help: lightroom and iphoto

[airluke]

Hi,

I'm new of this forum, and I'm also new @ mac, even if with a large experience with Linux systems.

I tried to find out how to solve my issue on the internet with no luck, so I'm going to explain it here - hopefully I get the right forum section...

I have at the moment a windows vista server, a mac book air, a 2 TB nas with linux on ext3 fs.
I'll move the server to a imac 24, but it will happen in few months.

I use lightroom to keep my photo organized and to manage export for commercial use. I usually do it on the server, so on the WS machine.

From my understanding, it is practically impossible to use lightroom on the same archive (so, viewing the same changes on the pictures) from both mac and windows.

However, it would be sufficient at the moment to see the "edited" pictures in iPhoto.

In iPhoto, I can point at the pictures folder, but I will see non edited version of the pictures. Only for raw images, which is 15% of the total, I can see the edited version because of the XNP file.

So, at the moment I export the repository from lightroom on a NAS folder and iPhoto points then to edited version.

However, since LR doens't have the ability to preserve folder structure when exporting, this is a time consuming activity.

Any suggestion on how can I solve this issue, or how can I mantain a sort of sychronization between iPhoto and LR?

I will not edit any pictures from iPhoto.

I know this is a long post, so sorry for it!

Thanks!

 

[skybolt]

Your setup is way too advanced for me, but wondering if this suggestion might help your situation. In iPhoto preferences, set LightRoom to be your external editor. Then, when you edit a photo from within iPhoto app, iPhoto will put it right back where it belongs in iPhoto. Does this even address your problem?

 

[airluke]

Hi, thank you for your reply.

I will not edit from within iPhoto, so it will not be a problem.
The main issue is that iPhoto, for what it seems, do not read develop metadata inside jpg, so I can only see non edited pictures.

The only workaround, which is however time consuming, is to export the edited picture from LR, and then iPhoto - which points at them as a link - sees the right edited pictures.

 

[Peakoverload]

I'm certainly no expert nor do I understand why you say "it is practically impossible to use lightroom on the same archive" not because I don't believe you but because I wasn't aware of any such limitation or why this would be the case.

I do know that you can't put your Lightroom database on a network share but there is a way around this.

I don't know if the following is possible but maybe it's worth a try?

Export your Lightroom Catalogue from the PC.
Import the Catalogue into Lightroom on the Mac but put the catalogue in your shared folder.
On the PC map your Mac's shared folder to a drive letter (this should get around the fact that you can't put the catalogue on a network share - at least that's what I've read)

Okay so in theory your Mac can read and write to your Lightroom catalogue (even though at this stage you only want it to read)
The problem now is getting your PC to read and write to your Mac's drive. For this you will need MacDrive from MediaFour which lets a PC read and write to a HFS+ drive and only costs $49.95.

In my mind, and I may well be wrong and probably am, you should now be able to use your PC to edit your photos in Lightroom but to then view those changes on your Mac

 

[airluke]

Hi Peakoverlord,

i'll try during this week end and let you know.
I didn't try that, however when I put the catalogue in the NAS shared folder, mapped as a drive in windows, it says it's not possible to open catalogue in a network folder.

Maybe, being on a mac shared folder, it can work it out.

Thank you for this help, keep you posted.