Stop struggling with Lightroom! There's no need to spend hours hunting for the answers to your Lightroom Classic questions. All the information you need is in dtbain
Active Member
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2011
- Messages
- 127
- Location
- Glasgow, UK
- Lightroom Experience
- Intermediate
- Lightroom Version
- Lightroom Version Number
- Lightroom Classic 8.3.1
- Operating System
- macOS 10.13 High Sierra
Hello All
Any advice on the following would be hugely appreciated.
I am considering changing my Lightroom set-up so that my pics are in the cloud, but before I go to the effort and expense it would be extremely helpful to get the guidance of people on here.
Here's my current set up:
The above (set up after consulting people on here) works pretty well, except:
Hence I've been considering moving to a set up that keeps my pictures and master cat in the cloud. That seems to be the way the world is going and my hope is that if this works ...
Finally, then (sorry about the long explanation), can I ask:
1. Will option A give me everything I want, i.e. reliable, effortless back ups, and the ability to edit in Classic (using the same settings) on two macbooks without having to export parts of the master catalog and re-importing them? Not having used it, I am not 100% clear about how the cloud storage works with Lr. Is it (as with Dropbox's smart sync, I take it) that it will look on my mac as though all my pictures are on my mac, but actually they are all virtual copies, the full fat versions being in the cloud, and editing works by (for instance) choosing a folder to produce the full fat versions on the mac, for editing, before returning them to the cloud once finished? (I don' use smart previews by the way, since my instinct has always been to work with the full fat image, but perhaps that's stupid; do say if that's relevant here!) Also, so that I don't further waste your time, is there somewhere on the web (perhaps indeed on Victoria's site?!) where I can get a clear description of how the workflow would go for using Lightroom classic and having all one's pics and one's cat in the cloud?
2. Is option B feasible? It's certainly cheaper, which is attractive, but if it's inconvenient or unsafe I would avoid it, since what I am trying to do is maximise convenience and safety. I take the rough shape of this option is that I would keep my cat and pictures in the dropbox cloud, with only virtual copies on my machine, but -- unlike 1 -- I would go outside of Lr (i.e. to dropbox) to choose a folder to make it real (rather than just virtual) on my hard drive, so that I can edit what's in that folder, before later restoring those pictures to the cloud, leaving only virtual copies on my mac's hard drive. Is that right? Is that sensible? Would it achieve what I want? And, as before, does anyone know of someone who does this who might have written up a brief but clear account of the work flow? (At least one problem with the dropbox option is that I think I would, at least temporarily, need to get all my pics onto my mac's HD -- since that is where my dropbox folder lives -- in order for them to be uploaded to the cloud, but I don't have room for that on my mac hard drive.)
Thanks everyone. I've had such excellent advice from this forum in the past that I really didn't want to take this (for me) big step without consulting, but I am very sorry for the length of this -- thanks to all who made it to the end!
Any guidance *hugely* appreciated.
All best
David
PS. If the Lr cloud is also a good way of sharing pictures with friends and family, then that would mean I could stop using smugmug, hence saving some money that way, but I don't think that is its real purpose?
Any advice on the following would be hugely appreciated.
I am considering changing my Lightroom set-up so that my pics are in the cloud, but before I go to the effort and expense it would be extremely helpful to get the guidance of people on here.
Here's my current set up:
I have a Adobe Photoplan (£120 annually) that comes with both the Lr web version and Lr Classic and 20 GB cloud space. I use Classic, not the web version, and not any of the cloud space. I have two Macbook pros, the main one with HD of 1TB, the other 500GB. My master catalog, which (including pics) is just over 1TB in size, is kept on a 2TB external hard drive (ehd). When I edit, I usually don't do so directly on the ehd, but instead export various folders of pictures (yes, I keep my pictures in folders) as catalogues to my local mac drive ("Summer holiday", "Xmas holiday", etc), then edit them for a week or two, and then import those cats back into the master on the ehd. (I do this mainly so I don't have to be connected to an ehd, not because of speed. Editing on the ehd is fast enough, I've found, but fear the cable falling out, not to mention not wanting the cable when editing on the move.) I use chronosync to back up that master ehd to a second 2TB ehd, reasonably often, which I keep offsite. Finally, my wife occasionally edits pictures in Lr too, or makes photo books, on my second macbook pro, working on the same pictures, occasionally at the same time as me, in which case she exports a folder to catalog on that macbook's drive and then reimports, as I do. So that we both have the same presets etc. available, I've moved the Lr settings to a shared dropbox folder, to which there is a symbolic link in the Lr folder on each of the macbooks.
The above (set up after consulting people on here) works pretty well, except:
(i) I am beginning to find, the busier I get, that backing up is a bit of a pain. I need to get the second ehd from my office, bring it home, do the bup, and take it back. Not a huge deal, but a bit of a pain.
(ii) I worry that, even when I back up often (I lost some edits when I forgot to back up for a couple of months) a backup might fail when needed, or turn out to be incomplete, etc.
(iii) The exporting of folders to cats on my local disk and then reintegrating them to the master catalog is also a bit of a pain. Sometimes, one or two pictures unaccountably don't get reimported, for instance. I have always been able to fix this when it happens, but it takes time and is a clunky process.
Hence I've been considering moving to a set up that keeps my pictures and master cat in the cloud. That seems to be the way the world is going and my hope is that if this works ...
a. I won't need to do anything by way of backing up; the system will take care of this in the background (like dropbox or time machine), and the back ups that the system makes will be fully reliable, perhaps even archived such that I can revert to a back up other than the most recent if there is something wrong with the most recent. (See (i) and (ii) above.)
b. There will be no need for either my wife or me to export folders to cats on our local drives, at least not unless we're going to edit simultaneously, which would perhaps be a circumstance in which that will still make sense? (See (iii) above.)
c. I can continue to use Lr Classic, assuming I am right that this version remains more fully featured than the cloud version and also more user friendly at least for those of us who learnt Lr using it.
d. My wife and I can continue to edit my pictures on my two macbooks, using the same settings, ideally, perhaps sometimes simultaneously (which as I say might require snapping off catalogs and then re-importing).
So the question is whether this can be achieved and if so how best to do it. I take it there are really two options (please do say if there are others).A. Pay Adobe for more cloud space on my Photoplan to 2TB, which would push the price from £120 to £360.
B. Somehow try to use Dropbox to the same effect, for which I already pay for 2TB storage (hence no extra cost), and which now includes smart syncs. This would save me the £240 extra involved in plan 1.
Finally, then (sorry about the long explanation), can I ask:
1. Will option A give me everything I want, i.e. reliable, effortless back ups, and the ability to edit in Classic (using the same settings) on two macbooks without having to export parts of the master catalog and re-importing them? Not having used it, I am not 100% clear about how the cloud storage works with Lr. Is it (as with Dropbox's smart sync, I take it) that it will look on my mac as though all my pictures are on my mac, but actually they are all virtual copies, the full fat versions being in the cloud, and editing works by (for instance) choosing a folder to produce the full fat versions on the mac, for editing, before returning them to the cloud once finished? (I don' use smart previews by the way, since my instinct has always been to work with the full fat image, but perhaps that's stupid; do say if that's relevant here!) Also, so that I don't further waste your time, is there somewhere on the web (perhaps indeed on Victoria's site?!) where I can get a clear description of how the workflow would go for using Lightroom classic and having all one's pics and one's cat in the cloud?
2. Is option B feasible? It's certainly cheaper, which is attractive, but if it's inconvenient or unsafe I would avoid it, since what I am trying to do is maximise convenience and safety. I take the rough shape of this option is that I would keep my cat and pictures in the dropbox cloud, with only virtual copies on my machine, but -- unlike 1 -- I would go outside of Lr (i.e. to dropbox) to choose a folder to make it real (rather than just virtual) on my hard drive, so that I can edit what's in that folder, before later restoring those pictures to the cloud, leaving only virtual copies on my mac's hard drive. Is that right? Is that sensible? Would it achieve what I want? And, as before, does anyone know of someone who does this who might have written up a brief but clear account of the work flow? (At least one problem with the dropbox option is that I think I would, at least temporarily, need to get all my pics onto my mac's HD -- since that is where my dropbox folder lives -- in order for them to be uploaded to the cloud, but I don't have room for that on my mac hard drive.)
Thanks everyone. I've had such excellent advice from this forum in the past that I really didn't want to take this (for me) big step without consulting, but I am very sorry for the length of this -- thanks to all who made it to the end!
Any guidance *hugely* appreciated.
All best
David
PS. If the Lr cloud is also a good way of sharing pictures with friends and family, then that would mean I could stop using smugmug, hence saving some money that way, but I don't think that is its real purpose?
