P: Lightroom Ecosystem: Selective Sync

@michael_brodt

If smart previews were possible without taking up much cloud storage, this solution seems perfect.

Otherwise, we could just have Lightroom fetch either from archive (local storage) or cloud, so no smart previews on the cloud needed. Of course that i do not know the technical difficulty of this, but i would hope there is an option to allow the catalog to exist without touching the cloud at all. 

This would be a huge benefit as people grow their libraries. Done in conjunction with the ability to save or archive photos to an external drive only (on both desktop and iPad versions!) would mean that we could make decisions such as  keep active projects synced to the cloud, and archive older projects to external storage exclusively. Or to choose to have some projects synced and others not. For those that aren't, a Smart Preview is still generated, but the original resides on the storage option of our choice.

This does lead to the question of syncing and prioritization. Lightroom should sync to the fastest source available:

I did not know this post existed.

I guess it's the same as this one:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/conversations/lightroom-desktop-cloudbased/lightroom-cc-ability-to-specify-which-files-should-be-local-only-not-uploaded-to-the-cloud/5f5f45dc4b561a3d42639fc8

Although this has more upvotes.

I think this feature would allow for "the great migration" to happen, form Classic to CC. We already pay monthly for the software... If we don't need the Cloud, why should we have to buy it? Also, i'm sure Adobe doesn't really want to keep two softwares for the same thing... and one of them with old code. If they find a way to solve this, it's better for them as well.

With this, we could use Lightroom in all it's glory. The photos that you select to sync you can edit in your phone or tablet. The others stay in your local drive. I'd use it all the time, for a new session... send them all to the cloud, edit wherever and when i'm done, un-sync (and delete data from cloud -- important step).

Catalog would remain organized with all our photos and the cloud fature would be for editing on the go.

It would also be good if this was the default behaviour, or one could change in the settings to this being the default.

But this thread is already over 2 years old.... C'mon Adobe

I have LR CC on my MBA and iPad, and only want to sync current or important folders/albums/photos to Adobe cloud & definitely don't want to pay for additional storage (have loads of backup storage on NAS and through Amazon Prime).

I can't see any way on either MBA or the iPad to choose what gets synced to the cloud. Can anyone help, please? Thanks.

This is quite an old thread, and i think i've seen it somewhere else, but could not find any other.

I believe if Lightroom CC has the ability to store files locally, the "great migration" would finally happen, and Adobe could drop the horrible Lightroom Classic CC.

I would hope this is implemented in a way that you could easily define which photos/albums sync to the cloud and which don't, having the option to then delete that album from the cloud and keep it local.

This would allow the Lightroom CC to be fully appreciated in it's several mobile apps and avoid the storage of huge data in cloud servers. I mean, the workflow would be:

1. Import photos from hard drive to new album or previously created one.

2. Sync to the cloud (or not)

3. Edit (if you synced to the cloud, you could edit in the tablet, web or phone through your awesome apps)

4. Export to wherever

5. Un-sync the album

6. Delete cloud data from the album.

This would result in having your catalog organized in Lightroom CC, photos stored locally and everyone happy.

Thanks Victoria. Just what I wanted to know. All good now. Most grateful to you. 

I'm not sure this selective sync topic is exactly what you're asking for *Steve64 . Could you clarify a little more... is it that you don't want to sync them to the cloud, or you simply want to pick and choose which camera roll photos get added to the Lightroom app for editing? The latter is already possible by turning off Auto Add in Preferences and adding selected photos manually.

This thread is being merged into an existing authoritative thread for better tracking and response. 

Please please please can we have selective sync for Lightroom CC on my mobile. I don't want to post process many of the photos on my phone in Lightroom but there are a few. To do that, I don't want to sync all the photos on my camera roll to Lightroom. 

I want to delete all my cloud files and keep only the files on a local storage drive. Is this even possible or does Adobe force you to use their cloud services? I dont need to be able to access the photos from anywhere. I just want to use the product as a photo editing tool and keep all the photos locally stored.