Is a full move to the cloud based service really possible?

[hillbill]

Lightroom Version Number

Current versions

Operating System

1. Windows 10
2. iOS

Folks,

I've been an LR desktop user since it was originally released. I have one very large catalog with over 300,000 images and smaller catalogs that together make up this large catalog. My current workflow is to import onto an Ipad (and this is where most of my editing takes place now too). Sync to the desktop and eventually the desktop catalog makes it to the larger merged catalog and is itself archived. This in turn is duplicated onto 2 drives and cloud based backup. Paranoid or what!

As I now seem to be using the desktop less and less, I'm looking for a way to just make it part of the archiving process and nothing more or even removing it altogether. However, there are a few things holding me back from taking the plunge and I'd appreciate some thoughts from more experienced folk....

1. Ipad storage - limited to 512Gb on mine and I can't see that I can move the workflow on the ipad to make use of an external HD.
2. Adobe cloud storage, while limited at the moment to 1Tb on my plan I appreciate it will take quite a while to reach this but extending is expensive. Can't see a way round this tbh although won't affect me in the short term.
3. Desktop functionality missing in CC. Simple stuff like being able to apply noise reduction based on ISO seems to be missing at the moment (if anyone has a workaround for this, applying settings on import based on ISO in CC I would be very interested to hear it!)
4. Lack of multiple catalog support so I could adapt my workflow in CC to be similar to my desktop workflow...maybe I need to completely re-think this.

Just some thoughts, putting them down on paper so to speak!

All ideas and input greatly received!

g

 

[clee01l]

Lightroom Classic has never really supported multiple catalogs, just support for one catalog at a time. There is really no performance reason for needing more than one catalog to hold everything. Each of your many catalogs should really be located as a collection in one master catalog.
Lightroom (cloudy) can only sync to one Lightroom Classic catalog And this does not present a problem if you adhere to the one master catalog rule.

Lightroom Classic and Lightroom (cloudy) differ functionally in many ways. How keywords are handled and the one time one way transfer of keywords for me is the biggest functional difference.

I have maintained my Lightroom classic as the master repository for all of my images, I use Lightroom (cloudy) on my iPadPro as a front end, culling, and performing basic edits before I finish processing in Lightroom Classic

By using Lightroom Classic as a master repository, Images sync'd FROM LrC do not count against your plan limits. And if well manages you can use the 20GB plan to sync full sized images from Lightroom (cloudy) to LrC and not exceed your plan limits.

 

[hillbill]

Cheers, so I think what you are saying here, in reference to my original question -

Is a full move to the cloud based service really possible?​

is probably no (at least if I want to maintain a large archive of images like I already have)! I can see me just using the desktop version for archiving at some point in the future. The media in my master catalog is approaching 6Tb in size so a cloud plan is a non starter.

My workflow is not so different from yours although, like I say, quite a bit of the editing takes place on the Ipad now. I do get frustrated with how slow the desktop software is and the sometimes I need to turn images around quickly and the sync up, pull down process can be quite lengthy with a large number of images.

And there are some things I haven't found alternatives for in the cloudy version - one being the application of noise reduction on import. This seems quite straightforward on the desktop version with an adaptive profile/preset but I don't know how to do this on the cloudy version. Any help with this would go a long way to achieiving my goals here!

 

[clee01l]

I do get frustrated with how slow the desktop software is and the sometimes I need to turn images around quickly and the sync up, pull down process can be quite lengthy with a large number of images

The "slowness" issue that you mention is probably not Lightroom Classic. It could be due to the speed of your internet connection, other apps running on Windows (notably anti malware apps) that take up CPU cycles on the PC and the availability of the Freespace that Lightroom needs to process files.

I have 1Gigabit wired internet to the iMac and 16GB RAM on a M1 processor. And my EHDs are connect via Thunderbolt 3 ports. There are never any speed issues with Lightroom Classic. So I would suggest that you looks elsewhere to determine what might be slowing your workflow down.

 

[hillbill]

Cheers, maybe LR classic is not as optimised on the PC as mac? The laptop is a Dell 9550, i7 processor running on an NVMe drive, not externals, shouldn't be slow (although you're right, could be other bits and pieces working on the PC although everything else seems to work at (just about) acceptable speed!). It is definitely much slower than on the Ipad though where everything is super smooth. Once the images are on the laptop, I'm not expecting the internet speed to play a role in the performance issues.

 

[Jim Wilde]

And there are some things I haven't found alternatives for in the cloudy version - one being the application of noise reduction on import. This seems quite straightforward on the desktop version with an adaptive profile/preset but I don't know how to do this on the cloudy version. Any help with this would go a long way to achieiving my goals here!

In Lightroom on the iPad, go to Settings>Import Tab.....there you can set the raw image develop defaults that you want to apply on import. One of the option is to choose one of your presets.....so create a preset to set noise reduction (and any other settings you'd like to apply on import) and select that preset as your develop default.

 

[hillbill]

Cheers Jim, that has worked very nicely and will save me a ton of time! Much appreciated!