There are several ways to get photos to the Adobe cloud so they’re accessible on all of your devices. The Lightroom (cloud-based) desktop is one main portal to your cloud photos. Also, Lightroom mobile apps sync with it. Lightroom Classic is able to sync photos to the cloud if they are in a synced Collection (including the All Synced Photos collection). But sometimes there are differences in the numbers reported in each of the Lightroom apps, so how do you know what’s really synced to the cloud?
How can you know definitively what’s in the cloud?
Often overlooked, the Lightroom Web interface shows exactly what is stored in the Adobe Cloud. Go to https://lightroom.adobe.com in any modern web browser and log in with your Adobe ID.
If you’re having problems syncing, a Sync Errors album often appears below All Photos, offering clues about which photos are stuck and why (and sometimes the suggested solution, as this example shows).
Using the web interface, you can also do many of the same tasks as the desktop and mobile apps. This includes organizing the photos into albums and folders, adding metadata, sharing galleries with friends, family or clients, and even do some editing.
How do I see what my Lightroom apps think is in the Adobe Cloud?
Each app has its own way of checking the status of images in the cloud. Let’s take a look:
Lightroom (cloud-based) Desktop:
All Photos tells you the total number of photos and videos that are in the cloud (or are currently syncing to the cloud).
Check the overall sync status by clicking the cloud icon in the top right corner. Synced and Backed Up means the local database cache is in sync with the cloud. Syncing X Photos means originals and/or edits are currently being synced to/from the cloud.
Lightroom Mobile
Like Lightroom Desktop, All Photos tells you the total number of photos and videos synced (or syncing) to the cloud.
Verify the overall sync status by tapping the sync icon in the top right corner. Initially this tells you how many photos are still syncing, then changes to Synced and Backed Up when it’s done.
Lightroom Classic
Lightroom Classic is not specifically part of the Lightroom Cloud ecosystem, but one catalog can be synced with the Adobe Cloud. Not all of the photos in your Classic catalog sync to the cloud, only photos in All Synced Photos (which includes ones in the individual Synced Collections.) All Synced Photos will tell you the total number of photos synced. Note, the count doesn’t include videos, which can sometimes case a discrepancy between counts.
To check the status, click on the cloud icon in the top right corner of the screen. This will tell you the sync status:
Sync completed
Sync in progress
Sync Paused
Disconnected / offline
For extensive information on Lightroom Classic, see Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ.
If you have the Photography Plan, then as well as Classic you have access to the Lightroom cloud ecosystem including the mobile apps and web interface. For more information on these apps, see Adobe Lightroom – Edit Like a Pro.
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!
Good overview. It has been a while since I looked at my cloud status. Now I see that somehow I have saved hundreds of images to the cloud which (1) I have no idea how they got there and (2) I want to remove them from the cloud. How can I remove the unwanted images from the cloud without affecting them in my LrC catalog?
I’m running LrC 9.3 on a 2017 Retina iMac with Mohave OS.
Delete them from All Synced Photographs in Lightroom Classic, this will remove them from the Cloud.
Great, thank you for the suggestion. I was afraid to do anything from the web-based cloud because the warning message was so confusing and seemed so dire if I highlighted the unwanted images in Lightroom.adobe.com. I “removed (them) from all synced photographs” in LrC.
Hi Lightroom Queen,
Thanks so much for this very timely post.
I usually don’t have any trouble with syncing Lightroom Collections with Lightroom Mobile on my iPad. Local Activity tells me that Lightroom is syncing 12 photos. My computer has been running for days, and there has been no progress on these 12 photos. It seems as if there are 12 problem photos somewhere. How can I identify these 12 photos?
I don’t think cloud storage space is an issue, I’ve only used 300 mb of storage.
Thanks so much for your help
Go to https://lightroom.adobe.com to check whether the photos have reached the cloud or are showing under the Sync Errors collection. That should give you some clues on whether the problem is getting the photo up to the cloud or down to your computer.
Thanks for your reply. The solution to the problem was local. I opened Preferences|Lightroom sync. At the bottom of this pane is Sync activity, with a drop-down arrow. Clicking on this arrow showed me the 12 problem photos. Why didn’t I find this earlier? Some of the 12 photos were not in collections. I am mystified as to why LR was trying to sync photos that weren’t in a collection. Removing them fixed that. Of the remaining photos, in all but 1 the Metadata pane showed that the Metadata status had been changed. Clicking the Resolve conflict button fixed those photos. Again, I am mystified as to why a couple of photos in a collection had a changed metadata status when all the other photos were OK. This leaves me with just 1 photo that won’t sync, and I am stumped as to why this photo will not sync.
I post this solution with the hope that it may be of use to someone else.
PhilC