Skip to main content
eullman
eullman
Participating Frequently
July 29, 2019
Answered

Lr CC/Mobile<-->Classic sync & migration mess

  • July 29, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 908 views

Greetings. I am sorry if this has been answered before, but my searches are only turning up helpful pieces, and I could really use some guidance. I'm going to do my best to be brief, but a little history might help…

  • I'm a longtime Lr Classic user.
  • I added a Lr Mobile component to my workflow a couple years ago, and had some Collections syncing between Lr Classic and Mobile.
  • Early last year, I thought I'd try out Lr CC on my laptop and started bringing new photos in there.
  • Six months and a few thousand RAW photos later, I opened Lr Classic, and all the remaining hard drive space on my laptop was gobbled up as all the photos from Lr CC started syncing into Classic. Ugh. I paused syncing.

Which brings us to my current situation. I have decided to migrate entirely into Lr CC (and hope that Adobe adds some local file management options). I want to do some cleanup in Lr Classic before migrating my Classic catalog to CC. To resolve this syncing+storage issue…

  • I tried turning off syncing in Classic for all the existing individual Collections and un-pausing syncing. But that doesn't appear to stop syncing until all the old queued sync operations complete first. Ugh.
  • All the new albums from Lr CC since I had last synced also started syncing, again gobbling up my local storage.
  • I paused syncing again in Lr Classic and deleted all the Collections.

Is this the best way forward with the migration to CC???

  1. Keep syncing OFF in Lr Classic.
  2. Delete all the photos that have been added to Classic since my last deliberate import date (Dec. 2017).
  3. Perform whatever other metadata and album cleanup I need.
  4. Migrate the Lr Classic catalog to Lr CC.
  5. NEVER reactivate syncing in Lr Classic.

Does that make sense? I've backed everything up a couple ways, but I'd rather not have to re-import and do a bunch of work over, so I am being cautions.

Thanks a million in advance for any suggestions from the community!

-Eric

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Jao vdL

If you really want to move completely to Lightroom Cloud (The CC was removed from the name and now, since Adobe likes to maximize confusion, it is just called Lightroom but to make sure people know what we're talking about I add cloud to the name) you probably want to keep syncing off indeed. You shouldn't need to delete the images that have synced as the migration should recognize which images it already has so you probably don't even need to open Classic. Simply migrate the catalog. This will again eat up all your disk space as migrating a catalog to Lightroom cloud involves copying all images to an area on your startup disk (this cannot be changed) and then uploading those images. Many people get stuck here since they simply do not have the hard drive space to do this. The trick in that case is to export catalogs from Classic into smaller sub catalogs and to migrate those one-by-one so that you don't run out of space. A major pain indeed.

If Lightroom cloud does everything you need this is a great option. There are many cautions I normally throw up here about almost every essential feature from Classic missing in the cloud version and Adobe only adding them extremely slowly (Lightroom cloud still cannot print!) but if you have been using it for quite a while now and haven't missed any you probably don't need them.

1 reply

J
Community Expert
Jao vdLCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
July 30, 2019

If you really want to move completely to Lightroom Cloud (The CC was removed from the name and now, since Adobe likes to maximize confusion, it is just called Lightroom but to make sure people know what we're talking about I add cloud to the name) you probably want to keep syncing off indeed. You shouldn't need to delete the images that have synced as the migration should recognize which images it already has so you probably don't even need to open Classic. Simply migrate the catalog. This will again eat up all your disk space as migrating a catalog to Lightroom cloud involves copying all images to an area on your startup disk (this cannot be changed) and then uploading those images. Many people get stuck here since they simply do not have the hard drive space to do this. The trick in that case is to export catalogs from Classic into smaller sub catalogs and to migrate those one-by-one so that you don't run out of space. A major pain indeed.

If Lightroom cloud does everything you need this is a great option. There are many cautions I normally throw up here about almost every essential feature from Classic missing in the cloud version and Adobe only adding them extremely slowly (Lightroom cloud still cannot print!) but if you have been using it for quite a while now and haven't missed any you probably don't need them.

eullman
eullmanAuthor
Participating Frequently
July 30, 2019

Thanks, Jao. I greatly appreciate the guidance. If you would, please clarify:

migrating a catalog to Lightroom cloud involves copying all images to an area on your startup disk (this cannot be changed)

So even though Lightroom is set to store originals on an external drive, this import/migration process will use the boot volume?

Some additional, unexpected cleanup had to be performed: Deleting the synced photos that originated on my iOS devices from the Lr Classic catalog didn't also delete the images from the Mobile Downloads.lrdata container on my Mac's drive, so I had to find and delete those manually.

Thanks again!

-Eric

J
Community Expert
Jao vdLCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 30, 2019

Yes indeed. This is a bit of a design flaw in Lightroom (cloudy version). It always uses the internal drive for migration temporary data even if you have set the storage location for local copies to an external disk.

Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices