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RichardSwe
Participating Frequently
August 27, 2018
Question

Will this hybrid workflow work? -- LrCC and Lr Classic

  • August 27, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 667 views

I'm a long time (amateur) user of Lr Classic, but keeping my eye on Adobe's direction with cloud based LrCC. From what I've read, LrCC is aimed at casual photographers. I think Adobe will continue to grow LrCC towards that demographic rather than professionals or serious amateurs. So I'm doubtful that LrCC will move toward providing the in-depth capabilities of Lr Classic, but I can be hopeful meanwhile.

But lately I'm spending quite some time looking into LrCC. I understand the repeated warnings to not try to go forward syncing between LrCC and Lr Classic. It looks possible, but lots of knowledgeable people warn against it. OK, I'll try to not go there for now.

My drivers for looking at LrCC are:

  • for use while traveling -- to review, cull and perhaps make initial edits. I currently don't/won't travel with a laptop PC. I will often take an iPad.
  • increase the ease of creating albums for my wife to have on her iPhone/iPad -- e.g. grandkids or vacations. LrCC still seems barely OK for exporting for this purpose, but I can learn to make it work.

My drivers for staying connected with Lr Classic are:

  • ease & familiarity with editing photos while sitting at my desktop PC
  • strong path to preparing and exporting photos for printing and for LCD screen frames
  • probably several things I don't yet realize I like in Lr Classic but can't do in LrCC.

That said, I'm thinking of the following workflow approach -

  • Migrate Lr Classic catalog to LrCC, just so "it's all there" and to open possible learning with known photos I already have.
  • Do only minor editing in LrCC. Use my desktop PC for this mostly because its easier than trying to use a touch screen iPad to edit
  • When I'm ready for in-depth editing of a set of photos, export the full size RAW files to my PC, import them into Lr Classic and proceed -- (not trying to use syncing).
  • Use Lr Classic for exporting with in-depth control of export dimensions, jpg quality, dpi control and destination folder or online print service -- (all almost unavailable in LrCC)

Does this sound reasonable? Any pitfalls I'm not seeing yet?

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

DdeGannes
Community Expert
DdeGannesCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 27, 2018

Migrate photos and videos from Lightroom Classic CC to Lightroom CC

See additional info info from Adobe In the above link.

Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.3; PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.
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RichardSweAuthor
Participating Frequently
August 27, 2018

Yes -- thanks DdeGannes . I've been reading through that. I'd take my time before initiating this nuclear option.

JP Hess
JP Hess
Inspiring
August 27, 2018

You can do it that way if you wish. However, if you have the Creative Cloud photography plan you only have 20 GB of cloud storage. Migrating your catalog could cause some frustrations trying to keep everything synchronized. My suggestion would be to NOT migrate your catalog but just synchronize. That way the collections that you synchronize from Classic will just be smart previews and will cut into your 20 GB storage allotment. Then you could import directly into Lightroom CC as well. Those images would be full-sized images in the cloud and could be synchronized with Classic and downloaded to Classic. So you could work with them in Classic as well and compare the two programs. The images that you import to Lightroom CC will cut into your 20 GB storage allotment, but you could better manage how you use that allotment that way. The smart previews are big enough for most purposes, and the edits that you perform on those who will affect the master images in your Classic. Just a thought. Others might disagree, but that's how I would suggest you try it.

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RichardSweAuthor
Participating Frequently
August 27, 2018

Thanks Jim --

I understand my current 20 Gb limit and the additional $ option for 1 Tb cloud storage.

Part of my learning here -- and trying to keep this simple -- I think your synchronize suggestion means...

  • turn on synchronize in Lr Classic. This will sync all Lr Classic photos as smart previews up to LrCC (I think).
  • then create collections in Lr Classic. I can set these to sync both ways with LrCC, (eventually) ending up with full size images on both ends. (I think I need to consciously set up this sync linkage in Lr Classic for each collection I want syncing.)
  • the photos not in collections would remain as full-sized on my desktop/Lr Classic and as smart previews in LrCC.
    • any edits of the smart previews in LrCC would not sync back to Lr Classic -- i.e. they're not linked/syncing. I think this is one of the ways syncing can become confused.
    • I also think there are other ways to get things confused -- Adobe is so emphatic about not going down this synchronization path. I don't need to chase down all those paths to confusion. My question in just about finding a workable hybrid approach.

If it's simple, let me know if I have parts wrong. Thanks.

JP Hess
JP Hess
Inspiring
August 27, 2018

No, that's not quite right. The only images from Classic that will be synchronized with Lightroom CC are those images that are put into standard collections and then those collections are checked to be synchronized. Those collections will then be synchronized with Lightroom CC, and only smart previews will be synchronized.

Lightroom CC can be configured so that when you import images directly to it they will also be downloaded to your Lightroom Classic CC. In that case you will have full sized images in both programs. And all images that are in Lightroom CC are supposed to be synchronized and available on all mobile devices including cell phones, tablets, etc. Any changes made on any device are supposed to affect the master image wherever it is stored.

I haven't played with Lightroom CC on any mobile devices. I have the two programs installed on the same computer and have played with them on that computer. My experience is that doing it the way I'm doing it does not work well (and Adobe has indicated as such) and therefore synchronization "might" work sometimes but probably won't in many cases. And that has been my experience. I am not a fan of Lightroom CC for a number of reasons. I much prefer Classic. I experiment with Lightroom CC from time to time, but feel that Classic is much more in line with what I need.

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