I have over 60,000 photos and in Lightroom Classic I use a folder structure as follows:1 top level folder called Lightroom Photos9 sub-folders titled things like Events & Activities, People, Places Vacations & Trips, etc.Many many sub-folders inside those such as inside places folders like Arizon, California, Disney World, Napa, etc.Inside those many sub-folders are generally the auto generated date folders so YEAR -> YYYY-MM-DDThe problem I have with Syncing to the cloud are numerous.You can't just sync your library, you can only sync collections. This feels like a huge design flaw for me. I am already managing my photo organization. I don't want to manage it twice.Related to #1 although I can build collections from the top level folder by right clicking and choosing "Create Collection Set", as I add new photos I have to manually update collections. What a giant cluster. Whoever designed this must not actually be a photographer.Once I build collection sets, I have to manually set each lowest level folder to sync. If I have more photos than cloud storage I have to manually toggle dozens of folders.Even if you create a tiered collection set, you can't sync the folder hierarchy. So when I've created collection sets, when I go the the cloud all I see is hundreds of folders like 2015-12-25, 2015-12-26, 2015-12-27. This is useless for me finding photos. I know I want to look at photos from Napa. I have no clue what date I took them. Again, who designed this!?I know Adobe doesn't care about one customer but I'm at the point of moving to a different product. I'm not getting the features I'm paying for. Under the old licensing model I was fine, but now I'm paying over $100 a year and the cloud storage and functionality is unusable because it is so poorly designed.I tried migrating to Lightroom CC but the application is horrifically slow and kept freezing. I'm running a new MacBook pro and the application could barely load previews and it took ages.

I

imahawki

Known Participant

Question

Is Lightroom Classic cloud sync really this useless?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
January 20, 2019
4 replies
981 views

I have over 60,000 photos and in Lightroom Classic I use a folder structure as follows:

1 top level folder called Lightroom Photos
9 sub-folders titled things like Events & Activities, People, Places Vacations & Trips, etc.
Many many sub-folders inside those such as inside places folders like Arizon, California, Disney World, Napa, etc.
Inside those many sub-folders are generally the auto generated date folders so YEAR -> YYYY-MM-DD

The problem I have with Syncing to the cloud are numerous.

You can't just sync your library, you can only sync collections. This feels like a huge design flaw for me. I am already managing my photo organization. I don't want to manage it twice.
Related to #1 although I can build collections from the top level folder by right clicking and choosing "Create Collection Set", as I add new photos I have to manually update collections. What a giant cluster. Whoever designed this must not actually be a photographer.
Once I build collection sets, I have to manually set each lowest level folder to sync. If I have more photos than cloud storage I have to manually toggle dozens of folders.
Even if you create a tiered collection set, you can't sync the folder hierarchy. So when I've created collection sets, when I go the the cloud all I see is hundreds of folders like 2015-12-25, 2015-12-26, 2015-12-27. This is useless for me finding photos. I know I want to look at photos from Napa. I have no clue what date I took them. Again, who designed this!?

I know Adobe doesn't care about one customer but I'm at the point of moving to a different product. I'm not getting the features I'm paying for. Under the old licensing model I was fine, but now I'm paying over $100 a year and the cloud storage and functionality is unusable because it is so poorly designed.

I tried migrating to Lightroom CC but the application is horrifically slow and kept freezing. I'm running a new MacBook pro and the application could barely load previews and it took ages.

This topic has been closed for replies.

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

I think the important question here is "What are you trying to accomplish?" Are you trying to sync images so you can edit them on other machines and mobile devices? Are you trying to have a web-based mirror of your images? It's not entirely clear and these two uses are very different. If the first, realize that Classic will only sync smart previews to the cloud and it will not sync full raw images. Due to the limitations of Lightroom CC (there are many!) you can't really do hierarchies easily and you can't sync smart collections (so no automatic updates of the synced collections/albums). If you are trying to have a web based mirror, you are better off setting up a publish service and publish to a drop box folder or other cloud file service, or a web service such as smugmug. Lightroom CC cloud sync is just not very good for this. It does not scale well beyond a few images as you have found out.

I tried migrating to Lightroom CC but the application is horrifically slow and kept freezing. I'm running a new MacBook pro and the application could barely load previews and it took ages.

You don't want to migrate to CC if you have this many images and are steeped in the Classic model. It misses basically all essential features except editing raw images. It really is much more suitable for people that only live online, never print, and, counterintuitively, rarely share on social media (contrary to Classic where you can use publish services to easily do this, Lightroom CC is terrible at this except on mobile platforms where it is somewhat doable).

That said the slow behavior you describe is not normal. Most people experience it being faster than Classic even without using local storage.

I

imahawkiAuthor

Known Participant

What I'm trying to accomplish is the ability to import photos into a library and then do basic functions like rate, cull, and do basic editing on an iPad pro while doing more advanced full editing on my laptop. It appears from your response that Adobe doesn't want me to do that. It sounds like they've split the product in half, one for people who don't take many photos and one for people who do but don't want any advanced features like cloud syncing. Its a shame that this split is so poorly conceived.

It sounds like Lightroom CC is just not the product for me and it sounds like Lightroom Classic has a really horrible cloud feature set / implementation. I'm not doing the subscription model any longer for the basic functionality of Classic. These platforms should be merged (they should never have been split) and Adobe needs to hire some new architects who understand cloud software. Time to look at Exposure X or Luminar.

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

What I'm trying to accomplish is the ability to import photos into a library and then do basic functions like rate, cull, and do basic editing on an iPad pro while doing more advanced full editing on my laptop. It appears from your response that Adobe doesn't want me to do that.

This is exactly what I do with the cloud integration. I import a bunch of files in Classic. Put them in a collection that I set to sync and then do some rating and basic editing from an iPad which is fast and responsive since it only works on the smart preview. This works just fine. Not sure why you say that Adobe doesn't want you to do that. After I am done, I usually unsync from the cloud those images or only leave my final selection there. What you can't do is sync your entire Classic catalog by default but I never need online access to every image, just what is most pertinent right now.

The only things that are not good in Classic's cloud integration in my opinion are the inability to sync keywords, the inability to have smart collections synced, and the inability to sync full raw:

Lightroom: Keywords don't sync between CC and Classic | Photoshop Family Customer Community

Lightroom: Ability to sync Smart Collections/Albums (Lightroom CC / Mobile / lightroom.adobe.com) | Photoshop Family Cus…

Lightroom Classic: Should be able to Sync full raw files to the cloud, not just smart previews | Photoshop Family Custom…

I

imahawkiAuthor

Known Participant

"Sure LR CC is slow. Everything is done to/from the internet."

Not true. I have LRCC set to keep local copies. I would never go cloud only. So it is working off my local drive. In fact, only about 10% of my photos are even synced because I have 1TB of photos and I'm on the 20 GB plan. I would be willing to upgrade if the app actually functioned.

I

imahawkiAuthor

Known Participant

Perhaps you didn't read that I tried Lightroom CC and it was unusably slow. Also, Lightroom CC is lacking in features compared to Classic. I'm honestly not sure what Adobe is trying to accomplish here with the split application. Lightroom Classic still works fine if you treat it like Lightroom 5/6 etc. But you're now paying a subscription model which is a total ripoff if the features don't work. Why am I paying for cloud storage when I can't use it? Also, why build syncing into Lightroom Classic if it doesn't really work? Does Adobe honestly expect longtime users to go back and keyword tens of thousands of photos in order to migrate?

Just Shoot Me

Legend

You are paying for an upgrade that includes newer features and the Sync part is one of those.

It works fine for what I need and I think many others. For you not so much.

Sure LR CC is slow. Everything is done to/from the internet.

Just Shoot Me

Legend

Maybe the newer Cloud centric version, LR CC, would be a better fit for you.

But it stores all images in your catalog in the clouds, and you can also keep a copy on your local computer.

LR (Original) now called LR Classic was never designed for Cloud based storage in any way. that is neither images or catalog.

Adobe implemented the sharing feature in the best way they could for the price point of the subscription.

If this doesn't suit you then I suggest you turn to some other DAM program whether it be from Adobe or someone else.

Personally I do NOT want to share my complete image library with anyone, let alone place them all on the web/clouds.

I don't need to have Full Time access to any of my images and the ones I want to share with others I use the Sync feature included with LR Classic. Works for my. YMMV.

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