Share the "IPTCKeywordsSettings" folder between desktop and laptop?

[Henry Gilbey]

Please excuse me if I am missing something very obvious here.............

Keywords are everything to me and my photo library. The bulk of my keywording is done at home on my Mac desktop, but when I am away from home I work on a Macbook pro and keyword photos etc., ready for importing into my photo library when I get back home.

I have multiple keyword snapshots on PM+ which I backup to a Dropbox folder and then download those snapshots onto my laptop and put them into PM+ when required.

But when I am away and I need to amend or add to various Keyword snapshots, I kinda need to reverse the process to keep my desktop Keyword snapshots up to date - but it gets complicated if I don't keep track of which snapshots have been changed and so on.

So is there a way to "force" PM+ on my desktop AND my laptop to look at/share the same "IPTCKeywordsSettings" folder which ideally I could place into Dropbox so that any changes are automatically populated to both computers?

Thank you!

[Mick O (Camera Bits)]

Unfortunately, that is not possible at this time. There's no way to get Photo Mechanic to save/load from another location automatically.

-Mick

[Woodie]

Here is something to try. It's cumbersome but I have managed to make it work a few times. We'll start with the laptop but obviously just reverse to go the other way. In Edit>Preferences select the General tab. At the lower left select Export after you've made changes to the keywords. Then pick "Select None" and choose keywords (or other settings if they have been changed). Export to a location you can access with the other computer. From my laptop I export to a cloud drive that syncs with my desktop. Then, when I'm back on the desktop I go to Edit>Preferences and General. I Import the preferences file from the cloud drive, restart PM and now have the newly modified keywords available on the desktop.

I'm using PM not PM+ on a Windows (10 and 11) so I can't say how this might work (or not) with PM+ on a MAC but maybe it's worth a try. It can also work with other settings on the Export-Import list. It would be much easier if PM allowed the user options for storing various settings but it is what it is!

Good luck!

[PauloBMB]

I had done something similar using Macs Symbolic Links, back when I still had mac computers, I had all my lightroom presets on a dropbox folder and sync them through Symbolic Links between both my laptop and desktop, whenever I created or changed anything on one machine it would update on the other as soon as it connectes to dropobox. . It has been a long time and I can not remember the exact procedure, you have to do it using terminal commands. I do not know if they still work on a new OS, but if you google  Symbolic Links you may find it. Hope it helps.

Good luck!

[Henry Gilbey]

Unfortunately, that is not possible at this time. There's no way to get Photo Mechanic to save/load from another location automatically.

-Mick

No worries, thanks for your reply. I did think that this might be the case, ever hopeful though!

[Henry Gilbey]

Here is something to try. It's cumbersome but I have managed to make it work a few times. We'll start with the laptop but obviously just reverse to go the other way. In Edit>Preferences select the General tab. At the lower left select Export after you've made changes to the keywords. Then pick "Select None" and choose keywords (or other settings if they have been changed). Export to a location you can access with the other computer. From my laptop I export to a cloud drive that syncs with my desktop. Then, when I'm back on the desktop I go to Edit>Preferences and General. I Import the preferences file from the cloud drive, restart PM and now have the newly modified keywords available on the desktop.

I'm using PM not PM+ on a Windows (10 and 11) so I can't say how this might work (or not) with PM+ on a MAC but maybe it's worth a try. It can also work with other settings on the Export-Import list. It would be much easier if PM allowed the user options for storing various settings but it is what it is!

Good luck!

Most kind, thank you, I will give this a go on my Mac and see how I get on..............

[Kevin M. Cox]

I do exactly what PauloBMB suggested and have symlinked

~/Library/Preferences/com.camerabits.PhotoMechanic/

into Dropbox on my desktop and laptop.

It is definitely unsupported, so proceed at your own risk (I'm aware of and prepared to deal with any issues it creates), but so far has worked great.