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Question

Cumbersome syncing between LR Classic and LR

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
January 12, 2022
5 replies
1264 views

Because I want to share the best of our photocollection with my family members I want to sync my LR Classic collection (partly) with LR. As so far this has been an hour consuming, cumbersome activity.

First, every collection needs to be converted to a seperate catalog before import to LR. But this is not the worst. After importing in LR and syncing, I really need to clean up a mess in LR CC: sometimes copies of my pictures have been made and thrown in a new location "2021", which I have to undouble with the original photo (I exported as catalog ao with the aim to keep the original locations). Sometimes a virtual copy has been made, I have no clue for what reason. And now, since I use the mask function in LR more and more, I need for every picture to rebuild the masks in LR CC after syncing.

Once LR was a wunderful package. But it seems that an unclear "cloud strategy" of Adobe has introduced a lot of problems not to say maltreatment of LR CC (I do not mention de sync problems itself I have, ao LR being constantly in "still syncing 2 photos mode").

Windows

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J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

For sharing with family I would not use Adobe's cloud gallery sharing thing. It is really not very good for this purpose. You want to use a solution like zenfolio, smugmug, flickr, etc. all of which have very nice publish service plugins in Lightroom Classic. Even things like Apple's iCloud or Microsoft photos, google photos, amazon photos, etc. works better if your family wants to be able to download jpegs they can print etc but those are harder to maintain as you need an export step in between but it is still better for your family with respect to interface. Nobody outside of you can do much with the full originals since they won't render correctly in anything but Adobe apps so just simple jpegs is what you want anyway. Adobe's cloud thing is easy for a quick one-off gallery share and simple 2560 pixel jpeg image download (more than good enough for prints by the way) but it really doesn't work well for big shared libraries of images and any type of hierarchy applied to them. You really want to use something more suited for the task for that.

P

PaulR10Author

Participating Frequently

This is actually the heart of the matter. I did use the FlickR and the LR Classic sync feature for many years. But I stopped it for the following reasons:

1) Me and my familly members were not very enthousiastic about the messy and sometimes slow userinterface of FlickR. Now they run LR apps on their devices and find it a far better environment to scroll and watch our collection. It seemed such a logic architecture to me: Running LR Classic as a kind of central "engine", enabling the other users with their (easier to use and more modern GUI) LR apps as "sattelites". And Adobe apparantly agrees on this offering LR Classic and LR in one package deal!

2) But, part of this package deal is the obligation to take off Adobe cloud storage space. So why then paying extra money to an other cloud service provider? On top of this, having all in one integrated (Adobe) environment seemed the ultimate solution (I guess Adobe cannot be against this).

And this is my frustration/ BIG disappoitment: As you say Jao, and I fully agree, the LR/ Flick-R sync feature is excellent. Exhange of originals, tags, edits, either way, worked flawlessly, No complicated pictures with arrows "previews UP, Full size down, etc." as above in this thread. And again, already almost 10 years ago, it worked flawlessly (I neither had syncing errors as I have now) and this notably with an EXTERNAL service provider.

So I did expect, and I am really flabbergasted, that Adobe, almost 10 years later, would be able to repeat this within its OWN ENVIRONMENT. But nothing seems less true.

May be my remarks on Adobe's Cloud strategy, in my first post are clearer now. All in all I think Adobe has not thought through very well and/ or badly implementerd its Cloud strategy.

ps: It is not my intention to put my full collection in the Cloud, just the ("3 star and more") best part of it.

Jim Wilde

Community Expert

Apples and oranges. Syncing to Flickr is one way, from Lightroom to Flickr only. And it syncs RGB images, not raw images with metadata edits, which allows to sync edit changes without having to sync the image again.

Apples and oranges.

Exactly, Johan. Publishing to Flickr is basically an Export function with an automatic uploader on the back end (which thus requires the process to be redone whenever any changes are made to already published images). It is also almost exclusively a one-way process. It in no way resembles the far more complex real-time syncing function that allows all synced images, all edits to those images, and most metadata changes to the images to be possible from all connected clients, both on the desktop and multiple mobile devices, with automatic real-time syncing of those changes to the cloud server, which are thus immediately available on any other connected device on next launch. The album-sharing functionality was a later addition, and leverages the fact that "re-publishing" is never needed when changes are made, and is slowly being improved with the introduction of the client proofing tech preview and the newer collaborative editing function. Whilst there are still further improvements to hopefully arrive, I already find the current album-sharing system to be superior in most ways to the Flickr publish service (which I stopped using as soon as the cloud album sharing became available), but of course YMMV.

So no, the existing cloud syncing technology was never a part of the Lightroom publish services, it was not introduced until around 2015.

Rob_Cullen

Community Expert

"...to share the best of our photo collection with my family members..."

Have you tested the quality of images that you do share from a Classic Collection.

Although they go to the Cloud Albums as Proxy files with a long edge of 2560px, they are quite suitable for screen viewing on monitors and mobile devices. They download at 2048 pixels long edge which can make 8x10inch prints at 200ppi.

Check 3 images in my sample shared album for viewable quality- https://adobe.ly/2LcgALI

Unless your family need full-size files for a specific reason, the Classic > Cloud sync is mostly quite sufficient.

And- You can only Sync ONE Classic catalog to the Cloud. You can swap to another, but that is problematic.

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.1.1, Photoshop 27.3.1, ACR 18.1.1, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.2 .

P

PaulR10Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks for these inputs which I think are really helpful. First, I was not aware of the difference between "ordinary previews" and smart previews. Since my family members possibly want to make prints, my take was that preview quality would be below standard, but may be the smart previews will be good enough. Btw I haven't invented this (indeed) ugly workaround, it is adviced by LR specialists on the Internet, so I am really happy if this appears not to be necessary at all!

Mr McLion with regard to your "behavior" remark:

1) Let me be clear that my comment on Adobe is driven by the fact that in my eyes Adobe has neglected LR classic a bit, and I am not the only one, but at the end of the day, my worry/ frustration stems from being very passionate about the Adobe products.

2) The reply on my question, having invested a lot time in this syncing flaw (sorry, I still think it is) seemed quite blunt to me. And I am sorry, but if someone undersigns with "Adobe professional" I do not immediately understand he is a co-user trying to help.

Anyhow, many thanks for all input Paul.

DdeGannes

Community Expert

Quote you stated “Adobe professional”

There are no Adobe Professionals posting in the forum some of the users are known as Adobe Community Professionals. You can click on the Avatar to see more info on the person responding.

Adobe staff will have an appropriate designation.

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 15.0.1, PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

You totally misunderstand how to do this. Syncing between Lightroom Classic and Lightroom cloud is actually very easy. You do not need to export anything. All you need to do is enable sync in Lightroom Classic. Then you can choose to sync one or more collections from Lightroom Classic to the cloud. These collections will become albums in Lightroom cloud. That is all there is to it.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

P

PaulR10Author

Participating Frequently

No I do not misunderstand this at all! The way you suggest will only put previews in the Cloud, not the original files. So my family members can only use previews. So be careful with statements like this!

Is there anybody who really can be of help here?

GoldingD

Legend

What is your desired published photo scope?

Do you:

Want to just share the photos on the web for audience to view on computer, smart phone, or iPad, etc?
Want to share the photos so that the audience can print them, either at home or via a print provider?
Want to share the photos so that the audience can edit them in their own post processing software?
All the above?

And do you want:

Every photo in your catalog to be available
Just some photos to be available

F. McLion

Community Expert

And btw. ... there is no LR CC.

There is Lightroom Classic (the well known, "old", local photos and catalog based), and

there is Lightroom (no catalog, photos in cloud).

Here how to reset syncing: https://lightroomkillertips.com/sync-stuck/

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F. McLion

Community Expert

I must be getting something wrong ... or why are you exporting catalogs?

If you want to share a collection from LrC, simply set them to be synced. This automatically makes it available in LR.

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