Today’s Question: I purchased the Creative Cloud version of Lightroom for my desktop computer. Can I install a second copy on my laptop so that I can work when I am traveling?
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can have the applications included in your Creative Cloud subscription active on up to two computers at a time. Thus, you can most certainly have Lightroom and Photoshop (and any other applications included in your subscription) installed on both a desktop and laptop computer.
More Detail: You can actually install the applications included in your Creative Cloud subscription on as many computers as you’d like. However, you can only have the software active on two computers at any given time. If you need to switch between computers (such as a second desktop computer versus a laptop you travel with) you will need to sign out of the Creative Cloud application on one computer before signing in on another computer.
It is worth noting, by the way, that working with Lightroom across multiple computers does introduce certain challenges, since Lightroom does not enable you to seamlessly synchronize a single catalog across multiple computers.
You could use a service such as DropBox to synchronize a Lightroom catalog across multiple computers, of course. You could also use a separate “traveling” catalog on your laptop when traveling, and then merge that catalog with your “master” catalog once you return home. But the bottom line is that working with Lightroom across multiple computers does introduce a challenge in terms of Lightroom not providing a synchronization feature for using your catalog across multiple computers.