Can I work from an external hard drive?

Working from an external hard drive does have some limitations.  One of those being that the buffer rate (drive speed) might actually slow down the sync to Lightroom/Capture One.  When this happens, you might notice an over all lag in Lightroom/Capture One.  

We recommend the following workflow, for speed and efficiency:
1. Copy all of the files for that order/session on your main computer drive (desktop is fine).  
2. Create one catalog per order/session
3. Import all the photos for that order/session
4. Go through and cull, rate, and create green-labeled reference images (if applicable)
5. Export your order to Photographer's Edit (Lightroom/Capture One)

When you receive your order back, you will need to re-link the images on your hard drive to the completed catalog. Here is how to do that, for Lightroom/ and Capture One.

Once you have exported the images to your client, you're now ready to back up the files!
1. Copy your Lightroom/Capture catalog and files to your external hard drive.  You can use your own file structure but we recommend Year/Month/Client Name/Name of Session.  
2. We recommend a 2nd copy be uploaded to cloud-based storage (Backblaze/ iDrive).
Should your external hard drive ever fail, you'll still have access to the files!