Hi everyone

[danielckinney_1]

I'm semi-retired (U.S. Air Force for 27 years and then 23+ years as a civilian electrical engineer), live in Maine, my boyhood home state, six months of the year, and in Indiana, my wife's home, the other six months of the year. I work part time during the winter doing substation maintenance, upgrades, testing and commissioning.

I've dabbled in photography since my teenage years and presently own a Nikon D7000. I also just purchase a Lumix DC-ZX80 for my wife. I have some experience using Apple's Aperture to catalog and enhance my photos but it was years ago. When Apple stopped supporting Aperture, I went to Adobe and immediately became confused with the plethora of available programs that came with my Photographic subscription. On top of that, Adobe had a number of program name changes about the time I joined them. What a mess. It was so confusing that I put of doing any more photo work for several years. I was just taking pictures and stuffing them on any hard drive I could get my hands on. And then I found an inexpensive on-line email base Lightroom Classic course last fall. It was self paced. It cleared up a lot of the confusion regarding Adobe's naming and renaming and it helped me to understand the difference between Lightroom Classic and Photoshop. I haven't finished the course yet but have accomplished enough of it that I've been able to get my 75K+ photos organized, cataloged, stored, and backed-up in three independent locations. I'm still a little confused about the other Adobe programs I'm paying for but have decided to work with Lightroom Classic only until I get it well in hand. I'd like to start using Lightroom on my phone as well but not if it's going to consume a lot of my time and confuse the heck out of me.

I am an amateur genealogist and have a number of old family photos I've had scanned and now wish to restore/improve. I've attempted this using the Develop features in Lightroom Classic but am not very good at it yet. I only recently discovered there's a problem with my present computer. It is old enough that it doesn't support the newest operating systems (I'm now running iOS 10.15), which means Adobe won't send me the latest updates to any of the programs I'm paying for. My Lightroom Classic is running at V11.5 - so I think there are things that have been added to LRc that I can't use because of the limitations of my computer. When I get a new replacement computer, I know I'll have issues transitioning my LRc stuff over and will need some help and advice from all of you. But that won't be for a few months.

I'm looking forward to my membership here and with working with all of you. Have a great day all.

 

[clee01l]

I'm still a little confused about the other Adobe programs I'm paying for but have decided to work with Lightroom Classic only until I get it well in hand. I'd like to start using Lightroom on my phone as well but not if it's going to consume a lot of my time and confuse the heck out of me.

Let's see if we can shed some light.
If you are familiar with Aperture, then Lightroom Classic is the Adobe equivalent. Some years back, it was called simply Lightroom. Several name changes added to the confusion but LightroomClassic is the computer based product today. Also several years ago, Adobe started developing a cloud based product. It now has the name "Lightroom". There is a Computer version and a Mobile version that share the name. Functionally (within the limits of the platform (Mobile and Computer) they are pretty much the same. Lightroom stores everything in the Adobe Cloud. Lightroom Classic can synchronize with the Adobe Cloud and in doing so everything in the Mobile app can be available to the Computer app (Lightroom Classic) Conversely, all of the Lightroom Classic images ca sync to the Adobe Cloud and be accessed by the Lightroom app running on any mobile device.
There are some caveats. If you do a lot of work using the mobile devices or Lightroom on the desktop. the 20GB plan may not be adequate for the volume of full sized images imported to the Adobe Cloud through the Lightroom app. Lightroom Classic does not sync full size images to the cloud. Instead it syncs a proxy (Smart Preview) image that is suitable for use and edit by small mobile devices. The plus to this arrangement is that Adobe does not count the proxy (Smart Preview) images agains your plan Limits. So the 20GB plan can hold Lightroom Generated images while the proxy (Smart Preview) images won't be counted in the 20GB.

 

[danielckinney_1]

Thanks Cletus. I had learned some of the naming changes but your explanation clears up what I didn't know. And the details about Lightroom are particularly helpful, especially the part about the Smart Previews not counting against the 20GB. Can I put the LR app on my wife's phone as well as on mine or am I restricted to only one copy? Do I have to run the desktop version on LR in order for it to play with LRc?

 

[clee01l]

Thanks Cletus. I had learned some of the naming changes but your explanation clears up what I didn't know. And the details about Lightroom are particularly helpful, especially the part about the Smart Previews not counting against the 20GB. Can I put the LR app on my wife's phone as well as on mine or am I restricted to only one copy? Do I have to run the desktop version on LR in order for it to play with LRc?

The Lightroom mobile app is free. You can put it on any mobile device. This Lightroom Desktop app is part of the Photography plan. So don’t expect Adobe to let you install it on more than two computers.

The recommendation is to not install Lightroom Desktop on the Same computer that has Lightroom Classic.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[danielckinney_1]

Ah Ha. I'm beginning to get it. So, Lr on my phone communicates files directly to, and from, my LrC through the cloud. I had assumed I needed the Lr Desktop on my computer to be the interface between LrC and Lr. It's good to know I should NOT put Lr Decktop on my computer.

I see where there is two folders for iPhones in my Folders area. I don't know how they got there or how to use them. See the screenshot attached. Both phones are older than what we presently have (iPhone 14s). I must have attempted to use Lr sometime in the past - probably just after I got the Adobe Photographic Suite - I had no clue what I was doing. So what do I do the clear out those old (D9A's iPhone 6s and Dan's iPhone 5s) and add our new phones?

 

[Jim Wilde]

It's good to know I should NOT put Lr Desktop on my computer.

There's no technical reason at all why you shouldn't install LrD on the same computer as LrC. I think the (old) recommendation that Cletus made in the previous post was probably started through fear of the easily confused getting confused about which Lightroom they were using, but it's certainly not a recommendation I would make to anyone who wanted to use both apps on the same system. Sure, if you don't need LrD to be installed, then don't install it. But for the curious and the needy there is absolutely no problem at all having them both installed (I have them both installed of 3 different computers, and more often than not both will be active at the same time). There are things that can only be done using LrD so it makes sense to me to have them both installed.

I see where there is two folders for iPhones in my Folders area. I don't know how they got there or how to use them. See the screenshot attached. Both phones are older than what we presently have (iPhone 14s). I must have attempted to use Lr sometime in the past - probably just after I got the Adobe Photographic Suite - I had no clue what I was doing. So what do I do the clear out those old (D9A's iPhone 6s and Dan's iPhone 5s) and add our new phones?

Those "folders" only appear when the location in LrC for storing downloaded sync images is set to the default, in which case LrC creates a faux folder called "Imported Photos" under a faux "drive" with the name of the device that they originated from. If you hover over any of those "Imported Photos" folders you should see a tool-tip appear which contains the actual path to the actual folder that contains those images. You will see that they are in a folder which has a name consisting of a long (unique) string of alphanumeric characters within the "mobile downloads.lrdata" package, in the user's Pictures folder. To get rid of them is fairly easy....for the one with zero images, simply right-click on the "Imported Photos" folder and select Remove. For the other one, you can move the three images out of there by dragging and dropping them into any other folder location in the Folder's Panel, then repeat the right-click>Remove on the now empty folder.

You can't directly add your new phones, that should happen automatically when you first sync images from them into LrC. However, I would recommend that you consider setting a different location for the downloaded sync images via the option in the LrC Preferences>Lightroom Sync tab. If you do that, those faux drives and folders won't appear, the new location folder will act just like all the other folders in the Folders Panel.

 

[tspear]

When I was considering making the switch from Lr Classic to Lr cloud based, I had both apps installed on my computer.
Both worked just fine. The key is to not have the two applications point to the same directories. There is an option for keeping originals locally for Lr cloud focused (this helps with performance, if you can spare the space). I read a few blogs which talked about setting this folder to the same folder as Classic is using. This will cause all sorts of problems.
So in summary, if you install both, just make sure they do NOT share folders.

And yes, I opened the wrong application many times.

Tim

 

[clee01l]

There's no technical reason at all why you shouldn't install LrD on the same computer as LrC. I think the (old) recommendation that Cletus made in the previous post was probably started through fear of the easily confused getting confused about which Lightroom they were using, but it's certainly not a recommendation I would make to anyone who wanted to use both apps on the same system. Sure, if you don't need LrD to be installed, then don't install it. But for the curious and the needy there is absolutely no problem at all having them both installed (I have them both installed of 3 different computers, and more often than not both will be active at the same time). There are things that can only be done using LrD so it makes sense to me to have them both installed.

I should have probably added that in spite of the recommendation, I have both LrC and LrD installed on my iMac. I use LrD for review of what is sync'd to the Adobe Cloud and never use it for import of new images or as the primary editor for my Imported images on the iMac. Also I use LrM on my iPad as the primary import of new images into Lightroom ecosystem with the Cloud images automatically syncing to LrC where I make complete the processing of each image.
You are correct, there is no technical reason. However. If you import using LrD, you have the option to store a local copy of all originals. If you then sync the Adobe Cloud originals to LrC, you will end up with twice the number of full size original images on your computer.

 

[Jim Wilde]

You are correct, there is no technical reason. However. If you import using LrD, you have the option to store a local copy of all originals. If you then sync the Adobe Cloud originals to LrC, you will end up with twice the number of full size original images on your computer.

Agreed re the double local storage potential. But that's not a good reason to not install or use LrD on the same system as LrC, it's just a good reason not to check that "Store a copy of all originals" option when also syncing with LrC on the same system.

 

[Jimmsp]

......

I am an amateur genealogist and have a number of old family photos I've had scanned and now wish to restore/improve. I've attempted this using the Develop features in Lightroom Classic but am not very good at it yet. ..

Welcome.
I am working with a number of genealogists, and am also restoring some of my old photos.
Lightroom Classic is limited in what it can do here, especially in things like color correction, scratch correction, and filling in missing pieces. However, you also have a program called Photoshop. It has the world leading tools to do what needs to be done. And Adobe has made it very very easy to start a photo in Lightroom Classic, send it Photoshop and do some process work there, and then send it back to Lightroom Classic. As you progress on your journey with photo processing on a new computer, you can later start to learn about Photoshop. PS is a huge program, but you only need to become familiar with parts of it to really attack your old photos.
Don't hesitate to ask questions here - people are friendly and helpful.
Patience and practice will get you there, and you will have fun along the way.

Jim