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Can you use Classic & CC side by side..

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Jay Clulow

Photographer | Retoucher
Joined
Apr 27, 2016
Messages
58
Location
Stockport
Lightroom Experience
Advanced
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
9
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.15 Catalina
Well I'm in the unfortunate senario after building a new library first in CC (Cloudy). Having sync'd back to Classic (An Abyss of loose collections). I need to rebuild the folder/Collection Set structure in Classic to mimic that in CC (Cloudy). However its just occurred to me that seeing as I regularly move a lot of folders/collections around whatever I do in Cloudy isn't going to change in Classic is it?

These two products clearly aren't designed first to work with each other.
 
While there are workarounds Adobe does not recommend it. Classic sends smart previews to the cloud while cloudy sends actual files. They both argue over who is the boss.
 
If you create a new Album in Cloud then it'll appear in Classic (as a Collection) but any hierarchy won't sync. So, you'd have to then drag the new Collection to where you want it in Classic. Photos added to it do sync to the correct place though (so the moved location in Classic). Add something to this Collection in Classic and this syncs back to Cloud (as a Smart Preview if the original file isn't already in the cloud)

A copy of the actual file is downloaded into Classic if it comes to Cloud first.
 
While there are workarounds Adobe does not recommend it. Classic sends smart previews to the cloud while cloudy sends actual files. They both argue over who is the boss.
Personally I tend to agree with the recommendation to pick one but I wanted to comment on the lighthearted last phrase. While it may seem that way, the process is deterministic -- you won't need to deal with luck-of-the-draw issues if you carefully research and create a workflow. It will do the same thing each time, but it does take some time to work through all the implications of using both, and you will be the weak link in the chain -- the day you import a different way and end up confused will happen (as I see Paul has also commented on).

I think the "should I use both" is along the lines of "should I have more than one catalog" or "how can I manually sync classic between computers" -- sure, there are ways to do it that can be made to work, but if you want a simple, reliable, easy to follow workflow -- Pick One!
 
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