Confused: Creative Cloud Files vs Lightroom CC Photos

I recently got very confused and had to reinstall Lightroom Classic. I had previously imported photos to other folders in the past, with a Creative Cloud account showing up in the Lightroom library too! This software is great, but can leave anyone flustered if they don't keep current with the ever-evolving Adobe programs. 

I got so fed up, in fact, I started from scratch by: (1) storing images in an external flash drive as backup, (2) deleting the folders on my Mac under Pictures (all the Irac, Helper, Data, etc. files), and (3) uninstalling and reinstalling Lightroom Classic to get fresh folders without duplicates.

I will then implement the order and organization of creating new albumns---one at a time---from the external drive and the Creative Cloud files. If I had just left everying in the disorderly mess that it was, I would have gone crazy.

scottonian  wrote I've got the Photography Plan that I use for editing family / trip photos - it's been great. But I'm confused about "where" my photos are stored. when I open Lightroom CC,

Are you using LR CC the Cloud based program or the Traditional LR CLASSIC CC. 2 Totally different programs.

Although you can install LR CC (Cloud based version) with the Photography plan you still only get 20GBs of cloud storage space.

If you REALLY want to use LR CC (Cloud) then you should be using the LR CC plan that gives you 100GBs of Cloud Storage.

Otherwise uninstall LR CC and install LR Classic CC.

These are different worlds and Adobe needs to unify those. It becomes appearent for Adobe Rush where it is admitted in one of the posts there.

Creative Cloud can be used to share everything like a drop box. It gets synced to your PC wherever you choose to do that, the default is down deep in your user files. Unless LRCC, you can not switch off this syncing.

You can not transfer from that cloud to the LRCC cloud through the air, only via saving and uploading.

Lrcc is fine for jpegs and raws, and for most video. But if you had many clips that you have assembled in Premiere or else and want to share that control file, then you need to do it via the creative cloud. Likewise, if you had photos in your Premiere project, you can not share those via LRCC. I guess that is not your scope so it is of little importance. If you subscribe to a video plan, you get something like 100Gbyte storage. This storage Volume is also visible in LRCC then. Should you be interested in video, then this is a smart way to increase your LRCC storage volume.

Creative Cloud Files is a kind of Dropbox-like folder that you get when you have a Creative Cloud account. It's separate from Lightroom CC cloud storage, so adding a photo to it won't make that photo available in Lightroom CC.

If you are referring to Lightroom CC (the cloud-based version), and if you imported your images using that version of Lightroom, then the images are stored in the cloud. Depending on how you had that version configured on the old computer, it is possible that copies were also being stored on the hard drive of the old computer. But I don't know how you had Lightroom CC configured on the old computer or on the new computer as far as that's concerned. If you are referring to Lightroom CC, then when you go to Lightroom.adobe.com you are looking at the same images that you imported to Lightroom CC. The exact same images because that website is pointing to the same cloud location.

Since you have the Creative Cloud photography plan, you can also install Lightroom Classic CC which enables you to import images and store them on your local hard drive(s) and choose to share collections of images to Lightroom.adobe.com. Those collections will be smart previews rather than full-sized images. You will still be able to edit them and share them. The advantage of doing this is that these smart preview collections will not impact your cloud storage allocation.

Using both programs provide you with a lot of flexibility to manage your cloud storage allocation frugally.

[ moved from Adobe Creative Cloud to File Hosting, Syncing, and Collaboration]