The main catalog (and store of photos) remains on my desktop at home when I travel. When traveling, I import photos into LR running on a laptop. I do minor culling and editing during the trip (slow laptop, lack of time).
Back home, I use import from catalog to copy the photos, including any edits, into the home catalog and photo store.
I could run my catalog off the fast external SSD drive I use to store photos on the home desktop, but prefer to leave the catalog on the internal SSD, which is the fastest drive I have.
Photos and catalog backed up to local backup drive and the cloud.
This system works well for me, the biggest problem being the slow laptop for travel, a problem which will likely get fixed next year. But even doing minimum editing while traveling, by importing into LR on the laptop, I accomplish these things which are important to me:
- Make a copy of the photo while on the trip (the SD card is first copy, the laptop drive the second)
- Create and populate the collection(s) I will use for the photos back home. I.e. I am organizing the photos.
- Do enough checking of the photos to ensure that something is not awry with the camera(s) or the settings I'm using
- Will occasionally spend a little time editing a picture I am interested in and deleting any really obvious bad shots
Once back home, until the backup from the home computer is complete, the photos from the trip remain on the laptop and the SD cards.
