• Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
    Dedicated community for Japanese speakers
  • 한국 커뮤니티
    Dedicated community for Korean speakers
Exit
0

How to sync mobile download file to cloud?

Participant ,
Aug 06, 2022 Aug 06, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Hi, I may know part of the answer to this question but I want to get advice before I try. I've had an Adobe subscription for few years now using LR mobile on my iPad and LR CC and LRC on my PC. I use the "cloud" as the master environment where all my collections in LRC are synced to my albums in the mobile/cloud environment. Recently I went through a large culling of images in the mobile environment deleting a few thousand images, but noticed that LRC mobile download files on my PC have kept the files I deleted in the mobile environment. These files are getting too big and I am running out of SSD space. I would like to synchronize my LRC mobile download files to the cloud, getting rid of all the unwanted images I deleted from the cloud. What is the safest procedure to achieve this goal?

TOPICS
Windows

Views

213

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines

correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Expert , Aug 06, 2022 Aug 06, 2022

Don't do that (it wouldn't work anyway)! For future reference, the best way to delete images from both LrC and the cloud is to do it from LrC (if you delete images from any of the cloud apps, the original copy in LrC is merely unsysnced, not deleted). But deleting synced images from LrC will also remove them from the cloud....but if you prefer to do the culling from one of the cloud apps, don't delete them, instead just flag them as rejected. That reject flag will sync to LrC, where you can filt

...

Votes

Translate

Translate
Participant ,
Aug 06, 2022 Aug 06, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Sorry for mixing terminology. My question should read, "these LRC mobile download FOLDERS are getting too big, and I want to synchronize them to only contain the images in my albums in the mobile environment/images stored in the cloud".

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Participant ,
Aug 06, 2022 Aug 06, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

OK, for example, would this be correct procedure?:

 

1) backup my existing LRC mobile download folders on external drive, I have three folders including the mobile downloads.irdata folder.

 

2) delete the mobile downloads.irdata folder. I assume then that LRC will automatically start to regenerate this folder. Is this correct? If so, it will only re-populate with the images I have in the cloud.

 

3) finally, delete my backups on the external drive once I've verified that my re-generated mobile downloads.irdata folder contains same number of images as on the cloud.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Participant ,
Aug 06, 2022 Aug 06, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

On further reading it seems that deleting the downloads.irdata folder is probably a very bad idea as the image files stored on HD by LRC are treated as the master copies and thus deleting downloads.irdata would cause all my cloud images to be deleted too. Would it work to simply uninstall LRC, delete all the mobile download folders and then re-install LRC and re-sync it with the cloud? There must be a solution here!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Aug 06, 2022 Aug 06, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Don't do that (it wouldn't work anyway)! For future reference, the best way to delete images from both LrC and the cloud is to do it from LrC (if you delete images from any of the cloud apps, the original copy in LrC is merely unsysnced, not deleted). But deleting synced images from LrC will also remove them from the cloud....but if you prefer to do the culling from one of the cloud apps, don't delete them, instead just flag them as rejected. That reject flag will sync to LrC, where you can filter for the rejected photos then delete them from LrC, and thus from the cloud as well.

 

For now, though, you have to try to find all the images in the Mobile Downloads folder which are no longer synced if your goal is to delete them completely. One way to do that would be to select all the images in that folder (both synced and unsynced) and choose some way to mark them, such a by assigned an unused colour label to them all (though you could use other means such as flags or a keyword).

 

Let's assume for now that you don't use the Blue colour label in your catalog, so after selecting all the images in that folder (and using the Grid view, not the Loupe view) then press the 9 key on the keyboard. That will assign that blue label to all the images in that folder (make sure that "Selected Photos" is highlighted near the top of the Metadata panel).

 

When that's done, select the All Synced Photographs special collection in the Catalog panel, clear all active filters, then use the Library Filter Bar, Attribute option, and select the Blue colour label. That will list all the images in the Mobile Downloads folder which are currently synced with the cloud, so then pressing the 9 key again will remove the Blue colour label from them (they'll all disappear from the Grid because they no longer match the filter criteria, so then turn off the Filter).

 

Now if you select the Mobile Downloads folder again, and again filter for all Blue-labelled images, the Grid will then only contain the unsynced images. At that point you can select them all and delete them from LrC if that is your preference. Just be very carful to make sure that you are only deleting the unsynced images from that folder, and that is what you wanted to do....there's no "undo" after deleting images from LrC.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Participant ,
Aug 06, 2022 Aug 06, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thanks, will look into this. Adobe should have integrated LRC better into the cloud environment. Why they didn't defeats me.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Aug 07, 2022 Aug 07, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thanks, will look into this. Adobe should have integrated LRC better into the cloud environment. Why they didn't defeats me.

 

IMO it is part of Lightroom Classic's ethos and intention to keep the cloud and mobile apps somewhat at arm's length from the LrC desktop application and the local file system storage. And there is Lightroom for those who want the mobile apps, Lr desktop app and browser app all completely unified - necessarily therefore going without e.g. folders as a form of organisation. There is no thought AFAICT of ever synchronising such matters to cloud, where they would have no meaning. That's not just a practicality - it's a basic mismatch.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Participant ,
Aug 07, 2022 Aug 07, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I can see that. To be fair we should be somewhat thankful for the degree of synchronization with the cloud environment implemented in LRC as it provides a usable bridge between the two platforms, that I personally make use of extensively. Thanks to this discussion I now know how to better handle the two from a file management perspective.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Participant ,
Aug 07, 2022 Aug 07, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Great tips and suggestions to resolve my issue. Seems clear and straightforward. Many thanks!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Participant ,
Aug 07, 2022 Aug 07, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

By the way, before I embark on this suggested HD sanitization effort what is the best way to make a backup of all my synced images just in case I mess up? Can I make a backup of the All Synced Photographs collection? If so, how? Thanks.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Participant ,
Aug 07, 2022 Aug 07, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

BTW, probably figured this out myself. I decided to export all files in the "All Synced Photographs" catalog as originals to separate backup folder.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Participant ,
Aug 07, 2022 Aug 07, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

LATEST

Thanks Jim. This worked like a charm! Marked as correct answer now.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines