Where to store Lightroom previews / smart previews?

[ian in lancs]

I am migrating from a windows desktop computer editing setup running Lightroom and photoshop to one centred around a Mac book pro.

I have subscribed to Adobe photography plan for years but not used recently due to health issues; now getting back in the seat. I did like Lightroom library functionality to catalog and editing capabilities switching to photoshop as required. I’d like to have the same workflow.

The new 16” MBP has a 1TB SSD. The original and edited photos (c 3TB) are on an external HDD Raid drive. In time I will replace the HHD’s with SSD’s.

I think I want to mainly edit pics at a desk using the MBP connected to the Raid drive / external monitor and as a stand alone laptop on the move and connecting the raid drive when I get home to synchronise everything.

Is that the way to do it? Is there a better way?

Thanks

Edited by ian in lancs on Saturday 28th October 21:46

Edited by ian in lancs on Saturday 28th October 21:48

[StevieBee]

What you've described will work but would recommend accelerating the transition to external SSDs. I'd also keep your libraries external as well. 1TB internal sounds a lot but it also has to be for other things and if you shoot RAW, you'll find that gone sooner than you think.

Also consider the Adobe CC (Cloud) option.

[Gad-Westy]

Funnily enough I've just this week gone through some of this myself. We've used LR with a mac for years, in the past with an imac with a large amount of internal storage and then more recently using a macbook with external HDD. I always keep the catalogue files on a local SSD. Even with 30k + photos and never really clearing old versions or backups, our catalogue folder is 'only' 90gb. With a 1tb SSD in our macbook air, we are using about 500gb total. LR constantly reads and writes to the catalogue so it's handy to keep that on a local fast drive. The actual image files, speed is much less important.

This week, I've changed the external HDD to a NAS drive. The reason for this was mainly so that LR could maintain its link to an external drive no matter where we were in the house without having to carry an external drive around. In theory we can also connect to the NAS when on other networks but I haven't set that up yet. I was finding that with an external drive, we were constantly having issues where the drive would have been disconnected and when its reconnected, the volume name would get an incremental number so LR (and other software) no longer knew where to find stuff. Generally, you can work okay temporarily without all the raw files being visible to lightroom but if you try to then import images without realising can't see the external drive it will default to a local drive for import and you start to end up with photos stored in different locations. It can all be tidied up but I was getting fed up with running into these challenges. The NAS has fixed all this.

Disadvantage is that it is a bit slower for importing and importing images but that is really the only time it's slower. With smart previews, LR isn't really needing to access the originals very often so most of the time, it's business as normal.

Many different valid approaches to this but this seems to work for me. I will also mention, I have had far too many syncing issues with CC cloud to rely on that. I just use it for sharing stuff to the mobile app and occassionally importing images away from home but that can be unrelaible too.

[ian in lancs]

Thanks both for the responses. I want to continue to use an external raid drive for original files, edits and backups and I may rotate drives to keep one off site. Putting 2TB of photos on an internal drive is too many eggs in an apple basket! Catalog and previews residing on the Mac will be fine.

I assume smart previews are intended for a disconnected/remote editing scenario and the normal previews for a connected to drive scenario. Is that correct?

Having had the external drive wired to the outgoing desktop there were few syncing issues but I can believe it will be a pain so thanks for the things to watch out for. Switching to a NAS is a good idea.I will look into it!

Can you edit offline/away from home base and re sync on return. How is that more reliable than an ext HDD

Is the NAS plugged into the router or a stand alone wireless?

Thanks again

Ian