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dond20094863
Participant
November 25, 2018
Question

Deleted Lightroom Mobile Library

  • November 25, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 441 views

I have my LR Mobile app on my iphone set to auto sync with LR Classic on my desktop Mac. While on vacation with very intermittent and spotty wif-fi and cell service, LR Mobile gave me the little red exclamation mark indicating that my cloud storage was full and syncing was stopped. When I got home I went to adobe.com and looked for the files in my cloud folders. They were all empty, including the deleted folder, so clearly my storage wasn't actually full at all. So I googled for an answer and found a suggestion to delete the LR library in the browser to clear the logjam. So I did that. My Lightroom Mobile immediately deleted all the LR photos on my device. I guess the LR catalog online and the catalog on my phone are one and the same. The photos shot with the native iPhone app and the ones I exported to the camera roll are still on the phone, of course. I also googled around and found there is no recovery from this move. Does anyone know of any kind of workaround for this? Are copies of the photos kept in some hidden file on the phone? (It seems weird that the camera is completely divorced from the OS when used in LR.) Why doesn't Lightroom in the browser have a backup or recovery feature?

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    J
    Community Expert
    Jao vdLCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 26, 2018

    The trick for dealing with filled-up cloud storage in this case is to go to Classic and look at the "all synced photographs" folder. In there you will see all the images that have synced up to the cloud and have downloaded into Classic. What you do with those is to unsync them, which is done by removing them from the all synced photographs folder or by clicking the little syncing badge (the back and forth arrow) on the images in Classic. This removes them from the cloud, but keeps them in Classic. This in turn should remove just those photographs that have already synced up from your phone and create some extra space to sync up to the cloud. Your phone should immediately sync those and you go through the same exercise until they have all come over.

    Basically this is what you were doing before but instead of deleting the images on your phone you should remove them from the syncing in Classic. This ensures that you always have a copy in Classic and you never delete an image that hasn't already synced over the cloud.

    john beardsworth
    Community Expert
    john beardsworthCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 25, 2018

    No workaround that I know of. Deleting means deleting everything on their server. While some of us have asked for a trash feature, Adobe haven't implemented one and don't give you any control over whatever backups may happen on the server.

    Before you deleted the mobile content, did you allow any files to sync down into your Classic catalog? This would give you some/all of the photos that had filled up the space. What I would have done at that point is not delete - I would have unsynced those photos. This frees up space, allowing the phone to sync more photos until it fills up your allocation. So one might have to repeat these steps a few times.

    D
    dond20094863Author
    Participant
    November 25, 2018

    Yes. I have my synced files go to a specific folder, which is determined in the Lightroom Classic preferences. Once they sync they are there permanently. Copies are saved in date specified subfolders on my hard disk. A few days worth of files did sync with my computer before they stopped. I guess the files make a staging stop in the cloud before being synced down to my computer. Funny thing is I've never had this happen before. I've had my cloud storage fill up but it never interrupted the syncing down to my desktop. I would just delete the synced photos on my device and that would clear the "storage full" warning. I clearly should've made sure the actual photo files were someplace else before I deleted any libraries or catalogs. I thought I had learned that lesson before, but I guess not.

    john beardsworth
    Community Expert
    john beardsworthCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 25, 2018

    "I guess the files make a staging stop in the cloud before being synced down to my computer.'

    Yes, that's a good way to think of it. But what should happen is that when the storage allocation fills, syncing down to Classic will continue - what stops is syncing up to the cloud from the phone.

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