Adobe Lightroom has a frustrating flaw when used on devices with limited vertical screen resolution. Most of today’s netbook computers fall into this category, typically having only 600 pixels to play with from top to bottom.

The Problem

The problem manifests itself quite early in the Lightroom workflow. The contents of the Import dialog may be cut-off some way from the bottom, as shown below:

Lightroom Import dialog with missing controls

The dialog box cannot be moved or resized in any way that enables the missing parts of the form to be revealed. This is frustrating to say the least. The usual methods don’t work (e.g. trying to grab the edges or corners of the dialog, and dragging to resize; right-clicking the title bar and selecting Move). Initially, there seems to be no way to access the hidden controls (including the all important Import button!).

The Solution

If you set the vertical resolution to a value that’s greater than the native resolution supported by your screen (for example, to 1024x768 instead of 1024x600), Windows XP will display a scrollable “virtual” desktop, enabling you to access the full Import dialog.

Follow the steps below to change your screen’s vertical resolution, and work effectively with Lightroom using a virtual desktop.

Note that this procedure will affect all applications running on your Windows XP computer — not just Lightroom. Instructions for reversing this change are given at the end of the procedure.

1. Right-click on a blank area of your desktop, and select Properties from the context menu.

   The Display Properties dialog is shown.

2. Select the Settings tab, then click Advanced.

   A new dialog is displayed.



3. Select the Monitor tab, then clear the Hide modes that this monitor cannot display check box.

   

   The text beneath the check box hints at possible dire consequences (damaged hardware) if you go on to select an unsupported display mode. This is highly unlikely to happen with today’s monitors (LCD or CRT), and was really only ever an issue with older fixed-sync CRT screens.

4. Click Apply, then click OK.

   The dialog closes, revealing the Display Properties dialog again.

5. On the Settings tab, drag the Screen resolution slider to the right to select a screen resolution that has a vertical resolution of 768 or more. (The second figure shown beneath the slider is the vertical resolution.)

   Screen resolutions get larger as you drag the slider further to the right. You should stop at the first resolution that has the required 768 or more vertical pixels.

   

6. Click OK.

   The Display Properties dialog closes, and your desktop should now be displaying a higher vertical resolution.

   To see the “extra” bits of the desktop, move your mouse pointer to the top or bottom edge of the screen, which will then automatically scroll up or down.

   Now, when you use Lightroom, you will be able to access every part of the Import dialog.

To reverse any changes you make to your screen resolution, repeat the above procedure, setting the screen resolution back to its original values in step 5.

Thus far, issues have been relatively minor, and resolvable without too much drama. Adobe’s support centre combines decent product documentation with community sourced tips and comments, so it’s almost always been easy to find an answer to my questions without having to kick off an extended internet trawl.

The stumbling block is actually a consequence of a couple of other recent purchases — a Samsung N110 Netbook, and a wireless router/ADSL modem. Now that I’m a two-computer household (despite having taken to the wireless netbook to the extent that I’ve pretty much abandoned the clunky desktop PC), there’s the new joy of synchronising work, and sharing resources between the two machines.

Having installed Lightroom on the netbook, I thought it would be straightforward to attach a removable hard drive (containing my image archive and Lightroom catalog) to the wireless router, and fire up Lightroom. With the removable drive listed as a network drive in Explorer on the netbook, I did just this. Problem is, when I pointed Lightroom at the network-drive catalog, I was presented with:

Lightroom won't play with remote catalogs

Bugger.

Thing is, this shouldn’t really have come as a great surprise. While researching Lightroom prior to buying it (this is by far the most I’ve ever spent personally on a piece of software), I recall coming across a few blog and forum posts that bemoaned Lightroom’s shortcomings when it comes to networking. As it happened, these comments were generally written from the perspective of professional photographers with multi-user requirements that I simply don’t have. So I ignored them.

The irritating thing is, I don’t want to access the same catalog from two machines simultaneously. Ever. There’s only one of me, and I’m not going to start Lightroom on both machines. What I would find useful, is the ability to work from either my netbook, or my desktop, and not have to mess about keeping two copies of the catalog in sync.

I found a brief note of explanation as to why Lightroom may behave in this way. Apparently, the catalog uses the open source SQLite database, which doesn’t have multi-user capabilities, hence the lockdown on shared drive access. It would, I have to say, be a lot more convenient if access via a network drive was allowed, and only subsequently prevented if the catalog/database file was already in use and locked.

Ho hum. The answer for now has simply been to take a copy of the catalog for use on my netbook (at only 70MB, this is no great chore). This works fine, but begs further questions:

• How should I go about synchronising/combining the catalog files on the two machines? I’m particularly concerned that I don’t lose metadata or change history for individual images.
• What’s the best way to handle pre-built preview images? These are stored outside the main catalog file, and should probably be copied too to save having to rebuild them all?

I think before I get stuck in to the Adobe Lightroom support centre, I really need to clarify exactly how I want to work — at least then I’ll be able to ask the right questions!