HELP - Recreating Classic Folder Structure As Albums After Migrating

[gwasserman]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom 2.4.1 and Lightroom Classic 8.4.1

Operating System

1. macOS 10.14 Mojave

Hi - I migrated from Classic to Cloud. In Classic I used folders for organizing my photos (i.e weddings/2019/John) and didn't really use Collections and didn't realize Cloud wouldn't replicate the folder structure. When I migrated to Cloud, I obviously lost the folder structure so now I just have a ton of unorganized photos in Cloud (with local copies saved by Cloud in folders by date, so they're duplicated on my hard drive).

I still have access to Classic with my original folder structure. Is there any easy way to use those folder structures to get my Cloud photos into collections/albums?

The ideas I can come up with are:

1) Go to Cloud and add photos and select one of the original folders and add that into a new album. But then the photos would be duplicated and I'm not sure if Cloud would realize the file itself is a duplicate and not treat it like a second file for both cloud and local storage purposes.

2) can I "unmigrate" my library and just re-start with my Classic as it is now, but create a bunch of Collections before re-doing the migration? Not sure if there's a way to just cancel the Cloud subsription and go back to just Classic and then re-sign up for Cloud.

3) or instead of "unmigrating and remigrating" like in 2 above, can I delete everything in the cloud library and then manually add each of my folders as a new album in Cloud?

4) can I delete everything stored in Cloud and start over by recreating the collections in Classic and then telling them to sync with Cloud? (I understand if I did this, the full versions probably wouldn't sync and it would only be the smart previews?)


Any help is much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi gwasserman, welcome to the forum!

Yes, deleting everything and starting over would be one option. That said, I'd try something first.

1. Back up your Classic catalog
2. Enable sync in your Classic catalog and let it catch up.
3. Right-click on the parent folder and choose Create Collection Set from *. That should turn you folder structure into a collection hierarchy. Repeat for any other parent folders.
4. Let it sync (could take ages). That should sync the collections to the cloud as albums.
5. Then back in Cloudy, you'll need to drag them back into folders, as the collection sets don't sync. But based on your folder structure, hopefully that won't be too onerous a job.

 

[Jim Wilde]

Yup, that's the way I would try first. But a couple of things to add:

1. Before enabling sync in the Classic catalog, make a careful note of the number of images in the All Photographs collection in the Catalog Panel. Then, after enabling the catalog to sync, and the sync has finished, check the total again to make sure it's still the same. Reason for suggesting that is because in my testing of this particular procedure some while back, for some reason the sync process didn't work correctly....some of the images in the cloud weren't correctly matched with the same images in the Classic catalog, which resulted in Virtual Copies being created for those images (the VCs were sync-enabled, the masters were not). Easy enough to fix when you know that it's happened, just something to watch for.

2. After creating the collection sets and collections from the folder structure in Classic, note that the collections are not automatically synced enabled....so you have to do that manually by clicking in the check-box in front of the collections names (the check-box will only appear after the catalog has been sync-enabled).

 

[gwasserman]

Thanks for all of the suggestions. I went to try exactly your suggestion earlier before posting. Unless I'm missing it, Classic won't let me sync-enable a collection set, only the underlying collections, so I essentially lose the entire parent folder hierarchy.

It keeps feeling to me like i should effectively delete everything cloud and get back to a clean version of Classic and restart from there? If you think that makes sense, how do I do that?

Thanks so much!

 

[gwasserman]

In hindsight, if only I had read this article way back before building my 60,000 photo collection in Lightroom: Why not organize photos into folders by topic? | The Lightroom Queen

Ever since I started my photo collection, I've used folders instead of keywords.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Unless I'm missing it, Classic won't let me sync-enable a collection set, only the underlying collections, so I essentially lose the entire parent folder hierarchy.

Yep, hence step 5, about dragging the albums into album folders. Although looking at the hierarchy you mentioned, that might not to be too much trouble compared to starting over.

If you do want to start over, you have to go to the web interface, click the LR icon > Account Info > Delete Lightroom Library. It probably won't let you migrate the same catalog again, in which case you'd need to export the whole lot to a new catalog using the Export as Catalog routine, and then start all over again.

 

[Jim Wilde]

It probably won't let you migrate the same catalog again, in which case you'd need to export the whole lot to a new catalog using the Export as Catalog routine, and then start all over again.

Probably quicker to simply delete the local library ("Lightroom Library.lrlibrary") from the users Pictures folder....that's enough (or was when I last tested it) to fool Lightroom into allowing the same catalog to be migrated again.

And before doing the re-migrate, do ensure that you have converted all your folders into Collection Sets/Collections.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Probably quicker to simply delete the local library ("Lightroom Library.lrlibrary") from the users Pictures folder....that's enough (or was when I last tested it) to fool Lightroom into allowing the same catalog to be migrated again.

Oh interesting, thanks for testing that!

 

[gwasserman]

@victoria - I had missed the Step 5 piece. Thanks for clarifying. I'll try that.

@Jim - thanks - if I do go ahead with the delete and re-do I'll try that and let you know how it works.

One general question - if I am having Lightroom (cloud desktop) store local copies of my originals, does Lightroom refer to them when making edits, or is it always using the smart previews and the master stored in the cloud? Curious for two reasons:

1) if I do Victoria's 5 steps above, is there a risk that the new collections see their base file as the cloud master and not the local master, and if Lightroom always uses the cloud master anyway does it matter?

2) will be upgrading my local storage hard drive and am curious whether it makes and difference if the local copies are stored on a fast drive vs slow drive, or if it's only where the smart previews are locally stored that matters for performance? If it always refers to the cloud master and the local copy is just a backup that is never accessed by Lightroom, then I'm guessing drive type for the local copies doesn't matter like it could in Classic?

 

[gwasserman]

It worked! I still need to reorganize the collections into folders/subfolders in Cloudy, but the collections are all there and the photo count hasn't changed. Huge thank you!

One additional question - per my #2 above, does Cloudy use the local backups for anything or are they just backup and never accessed by Cloudy? Wondering, from a performance perspective, if it makes any difference if the local copies are stored on a fast drive vs slow drive, or if it only matters where the smart previews are locally stored? If it always refers to the cloud master and the local copy is just a backup that is never accessed by Lightroom, then I'm guessing drive type for the local copies doesn't matter like it would in Classic? But if Cloudy does use the local copy, then it should make a difference?

 

[Jim Wilde]

The local copy is only for performance and accessibility reasons, it's not designed as a backup (though of course many people treat it that way). When you edit an image using the Cloudy desktop app, it will always use the full res original (previews are used for browsing, etc.), so the idea behind the "local copy" is that in theory it speeds up the access to the image when you open it for editing (as there's no lag waiting for the original to be downloaded). In practice you might not notice any lag if you have smart previews stored locally as well, as you will be presented with the smart preview first while the original is downloaded in the background.

Note that when you edit an image which does not have a locally stored copy, the image is downloaded from the cloud and stored in the location specified for local files (i.e. the image is not "accessed" directly from the cloud). That local copy will remain until such time as the app decides to remove it (based on factors such as frequency of access, available local drive space, etc.).

The other benefit of having a local copy is the ability to carry on editing even when the system is offline. Though to be honest I'm not sure if Smart Previews would suffice in the same way as Classic can do, i.e. if you have Smart Previews downloaded for all files, can you edit while offline without a local full res copy? Probably one of the others here will know that answer, though I may setup a test for my own curiosity.

EDIT: Just tested and yes editing was possible using just the smart previews while offline.

 

[gwasserman]

Thanks Jim (and for the test). Since Lightroom is using the local copies as part of the editing process, it sounds like overall performance would benefit from having both the smart previews and the local copies stored on a faster drive (SSD or RAID) instead of a slower one?

 

[Jim Wilde]

You can't select where the smart previews are stored. They'll be kept in the local library, which by default is on the system drive (and cannot be changed). So having the local originals on a faster drive is likely to be unneccesary, I doubt very much that you'd notice a performance difference if they were on a slower drive (if you do have local smart previews you'd probably not notice much difference even if the local copy of the original wasn't available and had to be downloaded).

 

[gwasserman]

That’s really helpful. Thanks Jim.

 

[Selondon]

Hi Victoria,

Johan and myself were assisting (I think) the same user on the U2U forums, and were discussing Collections Sets migrating.

As I was unsure of any change, and without clarification in the official docs I believe, found your page that said:

• Color labels become keywords.
• Virtual copies become real copies.
• Collection sets become album folders.
• Collections become albums.

So thought, ah, it's changed, probably with the advent of Folders in the Cloud. Although, in your second post here it seems not?
Admittedly, I've only done one Classic Migration, that didn't have Sets anyway and am too busy to test via my work's Adobe account at the mo.

Cheers

Reed

 

[Jim Wilde]

Reed, Victoria's second post was talking about syncing, whereas the part of the book you referenced is related to migrating. They're different, e.g. keywords don't sync, but they do migrate. Up to 4 hierarchy levels, IIRC.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Right! So collection sets don’t sync, but do migrate. I never migrated a catalog (but do sync it), so I didn’t realize this difference.

 

[Jim Wilde]

Yep, that's correct (and I just reconfirmed to be sure!).