Can LrC Be Forced To Sync Original RAWs to Creative Cloud?

[Psamathe]

Lightroom Version

12.1

Operating System

1. macOS 13 Ventura

My understanding is that when RAWs are added to an LrC Library Collection that is sync'd to Creative Cloud, only Smart Previews are sync'd to the cloud.

Is there any way to get LrC to instead sync the full RAWs?

Reason: One great fetaure of Lr (CC) is that when you load RAW images into it those full RAWs are sync'd to the Creative Could. When travelling with limited internet the sync process is "painless" (recovers from poor connections, dropouts, etc.) where most manual copy methods report an error and stop. But next travels I'm looking to take laptop so I can use LrC - previous travels I've been finding Lr (CC) too limiting and then loads of work to port things into LrC on return home. But the CC sync (as a backup) is great should your phone/tablet/camera/laptop/all those get stolen - at least you still have your photos. Hence looking to use LrC and still sync full original RAWs to the Creative Cloud for cloud backup. nb I also use a different cloud storage so I have two cloud storage backup *I'm paranoid about backups).

In practice copy to any cloud service as backup would be fine, just that every copy method I've tried does experience failures (when using shared internet of poor quality in a hostel) an dcopy stops any needs manual intervention and then start again copying from point of failure. e.g. Finder, Transmit, Forklift - all report error and require you do something manual. My non-CC backup is enough work. As above, I already do 2 cloud backups, one manual to OneDrive (which is grief with failures and manual recovery/restart) so the Lr (CC) one is great but if a second manual one then double the grief!

Thanks
Ian

 

[johnbeardy]

Is there any way to get LrC to instead sync the full RAWs?

No, sadly.

But what you can do is import to your Creative Cloud Files folder, or to Dropbox etc.

 

[Califdan]

LrC cloud sync is not and should not, EVER be considered in any way as a form of backup. If it appears anywhere in your back up strategy then you need to re-think your strategy.

But, to answer you question if an image originates in LR/Cloud and a copy is synced down to LR/Classic, the full original remains in the LR/Cloud. However, if an image originates in LR/Classic and syncs to LR/Cloud only a smart preview is sent to the cloud. So, although not reccomended, you can use a convoluted scheme to export images using LR/Classic to a folder on your computer, then using LR/Cloud/Desktop or LR/Cloud/Web import those images to LR/Cloud ecosystem as new images which will by default then sync back to LR/Classic as a new image giving you two copies of the image in LR/Classic) at which point you can delete the original. But, the new copy will only have the metadata present on the exported image and will not have any of the edit history from the original. Your metadata dates may be a mess, participation in collections will be lost, etc. DON'T DO THIS.

Instead, ask yourself why you need full size RAW files in the Adobe Cloud (for which you pay storage costs) in the first place. The smart previews are more than adequate for editing, either way keywords won't sync back and forth etc. If you need to travel with your full size images for editing purposes, put your Lrc catalog and images on a portable hard drive and bring it along with a laptop (leave a copy of the that drive home for safety). If the answer comes back to a robust back up scheme then you need to pick a different tool to do cloud backups that self correct if they are interrupted. There are plenty on the market. You may want to look at CrashPlan for Small Business, or BackBlaze among others.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

So, although not reccomended, you can use a convoluted scheme to export images using LR/Classic to a folder on your computer, then using LR/Cloud/Desktop or LR/Cloud/Web import those images to LR/Cloud ecosystem as new images which will by default then sync back to LR/Classic as a new image giving you two copies of the image in LR/Classic) at which point you can delete the original.

There is a better and easier way. Do not export the images from Lightroom Classic, but first sync them from Lightroom Classic (as smart previews, obviously) and then import the very same images (so not copies!) in Lightroom desktop. Lightroom desktop is clever enough to see that these are the same images, and will replace the online smart previews by originals. And then Lightroom Classic is clever enough to not download these again.

 

[Califdan]

@Johan Elzenga - There is a better and easier way

Nice Shortcut.

 

[prbimages]

Or, just import into Lightroom Desktop (Cloudy) first. Then launch Lightroom Classic (on the same laptop) and the full images will sync down to it. Then you can do your editing in Classic.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Or, just import into Lightroom Desktop (Cloudy) first. Then launch Lightroom Classic (on the same laptop) and the full images will sync down to it. Then you can do your editing in Classic.

The downside of doing it that way is that Lightroom has less options to do things on import. It can’t rename the files on import, for example. And of course you may not want to sync all your images, only some of them.

 

[Jim Wilde]

It's basically "horses for courses"....two quite simple methods, so the user can choose which one suits them best.

BTW, the renaming issue is also easily dealt with. Rename in LrC after the images have downloaded from the cloud, and the rename will sync back to the cloud masters.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Agreed. The main reason why I do it the way I described is because I only want to sync selected images, and in most cases I’m fine with just syncing smart previews. I have very few originals online.