LR sync creating many duplicate collections after restoring a backup catalog

Report · Dec 16, 2024

After restoring a backup of my catalog, LR sync created duplicate collections in my LR catalog even though identical collections already existed. I can delete the duplicate "From Lightroom" collection without impacting the previous collection already in my catalog. But given the number of catalogs duplicated, it will be a lot of tedious work to check them all given there could be some new ones (not duplicated) mixed in I would want to keep.

Narrated screen video attached.

Ideas for things that could help
1. "skip duplicate" option when syncing from the cloud that would apply to collection sets (or albums as they are called in the cloud)
2. sort collections by created date to help me find ones that LR just created in the "From Lightroom" folder
3. when moving collections to collection set hierarchy, considering supporting these options to the context menu "move to" or "copy/paste".

Related forum post

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/duplicate-collections-and-syncing-issues/td-p/9867931

Report · Dec 16, 2024

You may find that your original Collections are no longer synced and the new one's in the "From Lightroom" collection set are the ones that are synced.
You may also find that the synced ones under "From Lightroom" contain SP's (Smart Previews) for the images that had been imported into LrC and synced to the cloud. These SP's should be up to date except for Keywords and they will be missing all the LrC edit history.
The images in your original collections will have all their edit history but, as I said are probably no longer synced.
Where the new duplicates are SP's from the cloud, they will be in a folder (I think it's called something like 'previews-from-lightroom') which is a subfolder under whatever folder you have set in preferences as the desitination for images downloaded form Lr/Cloud. These SP's will not have physical image files on disk, but that subfolder will be created on disk.
In the case where Lr./Cloud had full size original images, you now have two copies of those images in LrC and on Disk. The new ones from Lr/Cloud will be in the folder specified in preferences for Lightroom downloads.

If all of the above is the case, AND you don't mind having SP's (Smart Previews) in the cloud in place of any full size originals you may have had there before, then here's how I'd get back to normal. If you want to keep full size originals in the cloud it's more complicated so don't follow these steps if that's the case.

Verify that all the new collections have original collections with the same images (the original collections will point to images in their correct folder locations, the new duplicates will point to images in the designated Lighroom download folder)
Un-sync ALL those new collections under "From Lightroom" - DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP
For each now unsynced duplicate collection select all the images, right click on one and click on "go to collection". Assure that they are not in any of your original collections.
With them still selected go to the "All Synced Photographs" special collecton and remove them.
Go back to the un-synced duplicate collection and "remove" all the ones that are SP's and delete the ones that are full size originals after assuring that you have the same images in one of your regular folders as well.
Now re-sync your original collection.

That should get you back where you were. However, also be aware that changes you made in either Lr or LrC after you had created the backup you restored may have special issues - especially if you had deleted or removed images from either Lr or LrC afte the backup was created that now came back to LrC with the restore. Some of these will never-ever synce again. These will casue mismathes where the image is now present in LrC but is not in the cloud and can't be synced with the cloud. It's way too complicated for a forum post (I'm working on a blog article on this very topic but still have some work to do on it). When done it will be posted in www.danhartfordphoto.com under the "Artcles and Blogs" menu.

Report · Dec 16, 2024

Thanks for the detailed message Califdan2! I will have to do some experimenting and checking to see if my original collections are still syncing. I hope so as it will be big pain since those collections are now arranged in a nice hierarchy. And I've already deleted a couple of the new collections "From Lightroom" since the original collection still had the little 2 way sync arrow badging.

Report · Dec 17, 2024

I did some experimenting and found good news - the original collections are still syncing, and have intact history, snapshots and keywords. Photos in original collections still point to images in my local harddrive. After deleting a couple dup collections "from lightroom", I checked that the original collection is still fine and I the source image is still where I expected it to be on my local harddrive.

A couple factors may have helped me minimize the impact. 1) 99.9% of the photos/previews in my adobe cloud got there by turning on sync from a collection of local harddrive images in LrC. 2) After my catalog was corrupted, I had only been using Lr (cloud) so only minimal differences (if any) from the LrC side.

CalifDan2 - appreciate you taking the time to share all those points.

Individual responses/notes to your points below

You may find that your original Collections are no longer synced and the new one's in the "From Lightroom" collection set are the ones that are synced.

>>> All collections are syncing. Using the "wuhoo" collection I showed in the video, I set the color temp of one of the photos to blue (-100) using Lr (not classic). I then waited for the change to sync to LrC and saw the blue image in both versions of the collection in LrC - original one, and the new "From Lightroom" dup. Then from the original LrC collection, I set another photo color temp to be +100 (green/yellow) and observed the change sync to the other 2 collections: dup "From Lightroom" and Lr (cloud).

You may also find that the synced ones under "From Lightroom" contain SP's (Smart Previews) for the images that had been imported into LrC and synced to the cloud. These SP's should be up to date except for Keywords and they will be missing all the LrC edit history.

>>> I believe I'm OK here. Images from 2014 where imported into LrC (well, before it was classic) and still have all history intact and keywords. And I can use the context menu to go to the source image on my local hard drive.

The images in your original collections will have all their edit history but, as I said are probably no longer synced.

>>> Original collections appear to be still syncing as per response in #1

Where the new duplicates are SP's from the cloud, they will be in a folder (I think it's called something like 'previews-from-lightroom') which is a subfolder under whatever folder you have set in preferences as the desitination for images downloaded form Lr/Cloud. These SP's will not have physical image files on disk, but that subfolder will be created on disk.

>>> I recall having challenges waiting for previews in the past so I may have turned off smart previews. I did find a folder called "downloaded-smart-previews" but it was empty. Catalog settings > Previews shows smart preview total size is 5mb.

In the case where Lr./Cloud had full size original images, you now have two copies of those images in LrC and on Disk. The new ones from Lr/Cloud will be in the folder specified in preferences for Lightroom downloads.

>>> My goal next year is to only have full size original images in the cloud for a short term, then move those to my local harddrive(s) - using this youtube workflow as a guide - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WokVNITnEDA. As I do, will watch out for areas where I have (2) copies.

Report · Dec 17, 2024

When I just deleted the "from lightroom" dup - things are still all good from my LrC collection. But...

But the deleted "from lightroom" collection was then removed from the Lr cloud. The photos from the collection are still in the cloud, but I can't find the cloud album they were in. So if I then stop syncing the LrC collection, then re-start syncing that collection, the album eventually reappears in the Lr cloud in the root level (unfortunately not where I had it originally in the Lr cloud).

I've attached a narrated video that shows this below.

Pain Points

Cannot remove "Sync with Lightroom" from multiple images, required to do individually for each collection
On the confirmation dlg "stop syncing this collection?" if I choose to not show the dlg again, can I get it to show again later???
Cannot "start sync with Lightroom" for multiple images, required to do individually for each collection.

Changes that could help speed up this repair process

Support multi-selection operations to start/stop sync of collections
on the confirmation dialog, include information with user to clarify - "if you turn this off, you can't turn it back on again" OR "you can turn this back on again later via x setting"

Report · Dec 18, 2024

After thinking about the current situation, I found my primary goal is to just get the duplicated collections out of my "From Lightroom" folder so I can focus on new images.

The most simple way to reach this goal would be to just move the dup collections into their own "dup collection set". This would clean out my "From Lightroom" folder and not mess up my cloud albums and hierarchy or my LrC collections. And save me hours of time on the previous correction plan to delete, stop sync, restart sync, moving albums back into my hiearchy. I can still use the previous correction plan in the future if it causes problems or bugs me.