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Are all my Lightroom Classic Photos Backed Up Full Rez in the Cloud?

Forum|Forum|6 months ago
October 2, 2025
3 replies
393 views

Hi

I started with Lightroom Classic 15 years ago and I later added Lightroom Mobile on a few devices.

I have over 18,000 pictures with 1/3 in RAW format and a few videos.

I dont understand why it only occupies 19G on my 1T plan.

If I export them all in JPG it takes over 70G. RAW takes more room.

I suspect that not all my pictures are backed up in the cloud in top resolution.

I need your help understanding the Cloud Sync/Backup

I want to make certain that everything is in the Cloud in the best resolution available.

Thank you in advance.

Windows

Correct answer dj_paige

The Adobe cloud has never been, and is not now, a place where backups of your original Lightroom Classic photos are stored.

The only things you can store in the cloud via Lightroom Classic are smart previews, a lower resolution image than the original image, taking up less space than the original images.

Best you should look into local backup solutions, such as external drives or NAS drives. Or you can use true cloud backup services, one of which is called Carbonite, which I use. Actually, I have backups on external drives, and another set of backups in the cloud using Carbonite.

B

bbraultAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you for the Clarification but it raises 2 questions:

1- What about all the pictures that I take from my iPhone and I later selectively add to Lightroom?

Are the Apple Cloud photos better resolution?
I use my iPhone more and more and my DSLR less and less. Am-I losing storage resolution adding them to Adobe?

2- I am using 19G out of a 1T plan with 20 years and 18,000 photos. What's the point of a 1T plan?

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Photos created by mobile devices will be in the cloud in their full resolution. That also applies to photos from a normal camera, if you would import those photos not into Lightroom Classic and let them sync up to the cloud, but into Lightroom or Lightroom mobile and let them sync down from the cloud into Lightroom Classic.

The question what's the point of the 1TB plan is a valid one. If you only use Lightroom Classic then my answer would be 'there is no point, Adobe just forced you into it to make some more money', but hardly anyone (and you just confirmed that) really only uses Lightroom Classic these days. Everybody has a smart phone, and from time to time we use that to make photos, if only because it was the only camera we had with us at the time. But if your cloud space is only used for smart phone photos, then it will indeed a long time before you used the full 1TB.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

B

bbraultAuthor

Participating Frequently

Underestood.

I would like to move all of my pictures to the Adobe Cloud because I will eventually migrate away from the PC.

How can this be done without losing my edit history, etc...?

Conrad_C

Community Expert

Lightroom Classic has never synced full originals to the cloud. All photos uploaded from Lightroom Classic are Smart Previews, so they’re not full resolution, which may explain the storage usage being lower than expected. Part of the reason it works that way is that Lightroom Classic is designed to use local storage to be the source of all originals, so local storage is always its priority for originals, not cloud storage. It will always download any originals it finds in the cloud, but will never upload originals. For this reason, cloud sync from Lightroom Classic catalog can’t be used as a full quality, full resolution backup.

Full quality originals are always uploaded from any of the cloud-based Lightroom apps, such as Lightroom for macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, and web browsers. This is because the cloud-based Lightroom apps are designed in the opposite way compared to Lightroom Classic: For them, cloud storage is the priority for storing originals. They use local storage as a temporary cache of what’s in the cloud. (The only exception to that is the Local tab in the macOS/Windows version of cloud Lightroom.)

It’s possible that your Lightroom cloud storage contains a mix, if it contains Smart Previews uploaded from Lightroom Classic combined with originals uploaded by any of the cloud-based Lightroom mobile or desktop apps you use. If that’s the case, you can assume all originals in the cloud have been downloaded locally to your computer by the Lightroom Classic catalog that’s synced to the cloud.

If your goal is to have a complete backup of original full-quality images cataloged by Lightroom Classic, you can either set up a full local backup routine for the original images using your own storage drives (which is what I do), or set up a cloud backup using a third-party cloud backup provider.

B

bbraultAuthor

Participating Frequently

You are correct, I have a mix with more and more from my mobile device.
How can I migrate those "low resolution" previews from my PC because I see myself moving away from the PC and towards iOS devices.

dj_paigeCorrect answer

Legend

The Adobe cloud has never been, and is not now, a place where backups of your original Lightroom Classic photos are stored.

The only things you can store in the cloud via Lightroom Classic are smart previews, a lower resolution image than the original image, taking up less space than the original images.

Best you should look into local backup solutions, such as external drives or NAS drives. Or you can use true cloud backup services, one of which is called Carbonite, which I use. Actually, I have backups on external drives, and another set of backups in the cloud using Carbonite.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

As @dj_paige already said, Lightroom Classic does not backup images to the cloud at all. Yes, you can sync selected images from Lightroom Classic to the cloud, but these are synced as smart previews, not originals. Smart previews synced from Lightroom Classic don't count in your cloud space, so that 19GB are probably photos taken with your mobile devices.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

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