extra storage. Does the mobile app version of LR prevent some of the workflow suggestions you make in this video?
@@michaelcibula9552 The seperate drive is essential for performance. It is it's own fast data source and line into the computer. No chance your catalog data has to wait while the computer accesses photo, App or OS data from the drive at the same time it needs catalog data. A seperate very fast ssd Catalog drive radically improves performance. Try it. You'll see. The tablet will frustrate you. Think MB Air at least. I've watched dozens of people try the best of tablets and seen the frustration time and again on workshops. You need both fast data connections (usb 3.2 or thunderbolt) and robust file management. Tablets just don't give you that yet. :(
If traveling to a place that has internet, I like to also use synology drive or vpn directly via tailscale and do a backup that way. I’ve also been trying to work out an actually usable way to do it all on an ipad (backup to ssd, DS File to backup to cloud) but I hate how badly LRC and LRmobile play with each other.
@@FieldingSmith I only use LR mobile for phone images, or uploaded small jpegs from camera Bluetooth apps for quick sharing. Never RAW camera files. It integrates into LR classic fine for that, but that's all I can see using it for. Yep, synology drive can be fabulous for creating your own Dropbox like cloud storage. I generally can't keep up with the data production on my trips, but I do back up critical stuff to be extra safe that way too. Good pro tip there.
Thanks for the vid. Anything special that needs to be done sharing files between a Windows & Apple/Mac computers? Thank you for any replies. I use a Dell PC desktop but thinking of switching to a M series Mac, especially for the road.
Do you keep your LrC catalog on a portable SSD always? Even for your main workstation at home? Or do you combine catalogs after returning from the field?
I work with one catalog with all my images from 1995 to today. That catalog is on an EXFat formatted Samsung T7 drive. I can fire up that catalog on my Mac Studio Ultra, on my PC laptop, on my wife's MacBook Air or on any computer running lightroom Classic that I encounter and be exactly where I left off in my work on any other computer. That drive is backed up on my NAS, on my backup drives, in the cloud on backblaze and on a 2nd backup Samsung T7 in the field. It runs at 900 megabytes per second, and it is the only catalog and drive I ever use to work on photos. Fast, safe, flexible, simple and secure.
Can you go through the devices for backing up without a computer? If you have a computer it is easy. I need to backup cards without one … and I don’t want to carry around many very expensive CFExpress B cards.
@m.maclean8911@m.maclean8911 Nope, that's the whole point. There really is no good way yet. I'd never consider anything less than a Macbook Air. The next step down is a ton of expensive cards, no learning from the previous days work and endless hours of culling after you get back.
I always thought that the LR Catalog should be on your internal laptop drive because of the speed of the internal drive, and the big picture files should be on your slower external drive? If I heard you correctly, you do just the opposite?
@@gosman949 100% Not only does this allow me to share my catalog effortlessly between multiple computers I work with (Mac & PC), the seperate fast ssd catalog drive is also essential for performance. It is it's own fast data source and line into the computer. No chance your catalog data has to wait while the computer accesses App or OS data from the system drive at the same time it needs catalog data. A seperate very fast ssd Catalog drive alongside a fast ssd photo drive, both separate from your system drive, radically improves performance. Try it. You'll see. Also, these T7 SSDs are running at about 900MB/s they're hardly slow. ;)
I don't want to look like the class idiot but with regards to storing the main LR Classic on external SSD, do you still keep the application on your mac hard drive or do you drag the actual application onto your external drive? My MacBook Pro (2018) is super slow with LR. When editing images it takes like a second to show next image and the fan starts kicking in within minutes of working. I've been using external drive for exporting but the RAWs i try and avoid importing to external due to slow speeds. I'm using a Z9 so I guess files size is playing a huge part. Finally, I noticed you 'COPY' files from memory card. I've been using 'COPY AS DNG'...is this causig part of my issues? Sorry for long message Hudson. 🙏👍🏻 Greetings from the Scottish Highlands 🏴🌄 Thanks, Andy
Yes absolutely. I believe in a 3 drive system for Lightroom (ignoring backup). System drive has the OS and App (in this case LR), A fast SSD has nothing but the catalog and a final fast drive has all the photos. Backup? You can backup your system drive with time-machine. Use incremental backup software (I like GoodSync) to keep a copy of your data and catalog on a big slow drive (or drives) at home. Back that big slow drive up to Backblaze in the cloud. With a little effort the whole backup process can be automated to happen every night.
Thanks!
Thank you! Much appreciated. 🙏
Once again you have me thinking about new and better ways to do something! Thank you for all your content it is always appreciated!!
Excellent video H! Really like having a new mobile perspective to the Lightroom process. Many thanks!
Just the video I needed as my wife and I travel to Vietnam to visit her family on Saturday and have been researching how to back up on the road. Thanks Hudson! Great video and super helpful!
@@daveabernathey have a fantastic journey! It's on my list.
@HudsonHenryPhoto if you'd ever need a translator or help along the way just let me know! It's one of my favorite destinations to go to as the country is very beautiful!
Great video. I always worry about version control when I get home. Will try your approach. Thanks,
Tanks so much! Very valuable!
Sitting in El Jefe, "the workshop school bus". LOL I never thought of it in those terms before, but what a perfect way to describe El Jefe!
And just like when I was young, I always have to sit in the back…….
Hey Hudson excellent video and topic ! Question I’ve been creating a new Catalogue on my external portable drive for my trips and then merging it with my main catalogue on my external 40 tb hard drive at home . My catalogue at home is now huge do you think it is still worth taking the whole huge catalogue with me on trips ( realizing I really can’t do anything without actual images files only previews ???
@@artiedoc I think you're well served moving the catalog to as fast a dedicated external ssd as you can afford and keeping it thoroughly backed up. It should be seperate for increased performance. I prefer to work in a single catalog for simplicity, but your system is fine if it works for you.
@ Thanks as usual for the quick and always welcome advice !!!
It’s great to hear you’re going to release a course on organization :)
Have a couple questions that may be easier to cover in office hours. I’m not sure I fully understand the benefit of having the LR Catalog on a separate drive. Is that so you can use multiple devices to access your LR catalog, ie laptops on the road but then plug into your Mac Studio when at home? If that’s the goal is there another path to having a synced LR Catalog on all your devices to avoid having an extra drive?
On the laptop vs tablet for when on the road. I was thinking of using an iPad Pro on the road due to the weight. I think it can work w usb c drives for extra storage. Does the mobile app version of LR prevent some of the workflow suggestions you make in this video?
@@michaelcibula9552 The seperate drive is essential for performance. It is it's own fast data source and line into the computer. No chance your catalog data has to wait while the computer accesses photo, App or OS data from the drive at the same time it needs catalog data. A seperate very fast ssd Catalog drive radically improves performance. Try it. You'll see.
The tablet will frustrate you. Think MB Air at least. I've watched dozens of people try the best of tablets and seen the frustration time and again on workshops. You need both fast data connections (usb 3.2 or thunderbolt) and robust file management. Tablets just don't give you that yet. :(
If traveling to a place that has internet, I like to also use synology drive or vpn directly via tailscale and do a backup that way. I’ve also been trying to work out an actually usable way to do it all on an ipad (backup to ssd, DS File to backup to cloud) but I hate how badly LRC and LRmobile play with each other.
@@FieldingSmith I only use LR mobile for phone images, or uploaded small jpegs from camera Bluetooth apps for quick sharing. Never RAW camera files. It integrates into LR classic fine for that, but that's all I can see using it for.
Yep, synology drive can be fabulous for creating your own Dropbox like cloud storage. I generally can't keep up with the data production on my trips, but I do back up critical stuff to be extra safe that way too. Good pro tip there.
Another awesome video. That photo of the seals didn’t make the cut? It was so cool….I think I saw babies!!!
@@amyperlmutter9112 there's a video that makes the cut. The sound was just silly. Thankfully we couldn't record the smell though... 😅
@@HudsonHenryPhoto Haha!
Thanks for the vid. Anything special that needs to be done sharing files between a Windows & Apple/Mac computers? Thank you for any replies. I use a Dell PC desktop but thinking of switching to a M series Mac, especially for the road.
Format the drives Exfat. That's it. Oh and that's the stock format for Samsung T7 drives.
@@HudsonHenryPhoto Thank you sir!
Do you keep your LrC catalog on a portable SSD always? Even for your main workstation at home? Or do you combine catalogs after returning from the field?
I work with one catalog with all my images from 1995 to today. That catalog is on an EXFat formatted Samsung T7 drive. I can fire up that catalog on my Mac Studio Ultra, on my PC laptop, on my wife's MacBook Air or on any computer running lightroom Classic that I encounter and be exactly where I left off in my work on any other computer. That drive is backed up on my NAS, on my backup drives, in the cloud on backblaze and on a 2nd backup Samsung T7 in the field. It runs at 900 megabytes per second, and it is the only catalog and drive I ever use to work on photos. Fast, safe, flexible, simple and secure.
Can you go through the devices for backing up without a computer? If you have a computer it is easy. I need to backup cards without one … and I don’t want to carry around many very expensive CFExpress B cards.
@m.maclean8911@m.maclean8911 Nope, that's the whole point. There really is no good way yet. I'd never consider anything less than a Macbook Air. The next step down is a ton of expensive cards, no learning from the previous days work and endless hours of culling after you get back.
My biggest thing is how do you keep you edited files organized and keep them in a way to find the raw photo.
@@a97b18b we'll have a whole video course about that coming out very soon.
I always thought that the LR Catalog should be on your internal laptop drive because of the speed of the internal drive, and the big picture files should be on your slower external drive? If I heard you correctly, you do just the opposite?
@@gosman949 100% Not only does this allow me to share my catalog effortlessly between multiple computers I work with (Mac & PC), the seperate fast ssd catalog drive is also essential for performance. It is it's own fast data source and line into the computer. No chance your catalog data has to wait while the computer accesses App or OS data from the system drive at the same time it needs catalog data. A seperate very fast ssd Catalog drive alongside a fast ssd photo drive, both separate from your system drive, radically improves performance. Try it. You'll see. Also, these T7 SSDs are running at about 900MB/s they're hardly slow. ;)
I don't want to look like the class idiot but with regards to storing the main LR Classic on external SSD, do you still keep the application on your mac hard drive or do you drag the actual application onto your external drive? My MacBook Pro (2018) is super slow with LR. When editing images it takes like a second to show next image and the fan starts kicking in within minutes of working. I've been using external drive for exporting but the RAWs i try and avoid importing to external due to slow speeds. I'm using a Z9 so I guess files size is playing a huge part. Finally, I noticed you 'COPY' files from memory card. I've been using 'COPY AS DNG'...is this causig part of my issues?
Sorry for long message Hudson. 🙏👍🏻 Greetings from the Scottish Highlands 🏴🌄
Thanks, Andy
Yes absolutely. I believe in a 3 drive system for Lightroom (ignoring backup). System drive has the OS and App (in this case LR), A fast SSD has nothing but the catalog and a final fast drive has all the photos.
Backup? You can backup your system drive with time-machine. Use incremental backup software (I like GoodSync) to keep a copy of your data and catalog on a big slow drive (or drives) at home. Back that big slow drive up to Backblaze in the cloud. With a little effort the whole backup process can be automated to happen every night.
Thanks!
Thanks so much for that! 🙏