Lr and Cloud Storage

[Colin Grant]

Lightroom Version Number

3.4

Operating System

1. macOS 10.15 Catalina

Each update I get closer and closer to using the cloud. I love the interface and the general feel of things and I do not mind round tripping to Ps for some of my editing needs. It is however the Ps round trip that concerns me. Currently I have to use it for tasks that are available within Classic, colour range and luminosity masking are examples. That in itself is fine but the result is another image comes back to Lr and is stored in the cloud. So, by simply undertaking some colour range masking I double the amount of storage use cloud-side for that image - I have the Lr variant and the Ps one. That seems a recipe for needing a lot of not cheap cloud space. I am not missing anything am I?

It just seems that the cloud might never be an option for those with large catalogues and some sort of workflow will need to be required so as to have only have the last 12 months or so in the cloud. Trouble is what do we do with the "ex cloud" stuff - put it in Classic as it won't be available to re-edit or browse in the cloud.

 

[clee01l]

You have to examine the missing functionality in Lr. For many people, these are not critical. I think using PS as a replacement for LrClassic functionality not in Lr is an acceptable solution.
The biggest shortfall in Lr at the moment is a non existent backup capability. Adobe only keeps your deletes for 60 days after that it is gone for good. Storing a local copy of the master image is an option, but none of the develop history is ever preserved.

I can see storing my complete inventory in the cloud and that goes back 12 years. But in the cloud is out of my control without checks and balances


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Colin Grant]

Good point re backup, Cletus. There is also the cost of cloud space though. 1TB is nothing these days and Adobe is not exactly giving away space. Cloudy is a not inexpensive option therefore. That is the price of being locked in to an ecosystem I guess. Maybe Classic is the way to go (or should I say stay) for a good while yet. I do not see Adobe addressing the cost of cloud space any time soon.

 

[prbimages]

So, by simply undertaking some colour range masking I double the amount of storage use cloud-side for that image ...

A good point, one that I hadn't considered before (but I am on Classic and not considering moving). But surely it's going to be much worse than a "doubling" of storage, since a TIF saved from Photoshop is usually at least 10x the size of the original raw file (and often more)?

 

[Colin Grant]

If saving in tif that is true of course. That just makes my observation even more relevant. So, now I worry what the future plans are at Adobe? The photography plan has stayed at it current rate for a long time now and that might well be down to the huge take-up. Hope so. Equally it could be a way of keeping us in the ecosystem until they complete the Cloudy project (whatever that really means) and rationalise the offerings. Already the Ps only subscription cost looks odd when set beside the photography plan

 

[tspear]

Lack of backup/export for leaving "Cloudy" are some what of a stopper for me.
Also is missing features plus storage costs. I have massively trimmed down my kept images so I only use 600GB. However, when I look at history, I am adding more and larger files as we go along. So I will pass the 1TB boundary with images alone in a few years.
And Adobe has offered no forward guidance on any of these issues.

 

[Colin Grant]

The features will come as Cloudy continues down the development path. I do not doubt that. Not sure what you mean by lack of backup/export for leaving Cloudy? Like you it is the space that worries me and the cost of it. Maybe Classic will last forever, or at least its functionality might. If that is the case maybe the best thing to do with Cloudy is ignore it

 

[clee01l]

Not sure what you mean by lack of backup/export for leaving Cloudy?

There is no dedicated backup of the work that you do in Lightroom. In Lightroom Classic you are able to track develop history step by step. A backup LrC catalog from six months previous will restore your images to exactly that state if you need to restore images from that time that have been since deleted or keywords that have been in a massive mistake. With a system backup like TimeMachine, I can recover a version of an image for any point in time. The only guarantee from Adobe is that they will preserve a copy of your original image in the cloud IF you do not delete it and only for 60 day IF yo choose to delete it.

 

[Colin Grant]

Gotcha - thanks Cletus. Think the only option is stay with Classic and hope that it remains a current version if you get my drift.

 

[alec.dann-verizon]

Two other major differences between LR Classic and the Lightroom (cloud version):
You cannot print from the cloud version.
The cloud version does not have Smart Collections.

With the Photography Plan 20 GB, you get both so why not use them both? Add the Lightroom app to your phone and use that take photos. Set Lightroom Classic to sync with the Adobe cloud. Put photos you want to edit in a synced collection in Lightroom Classic and you can use the Lightroom app on your tablet or phone to make adjustments or set flags and star ratings. Synced collections only upload previews to the cloud so they use a negligible amount of cloud storage.

As for backups, I would assume that any image stored in the Adobe cloud is supported by a robust behind-the-scenes enterprise backup system.

And when you set Lightroom Classic to sync with the Lightroom cloud, an original is downloaded to your hard drive (or selected local drive location) so that's a second level of back-up.

Alec

 

[Colin Grant]

I don't want to use both, basically

 

[clee01l]

I don't want to use both, basically

1. I use both with a reasonable melding of the features of both.
   Lightroom Classic is my master catalog.
2. I subscribed to the Photography Plan that includes 1TB of cloud storage (although the cloud usage is around 100GB)
3. I do not use Lightroom (cloudy) on the computer that has Classic.
4. I replaced a laptop running LrC with an iPadPro running Lr.
5. I use the Lr iPadPro as a front end to LrC on my iMac.
6. I import my camera cards into Lr on the iPadPro while I am in the field (or downstairs from my upstairs iMac)
   1. There I can cull, do basic edits assign a few keywords etc.
   2. When I get home to my master catalog, the images have sync'd from the cloud to the master catalog
7. I then have master copies of the original images on my iMac where that get backed up by TimeMachine and all of my Lightroom work is in my master catalog
8. Since Lr only supports a flat keyword structure, my hierarchal keyword structure in my master LrC catalog has suffered. I need to rework the LrC catalog keyword structure to comply with the keywording as produced by Lightroom (cloudy)
9. I have 21,000 cataloged images in my master LrC catalog.
   1. I began by only sync'ing ~7000 of my best images to the cloud. These were sync'd as Smart DNG proxy files and do not consume any of my 1TB of cloud storage.
   2. The other 14,000 images are not finish processed or are not important to be viewable on my iPhone or iPadPro.

 

[mikebore]

I don't want to use both, basically

As recommended by Adobe, at least not both syncing.
I have used both syncing, but for my use, the benefits outweighed the risks and complexities.
I know it works for some people.