Rebel Fish talked with Kevin Swan about using LR on two machines… Here’s what he had to say:

If you want to work with LR on two computers, the only thing you need to sync is the Lightroom Library. The raw files are irrelevant, since they aren’t actually edited.

So…

Import the photos into your library on your desktop.
Copy your LR library (wherever you have it) to your laptop.
Copy the raw images you want to work on from your desktop to your laptop.
Launch the LR library on your laptop.
Go to the library view
Because the raw images you are wanting to work on are in a different location than what the library remembers, the folder they were in (and all the other folders) will be red.
Double click on the folder that contains the images you want to work in.
It will ask where the photos are, point it to the new folder.
Make your edits as usual.
After you’re done editing, you copy ONLY the LR library back to your desktop (replacing the old one)
Launch LR on the desktop.
Because the library thinks the photos are in whatever location they were on your laptop, the folder will again be red.
Double click the red folder, point it to the location where the original raw files are.
Everything will then be synced up.

It sounds complicated, but it’s not once you’ve done it a few times.

When I used to have a desktop machine I:

Import all the shots into LR and download the raw to a folder on the desktop.
Make my edits to my favorites.
Run my slideshow.
Get home.
Copy my LR library file over the old one on the desktop.
Copy the raw folder from my laptop to whatever location i want on the desktop.
Launch LR and repoint the folder to the new source.
Done.

Easy as cake.
Piece of pie.

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