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Morgan Cartlidge
Participant
April 16, 2023
Question

Migrating edits but not originals from Desktop to Lightroom Classic

  • April 16, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 360 views

Hello!

 

I've been using the cloud based version of Lightroom with syncing turned off and only recenty realised that it's using 700gb of internal storage space. I have roughly 2TB of original files backed up on two external drives and want to use them rather than the cloud to store files. I'm now trying to migrate to Lightroom Classic but only have 100gb of cloud storage space so can't upload all my images to the cloud and download to Lightroom Classic as suggested by Adobe (this also seems like a real roundabout way of doing it).

 

Is there any way to import the edit data / XMP files from Lightroom CC into Lightroom Classic after manually re-uploading all the originals from my external drive into Classic so that I can free up space on my internal drive and have my originals in Lightroom Classic with the edits previously made in Lightroom CC?

 

Hopefully that makes sense!

 

I'm on Mac if it makes a difference.

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 16, 2023

If you export 'as original' or 'as DNG', then the edits will be stored in metadata and read by Lightroom Classic on import. I does mean you'll create a copy of all the images, but after you have exported the images and have them safely imported into Lightroom Classic, you can delete the redundant originals that Lightroom desktop used.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
M
Morgan CartlidgeAuthor
Participant
April 16, 2023

Thanks for your response! 

 

Do you have any idea why if I have more than 2 TB of originals, Lightroom is only taking up 760GB of space on my internal drive? It says its stored in App & User data and as far a I can tell it's files waiting to be uploaded to the cloud, but why aren't all the images I've imported into Lightroom there?

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 16, 2023

I can't tell you that without knowing your settings and without knowing which files are where.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
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