new iPhone, new sync?

[camner]

Mobile Operating System: iOS 11.2.1
Desktop Operating System: Mac OS 10.13.2
Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info): LR CC Classic 7.1

I purchased a new iPhone, and used the iCloud backup and restore process to transfer things from the old iPhone to the new iPhone; that process went smoothly. The first time I opened LrMobile on the new iPhone I was prompted to log in (makes sense), and then the sync process started. BUT, it synced ALL the photos on the new iPhone, most of which had been previously synced to the Adobe cloud from the old iPhone; Adobe cloud didn't recognize the new iPhone as the same device (perhaps that is logical, since it ISN'T the same device!). So, I now have lots of duplicates sitting in the special folder in LR CC Classic where it holds synced photos pending my moving them to the permanent folders on my iMac. It is going to be a tedious process to figure out which photos are old ones that I have already dealt with and which are new.

Two questions:
1. Was there a way I didn't think of to avoid this issue when upgrading to a new iPhone?
2. Is there a way for LR CC Classic to find suspected duplicates outside of the import process? That would be helpful as I go about straightening out this mess...otherwise I'll have to do a filter/search on each photo, one at a time, and that would be painful!

 

[Jim Wilde]

How did all those "duplicates" get onto the new iPhone? iCloud, perhaps? Because of the complications which iCloud can make when using LRCC on iPhone/iPad, I don't enable iCloud for photos. Classic is where I gather and manage ALL my images, no matter from what source, and I use the Adobe cloud to help get them all there. iCloud for photos just isn't needed in my workflow. In terms of preventing that happening again (if indeed iCloud is the "culprit"), I would have thought that if you populate the camera roll with the iCloud photos BEFORE setting up auto-import in LRCC, that should work (the auto import is supposed to only add NEW images that are subsequently added to the camera roll, so if they're already in the camera roll then auto-import shouldn't bring those images in).

Second question, no Classic can't help except during import, but there are plug-ins that can do duplicates detection. Someone will be along soon with a recommendation.

 

[camner]

I'm not using iCloud photos as part of the workflow. The only role iCloud plays with the photos is that I use iCloud backup; this backs up photos, messages, contacts, etc. The way the duplicate photos got onto the new iPhone is that I used the Apple recommended way of moving from an old to a new iPhone: back up the old iPhone to the cloud (or to one's desktop via iTunes) and then restore to the new iPhone, thus bringing over the camera roll, messages, etc. This was all complete BEFORE logging back into LrMobile. In fact, since it didn't occur to me that would need to log in again, it was several weeks AFTER the new iPhone was set up (with camera roll, messages, contacts, etc. restored) that I logged into LrMobile. I didn't need to do ANYTHING in LR CC (desktop), nor did I need to turn on syncing on the iPhone...once I logged in via LrMobile, the sync process just started on the iPhone, and when I next opened LRCC (desktop), it started syncing. That's when the duplicates arrived.

 

[camner]

As I've been digging through the "duplicate" photos, it seems that LRCC was fairly smart about how it handled things. When LRCC synced the photos from the new iPhone, photos that had already been imported from the new phone's predecessor came in as virtual copies of the previously-imported images. Images that were on the older iPhone that had been previously imported but deleted from LR (and my drive) by me as part of earlier processing of those images came in as "new," which makes sense. It will be easy to delete all the virtual copies, of course. Dealing with the "new" (old, already deleted) photos may be harder.

Another oddity with Adobe Cloud and syncing via LRMobile is that several days ago, another iPhone I sync via Adobe Cloud with LRCC popped up as another instance of the phone in the LR folder tree. The phone didn't change (same phone before and after), but all images synced after a specific date are in the new instance, while images synced before that date are in the older instance.

 

[camner]

This isn't a definitive answer, but I posted to the Adobe forum the question about LRMobile reuploading all images after moving to a new iPhone, and this is one reply I got:

This is a design flaw in Lightroom CC on the iPhone when you have the "iCloud photo library" option turned on which mirror all the images across devices. It should recognize all the images it wants to import are already in its catalog from before on the previous phone but it doesn't. This is why I was forced to turn off "auto add" as it messes up every time I get a new phone or iPad. Really what I want is an option to only upload newly taken photo roll images and to ignore the 1000's of images that have been there for years before you even got the phone.

The author of the reply is listed as an "Adobe Community Professional and MVP," FWIW...

 

[Jim Wilde]

Yup, that's one of the reasons I don't use iCloud for Photos....

 

[camner]

Yup, that's one of the reasons I don't use iCloud for Photos....

I think one can use iCloud without a problem...it’s the “auto add photos” of LR CC (mobile) that seems to be causing the trouble; LR CC Mobile keeps track of which photos from a given iPhone have been already uploaded to Adobe Cloud, but this info doesn’t seem to transfer to a new phone, thus leading to the “let’s just upload all photos again!” phenomenon. I don’t think using iCloud would help or hurt.

 

[Ronny Sharma]

Today I updated my iPhone 7 from iOS 10 to iOS 11.3 and now whenever I am opening the Lightroom CC app it is simply loading a blank screen during the start up and gradually crashes itself automatically. Anyone else been encountering this issue? How do I fix it?

Update: I deleted and reinstalled the latest version from Google Play and the app had been running smooth again.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Today I updated my iPhone 7 from iOS 10 to iOS 11.3 and now whenever I am opening the Lightroom CC app it is simply loading a blank screen during the start up and gradually crashes itself automatically. Anyone else been encountering this issue? How do I fix it?

Deleting the Lightroom app from the phone and then installing it again is usually the best option in case like this.

 

[PhilBurton]

Yup, that's one of the reasons I don't use iCloud for Photos....

My wife also had a problem with iCloud for Photos. I am a Windows user going back to Win 2/286 (for loading up Excel) and used to think that MacOS software had a more elegant, easier to use design. Once I started to really use iTunes and iCloud, I feel that Mac OS software can also be poorly designed and hard to use. Apple didn't put its best team on the development of those products, shall we say.

If anyone is using a substitute for iTunes that completely replaces it, I would like to hear from you. Send me a private message, if you don't want to incur the Wrath of Cupertino with a public comment.

Phil Burton

 

[Colin Grant]

I thought the problem here was a bug in Lr, not iCloud or Photos. What exactly is your wife issue, Phil? I find nothing intrinsically wrong with iCloud or Photos, although I do not really favour Photos as there are alternatives I prefer.

 

[MarkNicholas]

I think one can use iCloud without a problem...it’s the “auto add photos” of LR CC (mobile) that seems to be causing the trouble; LR CC Mobile keeps track of which photos from a given iPhone have been already uploaded to Adobe Cloud, but this info doesn’t seem to transfer to a new phone, thus leading to the “let’s just upload all photos again!” phenomenon. I don’t think using iCloud would help or hurt.

This appears to be another of those issues which arise when you let software do things automatically for you. It all works fine until it doesn't. I don't let Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC (for Iphone) automatically do anything. I tell it what to upload and when.

 

[MarkNicholas]

How did all those "duplicates" get onto the new iPhone? iCloud, perhaps? Because of the complications which iCloud can make when using LRCC on iPhone/iPad, I don't enable iCloud for photos. Classic is where I gather and manage ALL my images, no matter from what source, and I use the Adobe cloud to help get them all there. iCloud for photos just isn't needed in my workflow. In terms of preventing that happening again (if indeed iCloud is the "culprit"), I would have thought that if you populate the camera roll with the iCloud photos BEFORE setting up auto-import in LRCC, that should work (the auto import is supposed to only add NEW images that are subsequently added to the camera roll, so if they're already in the camera roll then auto-import shouldn't bring those images in).

Second question, no Classic can't help except during import, but there are plug-ins that can do duplicates detection. Someone will be along soon with a recommendation.

Jim I think you misread the OP. It appears that the photos are not duplicated on the Iphone. They are only duplicated in the "Adobe Cloud" because the Iphone Lightroom CC software didn't recognize that they were already in the Cloud. This issue doesn't appear to have anything to do with ICloud.