To use Lightroom on a laptop you MUST have a catalog on the laptop, or an external drive that you move between laptop and desktop, and anything that is edited/imported on the laptop would then need to be transferred to the desktop catalog as well. It is not difficult to do, but would need to become a standard procedure.

Carrying an external drive that included your entire image library and catalog is of course doable so the transfer of info is no longer needed, but that would put your images at a greater risk of being lost, so your backup procedures would need to be more bulletproof.

A very nice thing about Lightroom is that it will work your way. As long as you understand you are maintaining a database of where your images are stored.

I have a feeling the easiest method will be to have a catalog on your desktop and on your laptop - then import images in the filed to the laptop, work on them as needed, and when home export the catalog & images to be imported into the desktop system so everything on the desktop is complete.

I do not use Lightroom on a laptop at least not yet, so I am making some assumptions about exporting the catalog & images to sync the desktop.

Right now I make use of a Linux netbook to unload the SD cards when away, maintain a backup of the images on a small portable USB drive, that way I have 2 copies when I return. No editing in the field, just import everything when I return home to my desktop.

BUT, I would think a Macbook or Macbook AIR is in my near future, so I could elect to give the editing while in the field a try myself ;)

What I like about how I use hierarchal keywording is that you start off with the basics of what, who, when, and where and build it as big as you like as you go very easily.

I like it much better than normal keywords, selecting from a list means no more spelling discrepancies and best of all 1 check mark might add a bunch of pertinent keywords in one fell swoop.

Collections can definitely be handy, but so far I use only a few collections, mostly smart collections.

I also use a plugin to add specific info about the lens used, such as the naming convention and serial number to the EXIF data in every image. Has come in handy when sorting/searching metadata.

Yep, definitely agree about using the keyword list as a consistency mechanism. However, since keywords aren't searchable across catalogs (within LR), I've organized my photos into separate catalogs, such as "landscape", "metal", etc. Then, in each catalog I create a collection specific to that topic: for "landscape", I have such collections as "river", "trees", "rocks", and so on. The nice thing about this is, when I import more photos, I simply check the option "Add to collection", and select the appropriate one, or create a new one right there - all imported photos then go into that collection.


I like the idea of hierarchical keywords, and I haven't explored that yet - perhaps that will add one more level of searchability (is that a word?) to my photos.

Just another opinion on how to organize loads of photos with this amazing tool.

Yep, definitely agree about using the keyword list as a consistency mechanism. However, since keywords aren't searchable across catalogs (within LR), I've organized my photos into separate catalogs, such as "landscape", "metal", etc. Then, in each catalog I create a collection specific to that topic: for "landscape", I have such collections as "river", "trees", "rocks", and so on. The nice thing about this is, when I import more photos, I simply check the option "Add to collection", and select the appropriate one, or create a new one right there - all imported photos then go into that collection.

USB 3.0 is fast, so you may not see any benefit moving it to your internal, depending on how fast your internal disk is of course.

I did some speed tests on mine to determine the read/write speed of my internal vs my thunderbolt external disk vs my Thunderbolt external SSD, of course the SSD won out being maybe 5 times faster than my internal and twice as fast as my external disk.

I would think that unless you have a really fast internal, the USB 3.0 may be a little faster - assuming the USB external is a standard SATA type drive in the box that is fairly fast to start with.