Need some tips on managing files between LR and LRC . . .

[Hokenpoke]

I would appreciate any insights into how I can optimize this particular workflow:

I like to use LR on my MBP and iPad as a way to strip photos off a card and do some initial work on them - culling, starring, and light editing. I prefer to use LRC on my powerhouse machine at home to maintain my legacy catalog and because I have long ago worked out reliable storage and backup protocols. I organize the photos on my LRC-linked NAS by year and then sub-folder by subject or event.  This works well for me and want to maintain that as the basic organizing principle. So . . .

I understand that the full file I load up to the cloud is synced back to my LRC machine and I can access those files directly or more easily via the (cloud) LR collection that I create when doing the inital import into LR.  What I want to do, is to move the collection and the full file data into one of my year folders on the NAS and then have that same folder sync back to (the same) collection in LR. The objective in all of this is that there is only a single source copy of the raw data which is organized, stored, and backed up per my usual methods and that the collection in the cloud contains only the smart preview, thereby preserving space.

The only way I can think of to do this is to move the files, once synced back to LRC, onto the NAS, organized as usual THEN remove the files from the cloud THEN create a collection in LRC, add the organized files and sync this collection back to the cloud.

Is there an easier or more direct way to do what I have in mind? Any advice would be appreciated!

[Rob_Cullen]

The simplist method I have seen is-

-Turn off sync on the collection(s) you want to preserve. (Select the images)

-Remove the (selected) images from the 'All Synced Photographs' special collection. This will remove them from the cloud, and clear the online space that was occupied by the images.

-Re-sync the collection(s) which contain the images. This will cause a smart preview version of the images to be uploaded to the cloud.

If you have not set your NAS as the download location for cloud files in Preferences/Sync, then you will need to manually move files that were downloaded in the folder panel of Lr-Classic.

[Hokenpoke]

Thank you - I'll give that a try. I have another sync issue to try and resolve first.