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Move photos to cloud

Forum|Forum|22 days ago
January 28, 2026
3 replies
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I use Lightroom Classic and might move to just Lightroom. I have about 500GB of photos on a hard drive. Would it be advantageous to move them all to the Cloud. If so, how do I do that? I presume they would be available just as they are now from the drive.

Correct answer Conrad_C

I presume they would be available just as they are now from the drive.

That depends on what you mean by “available.”

When you migrate everything to cloud Lightroom, you don’t lose your current set of images that you’ve been storing locally, because what gets uploaded are copies. Those uploaded copies in the cloud become your working originals. In other words, you do a fundamental switch from working from your locally stored images to working from the Lightroom photos cloud server. This could free up local storage, because you could move your current originals off the computer. Then the only working images actually on your computer would be the ones temporarily downloaded and cached while you’re editing them. And, all your images are always available to any device you own that can run a cloud Lightroom app (Mac, Windows, iOS, or Android), as long as you have an Internet connection.

You don’t always have to work from the cloud. Cloud Lightroom now has a Local tab so that you can browse and edit images without having to upload them. However, be aware that the editing features available in the Local tab are much more restricted than both cloud Lightroom editing and local editing in Lightroom Classic. If local editing with a full feature set is more of a priority for you, you should stay with Lightroom Classic.

Think carefully about what you like the most about Lightroom Classic, because in addition to your source files moving online, cloud Lightroom has a different feature set than Lightroom Classic. Some features are better than Classic (like automatic keywords), some are worse (like manual keywords), and some are missing (like printing).

One big question is: How important is it to preserve how you have organized your photos in Mac/Windows folders? Because when you migrate to cloud Lightroom, that permanently disconnects the cloud copies from any folder organization you may have used in Lightroom Classic, and it cannot be restored even if you do a bulk download. All organization becomes virtual, similar to using Collections in Lightroom Classic. In part this is because virtual organization makes it a lot easier to preserve organization across different desktop and mobile devices, but this aspect of migrating all your images to cloud Lightroom means you have to be OK with losing your current folder organization. For some people this is no problem, for others this is a deal-breaker.

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BobZ30Author

Known Participant

I have my photos organized in LRC by year as well as in other folders for specific things such as greeting cards, what I have in a RL galleryy. I would lose that ability using the cloud?

Conrad_C

Community Expert

You can still create hierarchical organizations in cloud Lightroom, and they are called “albums,” but:

Albums can’t be based on, or directly synced with, any folders you were using locally on your computer. They exist only in Lightroom in the cloud.
Albums in cloud Lightroom actually work like Collections (not Folders) in Lightroom Classic.
Cloud Lightroom does have something called “folders” but that’s just what it calls groups of cloud albums.

If it’s only important for you to preserve existing folder organization and if it is not important that they continue to be tied to folders on your local computer, then before migrating, in Lightroom Classic you can secondary-click a folder and choose “Create collection (or collection set) for [clicked folder]” from the context menu that pops up. By converting folder organization into collections, that organization can then migrate to albums in cloud Lightroom. But again, these new collections/albums will no longer be tied to a file system folder on your computer.

The other way you could continue to work with your local folders in cloud Lightroom is, again, the Local tab. That would continue to to give you access to images in the folders on your computer (but with fewer features). However, again, if you’re editing something in the Local tab, you’re not working on what’s in your Lightroom cloud storage and vice versa.

Cloud Lightroom is better if having constant cloud access to your images from any desktop or mobile device is much more important than preserving locally based workflows. But Lightroom Classic still exists because there are a lot of us for whom keeping source images local is a lot more important than having constant cloud access from any device.

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BobZ30Author

Known Participant

That;s with Lightroom. If I upload by Classic catalog, will it still retain the organization I have?

Conrad_C

Correct answer

Community Expert

I presume they would be available just as they are now from the drive.

That depends on what you mean by “available.”

When you migrate everything to cloud Lightroom, you don’t lose your current set of images that you’ve been storing locally, because what gets uploaded are copies. Those uploaded copies in the cloud become your working originals. In other words, you do a fundamental switch from working from your locally stored images to working from the Lightroom photos cloud server. This could free up local storage, because you could move your current originals off the computer. Then the only working images actually on your computer would be the ones temporarily downloaded and cached while you’re editing them. And, all your images are always available to any device you own that can run a cloud Lightroom app (Mac, Windows, iOS, or Android), as long as you have an Internet connection.

You don’t always have to work from the cloud. Cloud Lightroom now has a Local tab so that you can browse and edit images without having to upload them. However, be aware that the editing features available in the Local tab are much more restricted than both cloud Lightroom editing and local editing in Lightroom Classic. If local editing with a full feature set is more of a priority for you, you should stay with Lightroom Classic.

Think carefully about what you like the most about Lightroom Classic, because in addition to your source files moving online, cloud Lightroom has a different feature set than Lightroom Classic. Some features are better than Classic (like automatic keywords), some are worse (like manual keywords), and some are missing (like printing).

One big question is: How important is it to preserve how you have organized your photos in Mac/Windows folders? Because when you migrate to cloud Lightroom, that permanently disconnects the cloud copies from any folder organization you may have used in Lightroom Classic, and it cannot be restored even if you do a bulk download. All organization becomes virtual, similar to using Collections in Lightroom Classic. In part this is because virtual organization makes it a lot easier to preserve organization across different desktop and mobile devices, but this aspect of migrating all your images to cloud Lightroom means you have to be OK with losing your current folder organization. For some people this is no problem, for others this is a deal-breaker.

B

Bill Sprague

Community Expert

The answer to your question might be more about what you might want to accomplish. It used to be an “either or” choice. Now it is not. Adobe has put the Lightrooms and Photoshop into an interrelated system where you can use all of them together. My personal choice is to use both of them and, for some work, use smart collections that sync the photos between LR and LrC. I tend to use LrC for more traditional work flows. LR works exceptionally well when I’m using my phone’s camera.

To put your photos in the cloud, you would open LR and add them from your hard drive.

Then you can use LrC to delete them from the catalog and your hard drive. There is an alternate method where you can set up synced collections where only smart previews from your hard drive are sent to the cloud. Try a few at a time first!

What are you trying to accomplish and what cameras do you use?

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