Using an External Drive w/ MacBook and iMac / Losing Edits

Answered

Mitchell Freedman

• April 29, 2022 11:10

I'm one of those guys who little x little has been replacing LR with On1.  I keep my entire library (40K + images) on a Samsung 2TB external drive, with assorted and I like to think well thought out back-ups based locally and also via Backblaze.

On a recent trip, I did many hours of editing in On1 on my MacBook.  When returning home and moving the external drive back to the iMac, none of my editing work in On1 was visible.

This or something similar seems not to be uncommon with On1 but I haven't found a clear answer for how to solve it.  I'm thinking this should be seamless.  

Thanks in advance for any assistance.  mhf

0

• 

  Brian Lawson Community moderator

  • April 29, 2022 12:44

  Have you turned off the option to create .on1 sidecar files in Preferences > Files? Edits are stored in two places by the program. One is the sidecars and the other is the program's internal edit database. Using the sidecars allows you to transfer your files and their edits to another system.

  If you are using the sidecars then your edits should still be there even if the program isn't seeing them for some reason. You can verify this by opening one of the sidecars from a photo that is missing its edits in a text editor. At the top of the file you'll see the metadata for the photo. Below that you should see a bunch of gibberish. That gibberish is the edit data. If it is there you can force the program to reread it and update its internal database by renaming the file or folder it sits in. After the edits have been reconnected to the photo you can change the name back.

  You can also transfer the internal edit database from one system to another with the Backup/Restore functions. This will also sync all your Presets, Styles, etc between the two systems.

  0
• 

  Mitchell Freedman

  • April 29, 2022 18:03

  Brian, thank you for responding so quickly.  

  I did have sidecar enabled on both computers so no issue there. Through text edit I was able to confirm that for the couple images I checked, the metadata was intact.  

  I wan't able to make sense of renaming the file but by doing a minor change to the Metadata in IPTC (just added a word in "job identifier") and applying that change to all the files in the folder, I succeeded.  

  Now I can see all the edits and labeling I did in On1 on the MacBook Pro in On1 on the iMac.  Added benefit is that those changes are now also present and usable in Lightroom

  Happy guy.  Thank you.  

  0

Please sign in to leave a comment.