LrC and LR synching woes

[atolkachev]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Classic 11.3.1

Operating System

1. macOS 12 Monterey
2. iOS

Great original content, great forum, thank you, Victoria. I feel I have wasted too much time trying to find answers on my own or going to the semi-official Adobe support forum.

I see that there is an LrC and an LR subforums. There should be one for "Trying to live in LrC and LR at once and hating it, but unable to think of the alternative". But for now I will post here as I am 70% LrC, 30% LR mobile.

Question 1. Has anyone found a relatively straightforward and reliable way to synch keywords between LrC and LR? Or at least to copy keywords from LrC to LR?

I keyword in LrC. I would love to be able to be able to search by my keywords in LR (iPad and/or web; I hardly use LR on my computer though I have it installed and current). I could
1) Keyword in LR.
2) Add all photos with a certain keyword to a collection.
3) Open LR.
4) Wait for the synch.
5) Tag all photos in the collection with the same keyword.
6) Delete the collection.
7) Repeat for each keyword (which could be a name of player, jersey #, species of birds, etc.; hopefully not more than 20 per shoot)

This sounds like way too much work, which is why I don't do it. I am not even going to ask why Adobe is dropping the ball on this, but there must be a plugin or a clever workaround for it?

Question 2. In similar vein, is there a way to keep nested collections in synch between the platforms? Every time I create a collection in LrC, it ends up at the root level in LR, and every time I create a collection in LR (mobile), it ends up under the "From Lr Mobile" folder in LrC. Always moving collections back and forth in both LrC and LR. So annoying and unproductive.

Question 3. Is there a way to kickstart synching, especially in LrC? It can sit for hours sometimes days thinking it is up to date. I sometimes literally flag and unflag photos in LR just to let LrC know that it missed an update made in LR. And if someone gives me Adobe forums' favorite recommendation to delete all synch data, I am going to cry.

Restarting LrC seems to help sometimes. In fact, the last thing I see before LrC shuts down is the self-satisfied green checkmark turning into the productive blue circle. But not always.

Thank in advance for help with any of these. Really #1 is the priority. 2 and 3 are griping.

 

[Califdan]

Question 1 - Apparently not syncing keywords between LR/Classic and LR/Cloudy is a "design feature". Ha! The user commnity has been begging for Adobe to implement KW syncing for years but is consistently rejected by Adobe (they say it can't be done - and this from the folks who can figure out how to sync complex masks). You may want to add comments and your vote on the Adobe Forum. There are several threads on this topic, but here's a link to one of them

https://community.adobe.com/t5/ligh...oom-ecosystem/idi-p/12248624/page/15#comments

However, if you understand some complexities, there is sort of a one time trick that should still work to get LR/Classic KW's up to LR/Cloud on a one time basis. It's not pretty, but I wrote a blog on the subject and how to do it here
https://www.danhartfordphoto.com/blog/2019/8/LR12-Sync-LR-Classic-Keywords-to-LR-Cloud

Question 2 - Which Classic Collection relates to which Cloudy Album is maintained by the systems. However the hierarchy of collections and/or albums is not. So, moving a collection or album to another parent does not sync.

Question 3 - I am not up to speed on this question.

 

[BobT]

Great original content, great forum, thank you, Victoria. I feel I have wasted too much time trying to find answers on my own or going to the semi-official Adobe support forum.

I see that there is an LrC and an LR subforums. There should be one for "Trying to live in LrC and LR at once and hating it, but unable to think of the alternative". But for now I will post here as I am 70% LrC, 30% LR mobile.

Question 1. Has anyone found a relatively straightforward and reliable way to synch keywords between LrC and LR? Or at least to copy keywords from LrC to LR?

I keyword in LrC. I would love to be able to be able to search by my keywords in LR (iPad and/or web; I hardly use LR on my computer though I have it installed and current). I could
1) Keyword in LR.
2) Add all photos with a certain keyword to a collection.
3) Open LR.
4) Wait for the synch.
5) Tag all photos in the collection with the same keyword.
6) Delete the collection.
7) Repeat for each keyword (which could be a name of player, jersey #, species of birds, etc.; hopefully not more than 20 per shoot)

This sounds like way too much work, which is why I don't do it. I am not even going to ask why Adobe is dropping the ball on this, but there must be a plugin or a clever workaround for it?

Question 2. In similar vein, is there a way to keep nested collections in synch between the platforms? Every time I create a collection in LrC, it ends up at the root level in LR, and every time I create a collection in LR (mobile), it ends up under the "From Lr Mobile" folder in LrC. Always moving collections back and forth in both LrC and LR. So annoying and unproductive.

Question 3. Is there a way to kickstart synching, especially in LrC? It can sit for hours sometimes days thinking it is up to date. I sometimes literally flag and unflag photos in LR just to let LrC know that it missed an update made in LR. And if someone gives me Adobe forums' favorite recommendation to delete all synch data, I am going to cry.

Restarting LrC seems to help sometimes. In fact, the last thing I see before LrC shuts down is the self-satisfied green checkmark turning into the productive blue circle. But not always.

Thank in advance for help with any of these. Really #1 is the priority. 2 and 3 are griping.

I feel your pain. I had this crazy idea that syncing LrC on a desktop, Lr on a laptop and the Lr phone app was a good idea. It's not. Well, it was a good idea for the short period of time that my mind had a handle on all the things that were going on. However, a few months down the track and I've forgotten much of it and little interest in researching it again.

 

[clee01l]

Keywords will sync ONE WAY, One Time. From LrC to Lr and only on the first sync. For this reason, I ignore keywords in Lightroom and only use keywords for organizational purpose in LrC.

Between LrC and Lr there is an equivalence between LrC Collections and Lr Albums. In Lr there is no correlation between Folders and LrC Collection Sets.

I am primarily a LrC user. I use Lr as a front end import to a master LrC catalog. I don’t seem to have a problem with one being out of sync with the other.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Ken @ Canadian Rockies]

Question 3. Is there a way to kickstart synching, especially in LrC? It can sit for hours sometimes days thinking it is up to date. I sometimes literally flag and unflag photos in LR just to let LrC know that it missed an update made in LR. And if someone gives me Adobe forums' favorite recommendation to delete all synch data, I am going to cry.

Restarting LrC seems to help sometimes. In fact, the last thing I see before LrC shuts down is the self-satisfied green checkmark turning into the productive blue circle. But not always.

Thank in advance for help with any of these. Really #1 is the priority. 2 and 3 are griping.

As for Q 3, I used to feel the same pain in LR mobile. I used to Pause,,,,, then resume. This was a simple fix for me. This was in LR Mobile, but don't see why this can't work in LrC.

But have you tried to Rebuild your Sync Data? By holding down your Alt Key while in Lightroom Sync Tab? Maybe there is a problem in there. .... oh, your Mac.. maybe that key... lol

 

[atolkachev]

But have you tried to Rebuild your Sync Data?

And if someone gives me Adobe forums' favorite recommendation to delete all synch data, I am going to cry.

I am crying now.

What I found out yesterday is that hitting Pause and the Resume in LrC seems to help even if the green checkbox does not turn to blue circle.

Sample workflow: I create a gallery in LrC that I want a customer to look at and pick from. I click View on Web. On the web, I select Proofing, enable, send link. Minutes or hours later, I see picks. I select Create Album of picks, all still on the web, because proofing even after all these months still just work on the web.

Now I want the newly created album (from the web/cloud) to show up in LrC. It will eventually, but how long do I want to wait? I did not want to web, so I clicked Pause and Start Synching. The green checkbox did not budge, so it seemed like my clicking did not do anything. But the new album showed up in LrC within seconds. Of course, maybe it would have shown anyway. So there is that. I will start Pausing and Starting synch and see if this consistently speeds up synching.

 

[atolkachev]

Keywords will sync ONE WAY, One Time. From LrC to Lr and only on the first sync. For this reason, I ignore keywords in Lightroom and only use keywords for organizational purpose in LrC.

This is very helpful! I knew I was not crazy, and I saw the keywords (from LrC) in Lr on a few occasions, like 1% of the time. I was trying to recall what I could do differently for those and could not.
So a workable workflow could be:
1. Turn off synching
2. Import into LrC
3. Keyword photos
4. Turn on synching
5. See LrC keywords in Lr?

I can't say this is ideal, because the first thing everyone wants after a shoot is to see the photos right away, they don't care about keywords, which are a long-term investment in better serchability. So, my instinct is to import and synch as quickly as possible, and the initial synch of new imports from LrC to the cloud is slow as it is.

But assuming I am willing to slow things down and postpone synch for the sake of keywording. I want to make sure I am hearing you correctly. Because I checked recent imports where I pre-keyword all photos on import with the event and venue data before I do more granular keywording by athlete name and number.

I do not see these keywords, which got added in LrC presumably before the synch, in Lr.

If your assertion is correct, and my assumption about the timing is wrong, I have to test this explicitly using steps 1-5 above. Or do you have any other advice or data on seeing the one-time, one-way synching in action?

 

[clee01l]

Key wording is the last step in my workflow before finalizing the image. I do not worry about keywords at all in Lightroom. There are Sensei keywords that are automatically generated in Lightroom . There is no equivalent Sensei in LrC.

Here’s my workflow:
I have 1TB of Adobe Cloud storage so I can import first to Lightroom and the full size image ends up in my LrC catalog and stored locally.

I import into Lightroom on my iPadPro. I do some basic processing in Lightroom. I create Albums so that “everyone” can see the photos right away. I reject but do not delete images that are not up to my standards. I may add titles and captions in Lightroom or may wait until I final the image in LrC.

When I get home, the images have been sync’d to the LrC catalog on my iMac. I finish any leftover develop needs and then delete any rejected photos in LRC as this also removes then from Album/Collections, the Adobe Cloud and any mobile device.

I next add the images to one or more publish services. The most important of which is the pub;ish service that adds my curated images to Amazon Photos (to be viewed at home on my 75” Omni FireTV

These final curated photos are also placed into a syncing Album/Collection to be created in the Adobe Cloud. Finally this curated Album is added to a new Portfolio page for my Portfolio website.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[atolkachev]

Key wording is the last step in my workflow before finalizing the image. I do not worry about keywords at all in Lightroom. There are Sensei keywords that are automatically generated in Lightroom . There is no equivalent Sensei in LrC.

Here’s my workflow:
I have 1TB of Adobe Cloud storage so I can import first to Lightroom and the full size image ends up in my LrC catalog and stored locally.

I import into Lightroom on my iPadPro. I do some basic processing in Lightroom. I create Albums so that “everyone” can see the photos right away. I reject but do not delete images that are not up to my standards. I may add titles and captions in Lightroom or may wait until I final the image in LrC.

When I get home, the images have been sync’d to the LrC catalog on my iMac. I finish any leftover develop needs and then delete any rejected photos in LRC as this also removes then from Album/Collections, the Adobe Cloud and any mobile device.

I next add the images to one or more publish services. The most important of which is the pub;ish service that adds my curated images to Amazon Photos (to be viewed at home on my 75” Omni FireTV

These final curated photos are also placed into a syncing Album/Collection to be created in the Adobe Cloud. Finally this curated Album is added to a new Portfolio page for my Portfolio website.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Just to make sure, by LrC we both mean Lightroom Classic?

Keywording (of player numbers and/or names) comes late in my workflow, and synching comes early, same as in yours. If Adobe gives me a luxury of synching keywords ONCE from LrC to LR, I need to make adjustments. That is if it works as you say it does and if I understood you correctly.

Sensei does not do numbers, and face recognition does not work for people wearing masks or splashing through the water. Therefore, if I take the time to manually tag athletes in photos, I will strongly prefer for these keywords to be accessible in the cloud versions of Lr.

 

[Jim Wilde]

There's a key bit of information missing from the above. In order to utilise that one way, one time transfer of keywords (and location data if also applied in LrC) to Lightroom from LrC the user has to:

1. Ensure that a Smart Preview has not yet been created in LrC. If you have already created one, e.g. during import, you must delete it in order to facilitate the subsequent keyword transfer. Do this for all images you intend to keyword and sync.
2. Once you have finished keywording, and any existing Smart Preview has been deleted, you must then save metadata to XMP (if you don't have that automatically enabled via the Catalog Settings, you can manually force that write by selecting the target images and do Ctrl+S). This is a key element to facilitate the metadata transfer.
3. Once that is done, sync the images to the cloud, either by adding the images to a synced collection (best), or by adding them to the All Synced Photographs special collection (in the Catalog Panel). No need to keep enabling/disabling syncing in LrC, as the latter allows selective syncing of images.

The point about deleting any existing smart previews is that when syncing an image to the cloud from LrC only smart previews are uploaded, and if LrC knows that a smart preview already exists it copies that existing SP rather than build a new one for syncing purposes...and if that SP was created BEFORE you save the metadata to XMP then that metadata will not be in that SP copy when it syncs. So you have to ensure you get the sequence correct, specifically.....ensure no existing SP, then keyword, then save to XMP, then sync and the specially created new SP for syncing will be created from the image file and will thus include the metadata stored in the image's XMP.

This is a sort or repeatable thing, so that you could initially sync before keywording (and because you are syncing only SPs that'll be a heck of a lot quicker than syncing the full original image files) so that you have the viewing access via the cloud. Once you have done the keywording you could unsync the collection, remove the images from the All Synced Photographs special collection (to delete the images from the cloud), then save to XMP (after making sure that any existing SPs have been deleted), then re-sync the collection. That will re-upload with the keywords.

 

[atolkachev]

There's a key bit of information missing from the above. In order to utilise that one way, one time transfer of keywords (and location data if also applied in LrC) to Lightroom from LrC the user has to:

1. Ensure that a Smart Preview has not yet been created in LrC. If you have already created one, e.g. during import, you must delete it in order to facilitate the subsequent keyword transfer. Do this for all images you intend to keyword and sync.
2. Once you have finished keywording, and any existing Smart Preview has been deleted, you must then save metadata to XMP (if you don't have that automatically enabled via the Catalog Settings, you can manually force that write by selecting the target images and do Ctrl+S). This is a key element to facilitate the metadata transfer.
3. Once that is done, sync the images to the cloud, either by adding the images to a synced collection (best), or by adding them to the All Synced Photographs special collection (in the Catalog Panel). No need to keep enabling/disabling syncing in LrC, as the latter allows selective syncing of images.

The point about deleting any existing smart previews is that when syncing an image to the cloud from LrC only smart previews are uploaded, and if LrC knows that a smart preview already exists it copies that existing SP rather than build a new one for syncing purposes...and if that SP was created BEFORE you save the metadata to XMP then that metadata will not be in that SP copy when it syncs. So you have to ensure you get the sequence correct, specifically.....ensure no existing SP, then keyword, then save to XMP, then sync and the specially created new SP for syncing will be created from the image file and will thus include the metadata stored in the image's XMP.

This is a sort or repeatable thing, so that you could initially sync before keywording (and because you are syncing only SPs that'll be a heck of a lot quicker than syncing the full original image files) so that you have the viewing access via the cloud. Once you have done the keywording you could unsync the collection, remove the images from the All Synced Photographs special collection (to delete the images from the cloud), then save to XMP (after making sure that any existing SPs have been deleted), then re-sync the collection. That will re-upload with the keywords.

That is an incredible, incredibly useful an detail description of the process. Thank you! I especially like the last paragraph, which is sort of a recipe for having my cake and eating it, too.

Can't wait to test it out. Will report back if it does not work as described.