Classic/Cloud Integration

[randal.hundley]

Lightroom Version Number

11.5

Operating System

1. macOS 12 Monterey

Thanks for the excellent discussion of the behavior of LR when using Classic and Cloud together. I've read this part of the book several times. I want to use Classic as my "source of truth" and main working tool, but also use Cloud to import photos from the iPhone and LR camera. And in some cases I'd like to put some photos in collections and sync to mobile to I can have access to them on the go.

If I understand correctly, the "All Synced Photos" folder will forever contain all the photos in shared collections, as well as all new photos which I might save to a folder in classic or delete. This seems like a mess, since ideally for me the "All Synced Photos" would be an intermediate storage point of downloaded photos before either deleting or saving them.

I'm just asking whether I'm approaching this incorrectly, or is this just a reality (in my opinion deficiency) of the software.

I'm thinking the solution for me is to use Smugmug for sharing my photos from my mobile phone/iPad, rather than using the Lightroom mobile app for this.

 

[Conrad Chavez]

If I understand correctly, the "All Synced Photos" folder will forever contain all the photos in shared collections, as well as all new photos which I might save to a folder in classic or delete. This seems like a mess, since ideally for me the "All Synced Photos" would be an intermediate storage point of downloaded photos before either deleting or saving them.

“All Synced Photos” isn’t a folder, it’s an automatically maintained collection (virtual list). It lists anything stored in Lightroom Photos in the cloud, which can include photos synced up from any cloud version of Lightroom (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, web browser), as well as any photos synced up from Lightroom Classic.

As such, All Synced Photos doesn’t necessarily “forever contain” files. Files can be removed from All Synced Photos simply by un-syncing them. For example, sometimes I no longer want so many photos in All Synced Photos. I can choose to un-sync some synced Lightroom Classic collections, and for the photos uploaded from any cloud version of Lightroom, I can simply select them in All Synced Photos and press Delete.

What does pressing Delete actually do in All Synced Photos? It un-syncs the photo, but because this is Lightroom Classic where “the truth” is local files, the files still exist where they were downloaded at the time Lightroom Classic first synced them from the cloud.

If that last paragraph needs clarification: When Lightroom Classic next syncs to the cloud and sees new images (for example because some were uploaded from Lightroom on a phone), they still exist on the cloud, but Lightroom Classic dutifully downloads a copy for local storage because that’s how it stores things. That local copy goes to the folder set in Preferences / Lightroom Sync / Location. I set that to the same destination folder I have set up in the Import dialog box, so that Lightroom Classic imports both my “real camera” and auto-synced mobile phone/tablet pictures into the same single set of folders organized by date.

So, if I ever chose to Select All and Delete from All Synced Photos, all the photos in there would disappear from Lightroom Photos in the cloud, but remain in their local folders by date along with the photos I imported from camera cards. One set of folders for everything.

I'm thinking the solution for me is to use Smugmug for sharing my photos from my mobile phone/iPad, rather than using the Lightroom mobile app for this.

That’s fine, no problem with that. I use the Smugmug Publish Service to sync specific collections to the Smugmug cloud, for the times when it works better for me to share/post an image through Smugmug, rather than through Lightroom Photos. You can use both at the same time for their different strengths. if you want. I guess I feel a little more free using Smugmug as a growing cloud archive of my favorite photos, since storage there is unlimited.

 

[randal.hundley]

Thank you for this detailed response. It is helpful. I realize that some of my terminology was sloppy. I knew that "synced photos" wasn't really a folder and that images weren't there "forever." But your reply does shed some light on the situation. I had forgotten about the "folder" where images from each mobile device get downloaded. I will need to think about and experiment with what you have said here. Again, I really appreciate your reply!

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Great explanation Conrad! Feel free to ask if you have further questions Randal, I think we'd all agree that Classic sync is more complicated than we'd like.