Lightroom sync pulling incorrect smart previews

[RascalSnaps]

I'm trying to sync a new catalog to my cloud-based Lightroom library. For some reason, some images are being pulled incorrectly and are being added from a different file with the same filename. Is there a way to fix this easily, or will I have to manually rename every file?

It seems to be creating new files for all the images it's pulling from the cloud, when I don't need it to do that; all the correct files are already on my computer. And because of the files with the same name, I think that's where it's getting confused as it's putting them all in the same folder as one image instead of the two separate images, with the same file name, as it should be. All the files with the same names are obviously in different folders and haven't caused any issues until now.

Is there a way to make it so when I sync, it still uses the original file location? I was hoping to have a year for each catalog, and re-sync my cloud based library to each new catalog each year. But if it will confuse files like this when I sync with cloud-based Lr, I'm not sure that's even entirely possible? I tried to add folders manually but it doesn't let me add them without importing images, and I don't want to import all the images - just tell it where to pull the synced images from.

I'm not sure I've explained it very well, but TLDR; I'm syncing Lr to Lr Classic and it's essentially merging two files with the same names into one. I need the separate images, synced, with the actual files kept in the original folders. I hope someone can make some sense of this and help me out.

Screenshots - 1 shows the incorrect image in the collection. It's from another image in the cloud library with the same filename.

2 shows the image it's taken it from.

3 shows the image it should be.

4 shows the image that's been duplicated into the mobile downloads folder created by Lr Classic when I tried to sync.

[JP Hess]

I am finding it difficult following the logic of what it is you are attempting to do. However, I will point out to you that it is only possible to link a single catalog from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom. You need to organize images within that one catalog into collections by subject or year or whatever category makes sense to you because those collections will become outcomes in Lightroom cloudy. It is possible to further segregate images into other albums in Lightroom cloudy. But, as I have indicated, you can only synchronize from a single Lightroom Classic catalog.

[RascalSnaps]

Hi, thanks for the reply. I'm struggling to explain it in a way that's concise, haha. I know it's only possible for one catalog to be synced to the cloud at a time.

Let me try again... I would like a catalog per year, in Lr Classic. 2022, 2021, 2020 etc etc. then for each year, I will have the relevant collections and collection sets as needed, NOT synced to the cloud. The only catalog I'd want synced to the cloud is the current year; so now 2022. I am trying to implement this into the 2022 catalog I've created, but I've run into the problem of it pulling the wrong files, as shown in the example in the screenshots I provided, wherein lies the problem. 

So when the new year comes round, 2023, I'd want to stop syncing my 2022 catalog and sync my new 2023 catalog instead. But if this issue will crop up every time, I think I may be best just using a single catalog to avoid the hassle; which I didn't really want to do!

[JohanElzenga]

Lightroom Classic can only sync one single catalog, and if you change the catalog that is synced, then Lightroom Classic will download everything that is in the cloud already, as a new original. In other words: if you enable sync of your 2022 catalog, then all photos that are already in the cloud because they were synced from your 2021 catalog, will download into your 2022 catalog as new photos.