Hardware Differences for LR Classic vs. LR EcoSystem

Question

I"m a long time LR Classic user but I've been away from it for a couple of years. Looking to jump back in with both feet, including a computer upgrade. I might switch to LR Ecosystem.

Big question: what are hardware requirements between Classic and Desktop Cloud Mode? Also, are there any workarounds for making full use of Sensei image seach in Classic? I'm actually toying with the idea of copying .jpgs of entire library into a folder outside of LR just to enable access to the more robust AI search tools in iOS Photos or Google -- using that folder has a look up to direct me to the full res image from LR. Any advice would be greatly appreciated - Frank

Jao vdL · Answer

Hardware requirements for each are very similar. You should have an Apple Silicon machine or a windows machine with a recent non-embedded GPU like a nvidia recent model. The minimum requirements will not give you a good experience. They will work but be very slow. Lightroom Cloudy can get away with slightly smaller internal hard disks since it stores everything in your cloud account and dynamically downloads what it needs. I would generally recommend at least 1 TB for Classic and 512 GB for Cloudy but you can get away with 512 for Classic and 256 for Cloudy if you use a NAS or external disk to store originals for CLassic or are simply not a heavy user for CLoudy. Classic needs all files to be locally accessible.

You cannot use Sensei in Classic biut you can sync images from Classic to the Adobe cloud and use sensei search in tghe Cloudy desktop app or on mobile operating system. Classic only syncs smart previews to the cloud which do not count towards cloud storage limits but are searched by Sensei just fine. Do realize that the sensei search results do not sync back and are also based on hidden assigned keywords that you cannot see in the cloud based app either.

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