Lightroom Question of the Week (6): Lightroom on a laptop

I received the following question a while back: I am using Lightroom on an older, small (laptop) computer, with a limited hard drive. What would be the best way to organize my Catalog and Pictures?

Well, assuming that the laptop is the only computer, here’s what I would recommend. If others have different workflows or tips for this user, please comment below!

The main problem with small laptops is their limited hard drive. So I would suggest the following setup:

The fact of storing the Catalog, which is relatively small, on the laptop harddisk itself has two advantages:

1. you always have your catalog with you
2. the access time to your laptop harddisk is likely to be faster than that to an external harddisk

You will also notice that I’ve put ‘1:1 previews’ in the first row of the table. In fact, I would suggest that, upon import, you let Lightroom create 1:1 previews. Those will also be stored on the harddrive of the laptop, and if you create them on import, you won’t have to render them ‘on the fly’ when you’re zooming or doing develop tasks like sharpening that use these previews. If you don’t make the previews upon import, you’ll have to do it on the fly, which will mean that Lightroom will have to access the (slower) external harddrive to build these previews. In short: one long wait (for the previews to render upon import) is better than many instances where you’ll have to wait a short time.

Also, I would recommend that you turn off ‘Automatically write changes into XMP’ in the Catalog Settings (PC: Edit => Catalog Settings / Mac: Lightroom => Catalog Settings). If you don’t, then (almost) every one of your Lightroom moves (keywording, rating, development, …) gets written to the XMP file which is in or next to your original (Raw) photo file. Which is on your external harddrive with the slower access time, remember? So, turning this feature off will result in a faster workflow than turning it on.

If you want, you can always, at  the end of your Lightroom session, select all your photos in your Lightroom Catalog and choose Metadata => Save Metadata to file (or use the shortcut Ctrl-S (Mac) or Cmd-S (Win) to write the updated metadata to the XMP file. Note that writing metadata to file is not necessary as far as Lightroom is concerned, because Lightroom keeps all metadata (including keywords, development instructions) in your Catalog! But, if you don’t write metadata to file, you won’t be able to see the changes in an application such as Bridge, that has no access to Lightrooms Catalog and relies on the info stored in the XMP file to display your photos correctly.

In this suggested workflow, the pictures are stored on an external harddrive. I would recommend a shockproof, portable drive. Personally, I use Freecom Toughdrives, but many flavors exist. If your laptop supports FireWire, go with a FireWire model.

Now, if you’re at your desk, you can just work with the external disk plugged in. But suppose you have to go somewhere. If you only want to perform Library tasks such as keywording, rating, … then you need not even take your portable harddisk with you.

If, on the other hand, you want to do some developing, or printing (tasks Lightroom needs to access your original photo files for), then you take your portable harddrive with you.

Last, but not least, you’ll see I’ve dedicated another (this can be a bigger, not necessarily portable) harddrive for backup. It is always important (especially if your pictures are on something as easy to loose or break as a portable harddrive) to make backups. And remember that backing up your Catalog does only that: it backs up your instructions, your keywords, … It DOES NOT back up your pictures. That’s something you’ll have to do separately.