How to synchronize the Lightroom Library between pc and mac

Today I want to show you a possible solution to synchronize the Lightroom Library between a pc and a mac. This is usefull if you want to import the data for example on a MacBook for vieweing and sorting it. Later you can develop the pictures on a bigger screen. This solution is also working between windows computers. For this solution I will use a Synology Diskstation for synchronizing the data. You can use also other NAS or Cloud services like Dropbox, OneDrive & Co.

My Environment

Actually I’m using the following components:

• MacBook Pro 15″
• Windows 10 PC with two 4K Monitors
• Synology Diskstation DS214 play

Set up the Synology Cloud Station

The first thing to do is to set up the Synology Diskstation as a Cloud Station. This is really simple because on the Synology you only need to install the package “Cloud Station” and enable it. A full tutorial with the instructions how to do it is here to find: Synology PC/MAC Cloud Station.

If you have another NAS you need to check in Google how to set it up correctly. Also for Dropbox, OneDrive you will find a guide. The process is quite the same. (N. B. for online clouds the disk space is limited (for example Dropbox has 2 GB). If you need more space (probably you will) you need to buy a subscription (normally about 100$/year). In this case you need to check if it is better to buy a NAS (like Synology, QNAP, etc.) solution with more space and without recurring costs.

Move the Lightroom Library

After the synchonisation between Mac <=> Synology <=> PC is working the last step is to move the Lightroom Library to the Synology synchronisation folder. In my setup I have synchronised the Synology Cloud Client with the following local folders:

• Windows: C:\Users\<Username>\Synology
• Mac: /users/<Username>/Synology

So, all the files contained in the Synology folder are synchronized. In the Synology folder I have created a new folder “Lightroom” where I put the Lightroom catalog and the pictures data.

The last step is to start Lightroom and under “File -> Open Catalog” select the Lightroom Catalog from the “Synology -> Lighroom” folder. You might also need to update the folder containing the pictures data. To do this mark the Folder and then select “Update folder location…”, like this:

Et voilà, the two computers are syncing the data.

Conclusion

I’m working with the synchronisation between Mac and PC since some days and it seems to be all fine. If you don’t have the possibility to have a central storage like the Synology you can also synchronize the data directly between the computers with BitTorrent. I haven’t testet it so far but it should also work fine. If you are intrested search in Google, there are many tutorials how to do it.