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grégoirea16244058
grégoirea16244058
Participating Frequently
April 28, 2019
Question

Using LR Classic + Cloud as photos backup ?

  • April 28, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 318 views

Hello community,

After many years with LR 4 and 6, I am now seriously thinking to move to LR Classic CC + LR CC.

I am thinking to use the Cloud feature as a main backup for all my photos.

So I did the following test:

- I created a LR Classic catalog with few photos ( Raw and JPG).

- I used LR to push all photos on Cloud.

- And when I reopen LR Classic, I see my photos are all synchronised. Good.

This is my "normal" situation.

Now I simulate a disaster by removing photos from my hard drive.

I reopend LR Classing catalog (assuming it was backuped somewhere else), and do a search for missing files:

At this point, I am not able to find an option to replace the missing file by the one from Cloud. Is it possible ?

The only solution I found is downloading files on my hard drive from Cloud using LR, and "relink" under LR Classic. But since the original directory structure was not preserved from Cloud, it will require too many manual operation to relink photos one by one (about 41K photos). So I decline the possibility to use this solution.

Best regards,

Grégoire.

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    Ian Lyons
    Community Expert
    Ian LyonsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 28, 2019

    The cloud cannot be used as backup for photos in Lightroom Classic. Basically, everything uploaded to the cloud via say Lr CC will be synced to Lightroom Classic. In short, there is no way of controlling which photos are synced from the cloud to Lightroom Classic. Additionally, Lightroom Classic can only sync smart previews to the cloud.

    Regarding your issue with deleted photos. It looks like you removed them using the operating the operating system.

    grégoirea16244058
    grégoirea16244058Author
    Participating Frequently
    April 28, 2019

    Hello Ian,

    Thank you for your reply.

    I don't understand what is says by "there is no way of controlling which photos are synced from the cloud to Lightroom Classic"

    In LR Classic, I can see :

    - which photos comes from LR CC.

    - which photos are local.

    - and which photo are both local and synchronised.

    But maybe I don't understand your remark. Can you please rephrase it ?

    Regards

    Ian Lyons
    Community Expert
    Ian LyonsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 28, 2019

    > In LR Classic, I can see :

    > - which photos comes from LR CC.

    Basically, any photo you sync to the cloud from Lightroom CC (desktop) or  Lightroom on a mobile device will also be downloaded to your synced Lightroom Classic catalog. These photos can be the full rez raw files, JPGs and videos. You cannot control which photos get downloaded from the cloud to Lightroom Classic. With Lightroom Classic, it's all your photos or none!

    It's also important to keep in mind that Lightroom Classic can only sync smart previews to the cloud. In other words, the cloud cannot be used to backup photos originally imported into Lightroom Classic.

    > - which photos are local.

    Everything is local in Lightroom Classic.

    > - and which photo are both local and synchronised.

    As above for Lightroom Classic. With Lightroom CC (desktop version) the primary storage location is the cloud. However, you can configure it so that a copy of each photos is also stored locally.

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