How have you determined that some photos have not synced? ... View more

You need to explain exactly how you "synchonised an LRCAT file". Also please confirm which app you are referring to, Lightroom Classic (LrC icon) or Lightroom Desktop (Lr icon). Also provide the current version number of the app. ... View more

I would guess that this is "as expected", i.e. when you create a VC of an image it gets all the attributes of the master image. So even though you are working from a folder, not a synced collection, the original image is synced which means that the VC would get that synced attribute as well.   But equally it could be bug, so we'll have to wait for Adobe to respond about that. In the meatime I can confirm that I do see that same behaviour on my Mac system. ... View more

I had accidentally imported photos of 4 separate basketball games that occured in January2026 into my December 2025 subfolder of my 2025 main folder.  Using "Update Folder Location" I successfully moved them to my 2026 main folder, but on that folder was a small black circle with an exclamation point in it, which reveals a message that says "subfolder(s) are missing in this folder, please relink..."  I right-clicked on that folder and did not see any "relink" option, so I clicked on synchronize folder" and those photos promptly dissapeared!    By @Morris in MT   The first thing to know is that the "Update Folder Location" option does not MOVE images from old to new location. It simply changes (updates) the catalog reference for all the images that are in the folder from the old location folder (December 2025) to the new location folder (January2026). It does not move the images at all, as it assumes that the images have already been copied to the new location, so when it finds that the images are not in that new location they are all flagged as "missing". At that point the situation would have been recoverable (simply copying the images outside LrC to the correct location would have resolved all those "missing" indicators). Unfortunately, using Synchronize Folder was not the way to go.   This is a screenshot of the standard Synchronize Folder panel:     As you can see there is an option to have LrC remove all missing photos from the folder that is being synchronized, and that is checked by default. If you did not uncheck that option (and it appears that you didn't) then when you clicked on the Synchronize button all the "missing" images would have been immediately removed from the catalog. Which probably explains what happened.   @dj_paige is right....the images should still be on the system, in fact they should still exist in the old December2025 location (as Update Folder Location does not remove them). Find them there, and reimport them (but you will have lost any edits or metadata that had been added to the images, unless you had saved metadata to those images before the Update Folder Location procedure). ... View more

Images can end up in your cloud account basically in two ways:   1. You choose to sync images from LrC to the cloud, either by enabling one or more collections to sync and then adding images to those collections (every image in a synced collection is automatically synced), or by adding images that are not in a synced collection to that All Synced Photographs special collection (so the images would not be seen in a corresponding album in the cloud, but would be seen within the All Photos view in any of the cloud client apps). Note that images synced to the cloud from LrC in this way are only uploaded as Smart Previews (smaller proxy images that are 2560 pixels on the long edge), and also note that these Smart Previews do NOT count against your cloud space allowance. With this method of syncing images with the cloud, the user has total control over which, if any, images are synced.   2. Images added directly to one of the cloud client apps (LrWeb, Lr Desktop, Lr Mobile of phones or tablets) are automatically uploaded to the cloud in original format, and these DO count against your cloud storage allowance. So, unlike syncing from LrC, the user has very little control over what syncs (the only "control" would be to pause syncing from one or more cloud client apps, but that's not really a very effective solution).    If you need to know which of those 7500 images in the cloud are originals vs. Smart Previews you would need to open the Lightroom Desktop app on your desktop, click on All Photos, then click on the Filter icon (at the right-hand side of the Search Bar, top of the main window), then click on Sync Status. You will see several items including "Synced from Lightroom Classic", which would be the Smart Previews, and "Synced and Backed Up" which would be originals. ... View more

Do you think it's possible the photos that were in the mobiledownloads.lrdata folder ended up there because my NAS and computer lost connection during a sync? In theory, this would make it so that, for a brief moment, LrC wouldn't be able to find the original files, potentially resulting in LrC assuming that the cloud version was the primary copy (as you put it). By @Carl24692759kjpf   No, it doesn't work that way at all. If LrC loses connection to the NAS then all the images on the NAS are reported as "missing". The only images that would normally end up in Mobile Downloads are those that have synced down from your Cloud account. If you are thinking that when a file goes missing from LrC that LrC then checks with the cloud to see if there's a copy of that images there, so can then download it to the specified downloads location, then no that's not possible. ... View more

Your workflow across the locations and accounts isn't completely clear (to me at least). Can you clarify which apps you are using at each location, and whether you add new images into the mix from both locations. If you add only from one location, which one is it?   There may be opportunities using designated albums that allow contribution and editing, but can't really make any firm suggestions until we know more about your workflow. ... View more

It could be a bug. I can filter an album in LrD, and can display the filtered images in the currently set Custom Order, but cannot change that custom order. However, on the same system at the same time I can display that synced album (collection) in Lightroom Classic, apply the same filter and display the filtered images in Custom Order, but then I CAN change that custom order using drag and drop in LrC, and the changes immediately sync back to Lightroom. So LrC can do it, LrD cannot (but nor can LrWeb, so it may be as designed after all). ... View more

  In one of your other replies, you clarified that what you are looking for is the image path at time of import. That is not what this option does. The “Storage location for originals” setting is a path to a single Lightroom-built cache of originals downloaded from their source storage in the cloud, and that path is set by that option, having nothing to do with any of the different locations where the contained images were imported from. So this option wasn’t going to give you the answer you wanted anyway.  By @Conrad_C   That "Storage location for originals" in the LrD preferences is actually used for two different Lightroom actions:   1. Images imported directly into LrD, either from a memory card or from a hard drive location, are first copied into that specified location, and it's from there that they are uploaded to the cloud. So at that point the cache does in fact contain a copy of the initial source images. 2. Images can be downloaded from the cloud into that cache, either as a response to a user request or as a response to editing the image (LrD downloads the image on the fly for that purpose).   What then happens to those cached originals depends on the state of the "Store a copy of all originals" preferences. If the option is checked, then all cloud originals are stored locally, which thus includes a copy of all the images imported directly into LrD. But if the option is unchecked, all those locally stored originals will eventually become eligible for local deletion, the timing of which is apparently based on some complex algorithms.   So, keeping that last option checked would at least give the OP the opportunity of having access to the "source" images from outside LrD, though the actual path to them will not be the same as the original path. prior to import. That latter path is not recorded by LrD. ... View more

When you migrate an LrC catalog to the cloud, any keywords will transfer from LrC to Lightroom, though any hierarchical keyword structure in LrC is flattened in Lr.   But after that you are out of luck as keywords do not sync in either direction between LrC and Lightroom. They do, however, sync across the LR ecosystem (i.e. between LrD, LrM and LrWeb). ... View more

The option presented to you of using LrClassic to import your existing images (using the ADD Import option to maintain the existing folder structure) is the only "automated" way that I can think of. Once imported, you would then use the option to replicate the folder structure into Collection Sets/Collections, which in turn would translate to Folders/Albums when you migrate the LrC catalog into Lightroom.   The alternative, using Lightroom only, would be to import one folder at a time, specifying the folder name in the "Add to Album>New" box.   Out of curiosity, what software were you using to manage your photo library before switching to Lightroom? If it was Apple Photos there is a migration function in Lightroom for that app, though I don't know if that would provide the ability to migrate folders names into matching album names. ... View more

  Would the unability to update infringe my possibility to keep using the version of LR I am still able to run in the future ?   By @Bohns38   Not really, there are plenty of users quite successfully running older Lightroom versions on older Operating System versions. Obviously you miss out on the newer features, but you know that. The only issue you might have in the future is if for some reason you need to re-install Lightroom on the same computer with the same unsupported operating system. In that situation you would be unable to install it via the Creative Cloud app, your only option would be to contact Adobe Customer Support to see if they are able to provide help. ... View more

An alternative to preview the images in Finder would be to use LrD's Local mode. Using that mode that you can open individual images full screen to review them. You can even apply edits to them to help you decide if you want to keep it in the cloud, and any "keepers" can be uploaded directly to the cloud from there. Much easier than writing down file names in Finder. ... View more

Hi Jim.   Further to the above, I went back into LrD and went through the process again. I found an additional 165 photos. I created a "To be swapped 2" album and did this all again. Of the 165 photos only 76 where found in the All Sycned Photographs in LrC. After removing those I checked again in LrD and there are still 89 photos appearing when I select Synced and Backed Up. They are all either .mov or .mp4 movie files. Not sure why these are still appearing but thinking I might just delete them in LrD as they would be taking up a bunch of space as well. Any thoughts? By @Darthyone   Movies are something of an anomaly in syncing terms. Movies added to Lightroom, e.g. movies taken on phones and synced to the cloud, will then sync down into LrC as normal, but after downloading into LrC they are unsynced in LrC (so don't appear in All Synced Photographs). They do, however, remain in Lightroom.....so if there are movies in the system they will cause a totals mismatch between All Photos in Lightroom and All Synced Photographs in LrC. Another oddity is that deleting/removing a movie from LrC will actually cause the movie to also be deleted from Lightroom. ... View more

Yes, I do know the answer to the bonus question.....and the answer is No, LrC will simply record the image as "missing" and there will be no attempt to replace it by downloading a copy from the cloud. But it you were to remove a synced image from LrC, that will cause the original in the cloud to also be deleted. So be aware of that.   Back to the way forward.....if you do decide to start a new LrC catalg and sync that instead of the original LrC catalog (Lightroom will only ever sync to one catalog, though you can have it switched from catalog to catalog) the best thing to do first is to decide where you want the downloaded images to be stored. MobileDownloads is the default location, but you can choose your own in the LrC Preferences>Lightroom Sync tab. You can also choose to have the images stored in a dated sub-folder structure, that's also done on that same Preferences tab. ... View more

The first thing we need to do is clarify exactly what you did. This is what I think you did:   Uploaded to the cloud all the images that you had in LrC, by exporting folder by folder as a catalog, then using the migrate option in LrDeskop (LrD) to import all those images. When that had finished, you had your 30k images stored as originals in the cloud. You then decided that you also wanted to carry on using LrC, so you opened it and enabled it to sync.   OK so far? If so, the question we need an answer to is what catalog did you open in LrC and started it to sync? Was it the original catalog which still contains those 30k images, or was it a new empty catalog? Until we know that, it's difficult to advise on the way forward.   A couple of things you need to know (which you would have been well advised to learn before you started this journey):   1. When you enable sync in an LrC catalog, a copy of ALL the current (and future) content in the cloud will automatically download into that LrC catalog. There is no selective sync option FROM the cloud, everything downloads.  2. Going in the reverse direction, from LrC to the cloud, only Smart Previews of the LrC originals will upload. But that upload IS selective, i.e. nothing will sync FROM LrC TO the cloud unless/until the user enables that (usually, but not exclusively, by putting images into a sync-enabled collection in LrC).   If the sequence of events is as I descibed, and it IS the original LrC catalog that you subsequently sync-enabled, my expectation is that those 30K images would download as Virtual Copies of the original images in LrC. The reason for that is that as the originals in LrC were not previously synced, the cloud will attempt to download the 30k originals, not knowing that they already exist in the LrC catalog. However, when the cloud gives the details to LrC, LrC's duplicates detection system should determine that the new images are duplicates of existing images. Not knowing what the user's intent is, it instead simply uses the metadata from the cloud images and uses it to create Virtual Copies of the LrC originals. So you should see each unsynced original in the original LrC catalog with synced VCs alongside. The VCs will contain any edit work that you might have done in the cloud.   That's the way it should work, but I have seen reports that sometimes VCs are NOT created, instead a full copy of the images in the cloud are downloaded and added to the LrC catalog as new files. So you need to check if that is the case.   If, however, you started a new catalog, then yes the full copy of the 30k originals in the cloud would download as originals and be stored locally in accordance with the location options specified in the LrC Preferences>Lightroom Sync tab.   So, what LrC catalog did you enable for syncing? ... View more

The files reside somewhere on the cloud servers, and are managed by Adobe. We have no knowledge of their exact location, but we don't generally need to know. We access the images using Albums/Folders, or All Photos, making use of the appropriate Search and Filter tools.    Why do you need to know where the images are stored? ... View more

Note that if the DNG "presets" for LrMobile provide the same function as the XMP presets for LrDesktop, you would only need to install the XMP presets into LrDesktop. Once installed, they will sync to your LrMobile apps, thus avoiding the need to manually create the presets from the DNG files. ... View more

That's not neccessary. If the Topaz apps are installed on the system (which they would be if they've been installed as plug-ins in LrC and/or Photoshop) you can add them to the "Edit in" option in Lightroom Desktop, as per the link that @JohanElzenga provided earlier in this thread. This is a screenshot of my "Edit in" menu in Lightroom:   ... View more

Can't explain it then. It works OK on my Mac system with only Develop and Metadata presets enabled as per your video. As I'm running on a Mac, my only other thought would be that perhaps it's a Windows-only issue? Just so that I can ensure my test is accurate, what settings (if any) do you have selected in the File Handling and File Renaming panels? ... View more

I can't see from your video, but in the File Handling section do you have "Add to Collection" enabled? I've found in the past that when having that option enabled when creating the Import Preset, the next import attempt does indeed revert the Import Preset box to "None" and I have to reselect my Import Preset.   I just tested again, created a new preset similar to yours (Add Import, apply Develop and Metadata presets), ran the import. Then initiated import again and the Import Preset was still selected. Updated that Import Preset to enable "Add to Collection", used the preset OK, then initiated another import and now the Import Preset box shows "None".   It may be a bug, or it may be as design. Can't remember if I reported it in the past. I also have a vague feeling that there may be other things including in a preset which cause subsequent imports to revert to "None" (keywords, maybe?). ... View more

As far as I can tell, Preview and Photos now support JPG, AVIF and JXL HDR formats, so it's a little surprising that the Apple Shared Albums do not. Presumably you've also contacted Apple about this issue? ... View more

I very rarely use Photos on either my MBP or iPhone/iPad, and I've never used Apple's Shared Photos. Having said that, I just exported a couple of HDR-enabled images from LrM on iPhone to the Device using JPG output with the HDR option enabled. When then opening the Photos app, the exported images were displayed with the HDR content.   I repeated the exercise on my MBP, again exporting using JPG format (which now appears to have HDR enabled by default), and the exported files when viewed with Preview again displayed HDR correctly. I also imported the JPGs into the Photos app, and again they displayed the HDR correctly.    So I would have thought that any Photos Shared Album should also display those JPGs correctly (provided of course that the album is displayed in an HDR-capable browser such as Chrome).   and from LrD on my MBP to the Desktop ... View more

At this point I'm tempted to stop all my syncing with the cloud, ask Adobe to just empty out my cloud account (or I just delete everything I have there) and then start my sync again - might be much easier than using the tools that seem to be available from Adobe to manage this. By @Darthyone   If you really want to start over, the easy way to delete everything from your cloud account is:   In LrC Preferences>Lightrrom Sync tab, click on the option to "Delete All Synced Data". That sends you to the LrWeb app in your browser, once there click on your Avatar top right corner, then click on "Account Info" in the drop-down menu, then click on "Delete Lightroom Library".   Same caveat as before, if you have any synced collections in LrC it would be best to unsync them first. That way all the collection contents will remain after you delete the cloud library, then you can resync those collections afterwards to start to repopulate the cloud with smart previews. ... View more

1) and 2).....these will be smart previews in the cloud, so do not count against your 20GB allocation. 3), 4) and 5)....these will be in original form in the cloud, therefore WILL be counting against your 20GB allocation. To replace those originals with Smart Previews, here's a procedure that you could use as a one-off exercise: a) In Lightroom Desktop (LrD), create a temporary album named e.g. To be Swapped. That album will be synced to LrC and will appear in the "From Lightroom" collection set. b) Still in LrD, click on All Photos and then click on the Filter Bar icon. c) Select "Synced & Backed Up" from the drop-down list. That will populate the grid will all those "Synced & Backed Up" images, which are in fact all the Originals. d) Press Ctrl+A to select all those images, then either drag them to that "To be Swapped" album or if it's easier right-click on any one of the selected images and hover the cursor over the "Add xxx Photos to Album" entry, the list of all albums will appear, select the "To be Swapped" album from that list. e) Now switch to LrC in Library mode. Find the "To be Swapped" collection and wait for the number of images to match the number of images in the corresponding album in LrD. That shouldn't take very long. f) Now the crucial bit.....Unsync that "To be Swapped" collection by clicking on the double-headed sync icon in front of the collection name. If you don't do that, the next step will empty the collection and you'll have no easy way to identify the images again. g) With the now-unsynced "To be Swapped" collection still selected, do Ctrl+A to select them all. Then, with them still selected, click on the All Synced Photographs special collection in the LrC Catalog panel. Within that special collection, find any one of the selected images and right-click on it and click on "Remove from All Synced Photographs". h) That will remove them from that special collection and that action in turn will unsync all those images and will delete them from the cloud (thus freeing up the cloud space). i) Select the "To be Swapped" collection again, then enable it to sync (click in front of the collection name). That will cause all the images in that collection to be sync-enabled and consequently be uploaded to the cloud as smart previews. It takes less time to do that than it's taken me to type out the instructions. The only thing that might be an issue is that this procedure will cause any of the affected images to be removed from any other synced collection that you might have added them to. No easy way of dealing with that other than by perhaps adding a keyword in LrC that identifies the collection membership, thus allowing you to add them back to the collections after the original-to-smart preview swap has been done. Going forward, based on the above procedure, develop a workflow for yourself that catches any new originals added to the cloud and replaces them with smart previews. ... View more

Using either the "Share" or "Export As" options, after the file is rendered for export you should be presented with the destination panel. There should be a horizontal line of app icons which will show often used apps, if Flickr is not shown in that list scroll to the right-hand end and there should be a "More" icon. Tapping on that should give you a vertical list of "Favourites" and "Suggestions". On my iPhone, Flickr appears in that list of suggestions, though I guess it will only appear in the list if it's already installed on the phone.    I'm using an iPhone, I don't know if it works the same on Android. ... View more

OK, so all you need to do is install LrD from the Creative Cloud app in the new MBP, and when you launch LrD it will automatically download all the information that is stored in the cloud, i.e. it sets up your local catalog using the master catalog in the cloud. So all your images, albums, folders etc. will appear on the new system, and that automatic setup includes the downloading of all the presets that you had installed in the cloud.   All you need to do is ensure that when you login into the Adobe Cloud on the new system that you use the same Adobe ID that you used on the current system. ... View more

Which version of Lightroom are you currently using: Lightroom Classic or Lightroom Desktop? ... View more