Import Mind bending confusion about syncing mobile to desktop

[Simon Linke]

Operating System: OS X Sierra 10.12.6

Lightroom Classic Version: 7.0
Mobile Lightroom iPhone app v. 3.0.0 317C4C

I have syncing turned on and I can see all the photos shot in the Lightroom camera app on my iPhone 6 plus in Lightroom Classic on my Mac.
What I can't work out is if the photos I see in the Library in Lightroom on my Mac are the full resolution RAW files or not.
I've looked under Library > Metadata but can't find any reference to the file size.
Can anyone help me with this please?
I contacted Adobe support to try to understand what was going on.
They told me that the only way to get a full size RAW file from the phone to the desktop was to sign in to lightroom.adobe.com/libraries and download each file manually and then import into Lightroom Classic.
I tried this but when I attempted to import the test photo I found 'Import' greyed out and a hover dialog to say that it looked like the photo was already in the catalog.
Can anyone clarify for me what the correct procedure actually is for getting photos from the phone to the desktop, especially in a way that will allow me to delete photos from the phone while retaining them in Lightroom Classic on my Mac?

 

[Jim Wilde]

Hi Simon, welcome to the forum.

In Lrmobile you can determine what's available by first selecting an image, then tap the cloud icon. You'll see what is held locally on the iDevice, and what is held in the Cloud.

The issue is that LR Classic and the various sync apps (LRMobile, LRWeb and the new LRCC) deal with new images differently. The outlier in this regard is LR Classic, which only ever uploads a smart preview of the original file referenced in the catalog. However, LR Classic WILL download any originals that are added from any of those sync apps, because these latter apps only upload originals.

So, if you've added an original image from your phone, when it eventually arrives in your LR Classic it will be a copy of the full original, not a smart preview.

Does that help? I use this method all the time for any phone captures, basically fire and forget knowing that in due course a copy of that original will land in my Classic catalog in my "ready to be processed" stack. Of course you have to get it setup first, but that's pretty easy to do.

 

[Simon Linke]

Thank you so much Jim for your quick response. That's very helpful and generous of you.
Once the image is Phone > Lightroom Classic Library if I delete the image on the phone will it remain in the Library on the Mac?
Or is it a two way sync where an action anywhere is automatically replicated across all devices?
Thanks again for your help.

 

[Jim Wilde]

Deleting the image on the phone (i.e. from within LRmobile) removes it from any other synced device (i.e. it's removed from the cloud ecosystem), apart from LR Classic. In Classic, it's sync status is obviously removed, but the file remains in the catalog and on your hard drive.

Note that deleting from the Camera Roll has no effect on this, as LRMobile keeps it's own copy. So if you want it off the phone completely you'll need to delete it from both LRmobile and the Camera Roll. If you used the LR Camera, the last bit won't be necessary as the LR camera doesn't save to the Camera Roll.

 

[Simon Linke]

Thank you Jim. I can't say how incredibly grateful I am for your help. Suddenly it all makes sense thanks to you. All the best. Simon.