I’m sure there must be an easy answer to this situation, but I wasn’t able to find a recent thread about it. I do my photo editing on my desktop with Photoshop and Lightroom, but my laser engraver (Creality Falcon 2 Pro 22W) is hooked up to my laptop in another room. It seems as though I should be able to save my project in LB on my desktop then open it in LB on my laptop but I’m unable to figure it out. At present, I have been either emailing the completed photo then dowloading it onto my laptop, or bringing my laptop into proximity where my desktop can “see” the laptop and share the file. Is there a better way? Thank you.
Similar set up.
I design in Affinity Designer and Lightburn on “main” PC in my office. My laser is connected to a laptop in the “workshop”. Both PCs are networked under Windows 11 - shared folder between PC and Laptop - right click share.
Design in the house - save to shared network folder.
Load into laptop in workshop - cut.
Works perfectly. Bidirectional so any edits in the workshop can be picked up later in the office.
G
Desktop is Windows 10 and laptop is W11. Does that matter? How do I do a “shared network folder”? The only way I know to share now is to right click the saved image on my desktop and a “share” option comes up. However, I then have to bring my laptop close enough to the desktop for it to pick up with bluetooth enabled. It’s just as easy to email the file to myself and download as to do that. I’m not very techie, and fairly new to LB (since December), so I’m learning a lot. Thanks for your reply above, btw.
However, I guess I am still wondering if there is a way for me to save a file with all the settings and adjustments in lightburn on my desktop, but then open that same saved file in LB on my laptop? Maybe I’m asking is my saved file in the LB cloud somewhere, or is the file with adjustments just saved on whatever computer hard drive that it was created on?
Occasionally, I create files in my home office, save them onto a USB flash drive, and use it to transfer them to the shop PC.
Personally, it’s been a simple and reliable way to move files between locations.
I use a OneDrive shared folder, that works really well. Dropbox would be another alternative if you would rather not mess with windows shared folder settings
Thank you, everyone, for the helpful suggestions. They still weren’t answering my question, but I realized I wasn’t asking the right question. My apologies. I understand how to share a photo between my laptop and desktop, and y’all gave me good suggestions that I didn’t think about. What I’m actually wondering, though, is this: I am signed into LB on both my desktop and laptop. I prefer doing all my photo editing (with photoshop) and lightburn editing on my desktop because of the size of the screen, location, and other factors, but actually have to run my laser with my laptop in a different location like many of you. What I’d like to do is make all the adjustments to my photo/project on my desktop, save the project along with the notes in LB, then be able to open that saved project in LB on my laptop. When I save a project on my desktop, and go to LB on my laptop, the project isn’t there…or at least I don’t know how to access it if it is. In my mind, if I’m signed into LB, and save a project, I should be able to go to LB anywhere, sign in, and the project will be there. I guess that assumes it’s being saved to a cloud somewhere or syncing somehow. Anyway, that’s my question. Sorry for the confusion. I know it’s the operator.
That is not correct. Nothing gets saved “in” Lightburn. Files are saved to whatever location you choose on your hard drive, in the cloud, on a USB drive, etc.. You then need to “Open” the file from that location to load it into Lightburn on your other computer. Lightburn does maintain a recent files list, but that is only files that have been opened in that copy of Lightburn.
Thank you. That’s why I said “in my mind”. Would be nice if that was the case…like the syncing capabilities of Lightroom.
That’s what we wanted to solve. As it’s now clear that there is no cloud service inside LB (I’d also like to have it, to sync settings etc.), the closest you can get to it is to use a shared folder that is automatically synched between both PCs (that’s kind of a cloud).
Easy & free solution: install Dropbox on both machines. On the main machine, make sure you save your files in the Dropbox folder. On the laser laptop, open LightBurn and choose Open → (select the Dropbox folder) and you will see your file.
Basically, no. You could use Windows Remote Desktop, but you would have to do all design work on the laptop
I have a NAS (Network Access Storage) that I use for copying Lightburn files from one computer to the other. I do development on both computers and transfer files back and forth, but only one feeds the lasers. This is all on my WIFI network.
Here is the cheapest File Server I could find that I think would work:
Thank you for all the information. I’ve seen ads recently on Facebook, for some reason, for these NAS devices but I had no idea what they’re used for. I had been searching for a device to back up my SD cards to while out on photo shoots, and then started getting these ads on my FB page. Now I understand what they’re purpose is, and why I started getting these ads. Thanks so much. You cleared up several things.
If those images are important, I would select something more robust. Mine is a Synology with 2 hot-swappable 4tb drives in a RAID 1 (mirrored) configuration. It was not too difficult to set up.
Have fun!
Thank you. May be getting too techie for my brain.
Sneakernet has been pretty much dead for a while, but is still useful in certain instances.
I use Mac and saving everything on ICloud. Most of the time I can reopen the project on other laptop right away but sometimes it takes forever and I just airdropping it. Which is gets annoying at times when in the rush.
I use OneDrive and everything I do on one computer is on the other.
You CAN do what you want, although there are some very specific limitations.
First, your desktop can “be” the NAS (network attached storage). I don’t speak Windows anymore (haven’t used it for more than 20 years) but I’m 100% confident in the principles. On your desktop, find a place on your drive that things will live. Then you share it, with other computers on your local network. Then on your laptop, you connect to that “share.” It will look like another disk, although it will be “over the network.”
Now on your laptop, do your work in Lightburn, and crucially, save (or copy) it to the shared folder. At this point, if you go to your desktop, you will see everything in that shared folder. STOP HERE FOR A MOMENT.
Close the files on your laptop. Be sure to do this BEFORE you try doing something to the shared files on the desktop. If you modify them on both systems, you won’t be able to keep track of your changes. So the only viable policy is to close the files completely on one computer before doing anything with the other computer.
OK, now you can go to the desktop and open the LB files, and they will be just as you last saw them on the laptop. Do anything here and save them, THEN CLOSE before you go back to the laptop.
For those using iCloud, DropBox, Box, OneDrive - you’re doing essentially the same thing, except that the shared location is “somewhere out there in the Internet.” (I’ve kind of drastically simplified things, but this is essentially true.)
I have a somewhat similar setup, except that my editing is on a laptop and the engraver is connected to a Mac Mini. The solution I’ve found that works for me is to save my projects in a Dropbox folder that’s shared by both machines.
You might also consider using something like RemotePC. I design in my office and then connect remotely to my workshop computer and run lightburn. This implies you have already set-up the item(s) you will be engraving.