I recently bought a PC and I am trying to use Tropy between both for when I work at home and when I work on the go with my Mac. After a lot of failures, I managed to create a Tropy project that I can open on both Mac and PC via a cloud storage system offered through my University called Box. I also created an image folder on the same cloud service thinking that the path files would be the same on PC and Mac. However, when I upload images from the PC, from that image folder on Box the images do not show up on the Mac but the metadata does. Why isn’t the Mac recognizing the image pathways if they are on the same cloud service that the .tpy file is? I know this question is extremely similar to others being asked but would appreciate any help. Thank you.
Tropy stores absolute paths to your photos by default; if you want to use the project on a Mac and PC this will not work because of the different file systems used (on Windows an absolute path always starts with a drive letter; on a Mac it will always start with the root folder).
To solve this, you can use the experimental ‘portable’ project mode. Because of Window’s drive letters this will only work if you can put the project file on to the same device (i.e., same drive letter) on Windows – i.e., your image folder on Box. The best way to do this is:
- Close Tropy
- Move your project file to your image folder
- Make a backup copy of your project file just in case!
- Open Tropy and open your project (since you moved the project in step 2, Tropy will not open the project automatically)
- Enable dev mode in the preferences
- Rebase the project from the developer menu. Do this only once (the menu action is a toggle) – there should be no visible changes, but if you close the project now and open it on the other device Tropy should be able to find your images.
- You can disable dev mode again if you like.
Tropy does not yet help you avoid or resolve potential sync conflicts which can happen if you work on the same project file simultaneously (if your devices are connected to the cloud service continuously; if they are not you need to be even more careful), so please always make sure you’re working off of the latest version.
Thank you for the reply. The original project file is already in the same folders that I keep the images, so can I skip step 2? Also, from the Mac side should I not upload images into trophy from that side since the file path will be different? My apologies, I am just a tad confused on if this workaround will be okay from the Mac side.
Yes, of course, if the project file is already in the same folder there’s no need to move it (still good idea to make a backup copy).
When the project is set up as ‘portable’ it stores only the path to the photo relative to the project file itself. Since they’re in the same folder, the paths will be identical on Mac and Windows (if you use sub-folders the paths should also work, even if slashes and backslashes technically make them look different).
Thank you so much, it worked! I can see the images on both computers without error.
One quick follow up. Will the path file be corrupted if i take images in that folder and place them into subfolders after having already uploaded them to the tropy project?
Yes, but it should be OK. After you move photos, you’ll have to consolidate them in Tropy again – if you’re moving photos from the root folder to new sub-folders, you’ll have to consolidate a single photo in each of the sub-folders and Tropy should be able to fix the others automatically. Once the paths are fixed and you close the project file, then open it on the other device once the network folder is up to date there, everything should be fixed there as well.