Have you considered moving from Lightroom Classic to the Lightroom Cloud Ecosystem to benefit from mobile editing and web sharing? Perhaps the Lightroom Ecosystem doesn’t have all of the features you need yet. Maybe you have too many photos to store in the cloud, or your internet connection is too slow to be entirely cloud-based.
While not perfect, having the best of both worlds is possible. You can keep Lightroom Classic as your primary photo archive and sync selected photos to/from Lightroom’s cloud to access on your mobile devices. You just need to be aware of the limitations. For example, keywords don’t sync, so you won’t want to spend hours adding them to your iPad only to find that they never return to Classic.
What do I need to know before syncing Classic with the Cloud Ecosystem?
These are the main limitations to look out for:
Lightroom Classic is a hoarder—When you enable sync, it downloads anything it finds in the cloud to your local hard drive. Even if you then delete a photo from the Lightroom cloud, it stays in Lightroom Classic, and if you delete an album in the Lightroom cloud, the collection just becomes unsynced in Lightroom Classic. Lightroom Classic wants to be in charge of your photos!
Only Smart Previews Upload—Lightroom Classic only syncs 2560px smart previews to the cloud, so it’s not a cloud backup for your originals. However, if you have a slow internet connection or only 20GB of cloud space, only uploading smart previews may be an advantage, as they don’t count towards your 20GB quota.
Single Catalog—Lightroom Classic only syncs a single catalog, so if you have more than one catalog, you’ll need to decide which one you will use or merge them into a single catalog.
Selective Sync—Lightroom Classic only syncs photos you specifically choose to sync. It’s easy to miss uploading photos, such as those created by Edit in Photoshop or HDR/ Panorama merge. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether you want access to all of your photos from other devices.
Features Have Different Names— Collections in Lightroom Classic become albums in the Lightroom Ecosystem, but Album Folders in the Lightroom Ecosystem don’t become Collection Sets. Also, some of the editing features are grouped differently, for example, the White Balance sliders are in the Basic panel in Lightroom Classic but in the Color panel in the Lightroom Ecosystem apps.
Some Features Don’t Sync—Lightroom Classic has many features that aren’t available in the Lightroom Ecosystem apps, so obviously, those don’t sync. Other features such as collections/albums, keywords, and people tagging are available in both Classic and the Ecosystem, but they aren’t completely compatible. They’re noted in the table below.
Videos Only Sync Down—Videos added on Ecosystem apps are safely downloaded to Lightroom Classic, but Classic can’t upload videos or some video metadata to the cloud.
Sync Limitations
| Sync Up from Classic | Sync Down from LR Cloud | |
| Import | ||
| Add Photos | Classic uploads 2560px smart previews of selected photos | Classic downloads all originals from the cloud |
| Add Videos | No | Classic downloads all videos, but the sync link is then broken |
| Organizing Photos | ||
| Collection / Album Membership | Yes, if collection marked to sync | Yes |
| Collection Set / Album Folder Hierarchy | No | No |
| Collection Custom Sort Order | Yes | Yes |
| Stack Membership | No | No |
| Create Copies | Virtual copies upload as smart previews even if originals are already in the cloud | Real duplicates created in Ecosystem apps become virtual copies in Classic |
| Delete Photos/Videos | If you delete or unsync in Classic, photos are deleted from the cloud | Photos deleted from the cloud remain in Classic, marked as not synced |
| Adding / Editing Metadata | ||
| Files Renamed | Yes | N/A |
| Capture Date Changed | Yes | Yes |
| Flags & Star Ratings | Yes (but no color labels) | Yes |
| Title & Caption | Yes | Yes |
| Copyright | Yes | Yes |
| Keywords / People | No | No |
| Location (GPS) | Yes | Yes |
| Develop Edits | ||
| All Edits | Yes (even if there isn’t a user interface for the slider/tool) | Yes |
| Snapshots / Versions | No | No |
For additional details on how to set up sync in Classic and troubleshoot sync errors, see the Cloud Sync chapter in Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ.
For extensive information on Lightroom Classic, see Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ.
Note: purchase of these books includes the first year’s Classic or cloud-based Premium Membership (depending on the book purchased), giving access to download the latest eBook (each time Adobe updates the software), email assistance for the applicable Lightroom version if you hit a problem, and other bonuses.
We also have a special bundle offer for the two books. This includes Premium Membership for the first year as described above for the whole Lightroom family!
For extensive information on Lightroom Cloud Ecosystem, see Adobe Lightroom – Edit on the Go.
Note: purchase of this book includes the first year’s cloud-based Premium Membership, giving access to download the latest eBook (each time Adobe updates the software), email assistance for the cloud-based Lightroom apps if you hit a problem, and other bonuses.
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