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Sync Sync LRC with LR Cloud

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grassflats2

Member
Joined
Jul 17, 2021
Messages
37
Lightroom Version Number
LRC 13.2
Operating System
  1. macOS 12 Monterey
I'm a pretty accomplished LRC user, but just recently got a laptop for when I'm shooting on the road. My assumption has been that if I upload photos from my camera to LR on my laptop, I could then access them via LRC after I get home. Maybe I just totally don't get the Adobe cloud system, but all my uploads are visible in the cloud via browser. Looking at the cloud storage on my LRC desktop, it shows the same amount of storage left as LR shows. However, I don't see the files/folder as being accessible in LRC. When I look at the "From Lightroom" collection, I don't see any of the uploaded files or folder. According the cloud, everything is synced....but it's not, at least with LRC. I'd simply like to be able to download all the Adobe cloud files and folders I've uploaded from the road and edit them in LRC when I get home, instead of having to import them into LRC directly from my card.
What am I missing here? Is what I want to do impossible?
 
OK. Most recent one is from last week since I had deleted more recent ones. It took me to a folder that I had set up and named after a previous road trip when I directly uploaded the file from my camera card into that folder. I had also uploaded the files while on the road. In a situation where I upload to the cloud via LR, then load the same files directly into LRC, would those later direct uploads show up as synced? Hey, you know a whole lot more than I do about this, so if you're confused, imagine me.
It depends on the order of doing things, though I think to explain what you are seeing it might be safe to assume that you imported the affected images directly into LrC before you uploaded them to Lightroom while on the road....or at least the direct import into LrC was done before the images synced down from the cloud into LrC.

Until recently, if you had images imported into LrC (but not synced) and then you added the same images to the cloud via Lightroom, the subsequent sync download would detect that the images already existed in LrC and instead of copying them into the designated downloads location would instead create Virtual Copies of those images which would of course be shown alongside the originals in the original folder. The VCs would be flagged as synced and would appear in All Synced Photographs, the originals would not be synced. But the synced images would not appear in the designated downloads folder.

I say until recently, that was the actual behaviour. However I saw something odd with that process a couple of weeks ago which made me think something had changed (but not announced as far as I can recall), so I've just done a more formal test. What's changed in that "import to LrC first, then import the same images into Lightroom then sync" scenario is that when LrC detects that the files due to be downloaded from the cloud already exist in LrC, those original files are now simply marked as synced.....so they'll appear in All Synced Photographs but not in the designated downloads folder (because in this scenario they're not actually downloaded). Which is exactly what you have reported.

If you do things in a different order, i.e. add to Lightroom first, let them sync down into LrC, then import them into a different folder in LrC, you'll get a different outcome, i.e. the sync downloads will go into the designated downloads folder, and they'll be the images that are added to All Synced Photographs. Oddly, and this feels like a bug, that subsequent import into a different folder in LrC is allowed (I would have expected duplicates detection to disallow that), but after import the second set are not flagged as synced.

Hopefully that explains your mystery, and the moral of that story is that there's really no need to import the same images into Lightroom and LrC unless there's a very good reason.
 
It depends on the order of doing things, though I think to explain what you are seeing it might be safe to assume that you imported the affected images directly into LrC before you uploaded them to Lightroom while on the road....or at least the direct import into LrC was done before the images synced down from the cloud into LrC.

Until recently, if you had images imported into LrC (but not synced) and then you added the same images to the cloud via Lightroom, the subsequent sync download would detect that the images already existed in LrC and instead of copying them into the designated downloads location would instead create Virtual Copies of those images which would of course be shown alongside the originals in the original folder. The VCs would be flagged as synced and would appear in All Synced Photographs, the originals would not be synced. But the synced images would not appear in the designated downloads folder.

I say until recently, that was the actual behaviour. However I saw something odd with that process a couple of weeks ago which made me think something had changed (but not announced as far as I can recall), so I've just done a more formal test. What's changed in that "import to LrC first, then import the same images into Lightroom then sync" scenario is that when LrC detects that the files due to be downloaded from the cloud already exist in LrC, those original files are now simply marked as synced.....so they'll appear in All Synced Photographs but not in the designated downloads folder (because in this scenario they're not actually downloaded). Which is exactly what you have reported.

If you do things in a different order, i.e. add to Lightroom first, let them sync down into LrC, then import them into a different folder in LrC, you'll get a different outcome, i.e. the sync downloads will go into the designated downloads folder, and they'll be the images that are added to All Synced Photographs. Oddly, and this feels like a bug, that subsequent import into a different folder in LrC is allowed (I would have expected duplicates detection to disallow that), but after import the second set are not flagged as synced.

Hopefully that explains your mystery, and the moral of that story is that there's really no need to import the same images into Lightroom and LrC unless there's a very good reason.
Thanks so much for working on this. In part that's why I asked about the amount of time it takes to sync to the cloud from LR. One thing I'm sure of: I never added files to LR AFTER I uploaded the same files to LRC. I think what happened is that, for example, I uploaded 150 files into LR on my laptop on Saturday over the weekend. I was in a camper at a campsite with no wifi, so I used my phone hotspot for internet connection. But it's slow, and I'm only connected to the laptop for relatively short periods (by way of explanation, I'm a concert photographer and cover festivals which I then have to write up quickly after returning home). I returned home on Sunday, and since I could not find the files in LRC, I then directly uploaded them into a folder I named on the desktop. So depending on how long it takes to upload to the cloud, I very well might have put them in LRC before the first batch had synced to the cloud. When I get home I put the laptop up and don't use it until I'm on the road again (that's why I'm sure I didn't use LR to upload AFTER I had already put them in LRC directly). The problem is that I have to edit all the photos and write an article as soon as I get home, so waiting a long time for them to upload doesn't fit into my flow. I'll experiment with that today to see how long it takes to upload. I did notice when I delete something from the web cloud a dialog box comes up that says I'll be deleting the photos from "albums and shares". Does that mean they will be deleted from the desktop albums?
And still not sure why creating a folder on LR to hold the photos doesn't create the folder on the cloud, much less in LRC.
 
OK. Most recent one is from last week since I had deleted more recent ones. It took me to a folder that I had set up and named after a previous road trip when I directly uploaded the file from my camera card into that folder. I had also uploaded the files while on the road. In a situation where I upload to the cloud via LR, then load the same files directly into LRC, would those later direct uploads show up as synced? Hey, you know a whole lot more than I do about this, so if you're confused, imagine me.
I feel your pain.
 
I will say I'm amazed this is such a thrash. I assume lots of people who are photographers that shoot on the road would upload to the cloud from the road for safekeeping, then will want to edit them on LRC on their desktop. This should not be this complicated.
It is not that complicated. I do it all the time I import my camera card into Lightroom on my iPad Pro using a USB-C Cardreader... If I have a decent internet connection my imported images and adjustment are in my Master LrC catalog when I get home. Other times I keep my iPadPro downstairs and my Mac Studio in my Office upstairs . It is easier and quicker to import un the iPadPro and let my gigabit ethernet sednthe file to the Adobe Cloud and back to my waiting Mac Studio running LrC.

If you are having such difficulty, why not do a side by side test. Put the desktop and laptop side by shoot a few images and import into Lr on the Laptop . The in Lr Create a "Test" album.
Watch LrC and see the "Test" album appear followed by the images imported into Lightroom. Nothing could be easier.

Except for the occasional "hang" with syncing into LrC everything about the Lightroom > Adobe Cloud > Lightroom Classic sync process is simple and direct.
 
It is not that complicated. I do it all the time I import my camera card into Lightroom on my iPad Pro using a USB-C Cardreader... If I have a decent internet connection my imported images and adjustment are in my Master LrC catalog when I get home. Other times I keep my iPadPro downstairs and my Mac Studio in my Office upstairs . It is easier and quicker to import un the iPadPro and let my gigabit ethernet sednthe file to the Adobe Cloud and back to my waiting Mac Studio running LrC.

If you are having such difficulty, why not do a side by side test. Put the desktop and laptop side by shoot a few images and import into Lr on the Laptop . The in Lr Create a "Test" album.
Watch LrC and see the "Test" album appear followed by the images imported into Lightroom. Nothing could be easier.

Except for the occasional "hang" with syncing into LrC everything about the Lightroom > Adobe Cloud > Lightroom Classic sync process is simple and direct.
Great suggestion. Just took me a while to get free to try it. I loaded 49 RAW files into a test folder on LR on my laptop. Within about 10 minutes the files and the folder were visible on the browser LR page. Shortly after the folder showed up in the LRC "From Lightroom" collection, and in Finder under the correct folder. One problem was there were two folders named "2024", one within the other. I've fixed that, but it appears to be working as expected. While I'm still not sure why this same approach didn't work over the weekend, I think there were two problems with what I had been doing: I didn't have a decent internet connection so there wasn't time for the files to upload, and it was pointing at a subfolder. I have two shooting jobs coming up this weekend so I'll try again and see if indeed it's all working. Thanks for all of your help.
 
Great suggestion. Just took me a while to get free to try it. I loaded 49 RAW files into a test folder on LR on my laptop. Within about 10 minutes the files and the folder were visible on the browser LR page. Shortly after the folder showed up in the LRC "From Lightroom" collection, and in Finder under the correct folder. One problem was there were two folders named "2024", one within the other. I've fixed that, but it appears to be working as expected. While I'm still not sure why this same approach didn't work over the weekend, I think there were two problems with what I had been doing: I didn't have a decent internet connection so there wasn't time for the files to upload, and it was pointing at a subfolder. I have two shooting jobs coming up this weekend so I'll try again and see if indeed it's all working. Thanks for all of your help.
I also assumed that maybe the folder would end up in the target directory but apparently they don't transfer in folders per se directly to the target folder....
 
I also assumed that maybe the folder would end up in the target directory but apparently they don't transfer in folders per se directly to the target folder....
It is not that complicated. I do it all the time I import my camera card into Lightroom on my iPad Pro using a USB-C Cardreader... If I have a decent internet connection my imported images and adjustment are in my Master LrC catalog when I get home. Other times I keep my iPadPro downstairs and my Mac Studio in my Office upstairs . It is easier and quicker to import un the iPadPro and let my gigabit ethernet sednthe file to the Adobe Cloud and back to my waiting Mac Studio running LrC.

If you are having such difficulty, why not do a side by side test. Put the desktop and laptop side by shoot a few images and import into Lr on the Laptop . The in Lr Create a "Test" album.
Watch LrC and see the "Test" album appear followed by the images imported into Lightroom. Nothing could be easier.

Except for the occasional "hang" with syncing into LrC everything about the Lightroom > Adobe Cloud > Lightroom Classic sync process is simple and direct.
Everything worked as expected. Shot the show last night, loaded the files onto the laptop on LR. Appeared almost immediately on the cloud webpage. Took about ten minutes or so for the folder to show up in LRC in the "From Lightroom" collections. A few minutes more and it appeared in Finder in the appropriate location. Still not sure why this didn't work last weekend, except as I said I might not have had adequate wifi access for long enough. Thanks for all your help.
 
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