Delete photos in Lightroom CC AND Lightroom Classic?

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
July 14, 2019
2 replies
1927 views

I am trying to migrate to Lightroom CC (from Google Photos + Capture One) but my workflow does not allow for a clean move to Lightroom CC, so I have to use Lightroom Classic together with Lightroom CC. It seems to work reasonably well via synced collections with one painful exception. Deleting files in Lightroom CC does not delete them in Lightroom Classic. They just get un-synced. It's convenient to prune photos on a laptop or mobile device while traveling, only to come home and find that all those deleted photos are still there, just unlinked from the Cloud. How do I delete everywhere from Lightroom CC (mobile or desktop)? If Adobe made it impossible to just delete everywhere, what would be a good workaround (e.g., deleting unsynced photos in Lightroom Classic as an extra step).

Also, here is an idea for Adobe - add lightroom classic features to Lightroom CC desktop and be done with this mess.

This topic has been closed for replies.

john beardsworth

Community Expert

To delete from everywhere, delete in Lightroom Classic.

So if you want to delete photos while on the laptop or mobile, use a Reject flag to mark them for deletion, and maybe remove them from the collection so you don't see them amongst the keepers. When you're back in Lightroom Classic, then delete them.

Max LTVAuthor

Known Participant

Yes, this is the only way I could discover. The problem is that others who use Lightroom CC on their mobile devices sometimes delete files instead of marking them as rejected, which makes it a PITA to keep everything in sync. Not sure if Lightroom is right for my needs due to this clunkiness.

john beardsworth

Community Expert

Adobe have said that they do not recommend using both Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Cloudy (Lightroom CC for Mac/PC). My reading is that this doesn't mean "do not", but that they don't advocate using both. If you know exactly what you are doing, Cloudy can indeed be handy on a second computer when you treat it as merely "Lightroom Mobile on your laptop" (it does little more than the mobile apps).

The thing to understand is that once you are syncing Lightroom Classic, you are in full control of your master files. So the photos on your hard drive are the masters, and any originals or smart previews in the cloud are only there to make the mobile system work. I don't think it's too hard to get into marking rejects in mobile apps / Cloudy before deleting in Classic, and into removing rather than deleting. Sure, it is a PITA. But maybe it is also a small price to pay for Lightroom Classic giving us more control and more and more powerful features?

Theresa J

Community Expert

Lightroom and Lightroom Classic handle your images very differently. Lightroom uploads everything to the cloud. The master file uploads to the cloud when you add photos to Lightroom on your computer, or mobile device. Lightroom Classic manages photos on local hard drives. When you sync something to the cloud from Classic, you are only sending a high res smart preview to the cloud. The master file still lives on a local hard drive. When you use Lightroom and Classic together things can get really confusing. Classic requires that photos be on a local hard drive. Because of this, Classic acts like a vacuum pulling down any master file in the cloud to a local hard drive. If you delete the master file from Lightroom, the downloaded copy will still reside in Classic.

Some day maybe Lightroom will have all the features that Lightroom Classic has, but that could take a long time.

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