You’re on vacation, at a workshop or shooting on location commercially, loading your images onto your laptop and working them in Lightroom 2. Will you be able to successfully and easily transfer all your Lightroom work to your desktop Lightroom catalog? Absolutely!
Let’s say your folder of images on your laptop is named “Vacation”. In the Library module in Lightroom, right-click on the folder name, and choose Export This Folder as a Catalog. Choose a location to store this temporary catalog. I recommend the desktop because it will be easy for you to find. Another option is to save it directly to an external hard drive that you can then use to transfer the catalog to your desktop. Choose a name for the catalog, like Vacation Catalog. Checking Export Negative Files will bundle a copy of the originals with the catalog so that you don’t have to move them over separately to your desktop and then have to have LR find them. I recommend that you do choose this option. Checking Include Available Previews will save and transfer the jpeg previews that have already been built. If you don’t, LR on your desktop computer will simply regenerate them — it just takes time that you have already spent for them to be generated on your laptop. Finally, click Save.
This process generates a folder called Vacation Catalog that has all the components in it. Move the folder to an external hard drive and connect it to your desktop computer. (Another option is to save the folder to a DVD and then insert this in your desktop computer.) In the Library module of Lightroom, in the menu bar go to File>Import from Catalog. In the dialog box, navigate to the Vacation Catalog folder on the external drive or DVD, double click on it to open it, and select the Vacation Catalog.lrcat file (it will be the only file that is not in a subfolder). Click Choose.
In the Import Dialog that then opens, under File Handling choose Copy Files to a New Location and Import, click Choose and navigate to the folder you want to store the images in permanently (like 20080701 New Mexico Vacation within the folder 2008). Click Import.
Done! Assuming everything went well with the import and your images and LR enhancements are there, you can go back to your laptop and remove the Vacation folder of images from the LR catalog and the hard drive. In the LR Library module, right click on the folder and choose Show in Explorer (Finder on a Mac). In Explorer or Finder, delete the folder. Back in Lightroom, right click again on the folder and select Remove, to remove it from the catalog.
Happy travels!
Digital Daily Dose 
[…] written about moving your Lightroom work from your laptop to your desktop (or any two computers) here. This involves exporting your work on the laptop as a catalog, then importing it into your desktop […]
Thank you for your easy to follow instructions.I understand that the “vacation lrcat”file is a seperate catalogue as opposed to the “main” catalogue on the PC.
Does it remain seperate when imported into LR on the PC or is it integrated into the “main” catalogue ?
Geoff, the information becomes incorporated into the main catalog, and then vacation.lrcat can be deleted.
[…] if you ocassionally work images on your laptop when you are in the field photographing. See this post for more […]
Wow! This is really helpful. Clear and to the point. Many thanks.
I am a bit confused. I was wondering if this method would work from what I gather with your method:
using one external drive, one laptop, one desktop
import images onto laptop with saving them on ext drive
flag, reject, label images, edit some on laptop
back-up that catalog by restarting LR
…..now home
load LR on desktop and load the “above” catalog
import images you want to work on
edit the images
back-up catalog by restarting LR on desktop
…. back to laptop
open LR and import above catalog
do what i need to do with images for web, email, etc
…..
now can i go and delete all previous catalogs except for the most recent one?
…
will this method work as well with keeping all up to date edits, flags, etc in the final catalog????
Thank you so much for your help. I just didn’t get a good understanding of what to do from your post.
I am not able to follow all the details of what you wrote, Michelle. Bottom line, if you are asking if you can import your laptop catalog into your desktop catalog (by launching your desktop catalog, and going to File>Import from Catalog and pointing to your laptop catalog, the answer is yes, that would work. And the purpose of all this is to be able to transfer all your work – edits, flags, etc… Once you import one catalog into your master catalog, you can delete the original.
Oh Great Article Thank For your post
I followed your instructions exactly and transferred 3100+ images from an Italy trip perfectly. Not one lost image! Thank you for making the process simpler than my two books detail.
Say your catalog is from “My Pictures”. Can’t you just put the field folder there in your laptop and then “sync” your desktop catalog?
[…] if you ocassionally work images on your laptop when you are in the field photographing. See this post for more information. Posted by lshoe at 8:08 pm Tagged with: catalog, Lightroom 2, […]
[…] written about moving your Lightroom work from your laptop to your desktop (or any two computers) here. This involves exporting your work on the laptop as a catalog, then importing it into your desktop […]