"0 B of 1 TB Used"

[nucleon2]

While I'm a longtime user of Lightroom, I confess to having a fundamental misunderstanding of how Lightroom CC, Lightroom Classic CC, Lightroom Mobile, and Creative Cloud Archive all relate to each other. I really have tried to peruse Adobe's literature, but I'm crying Uncle and asking those wiser than I for a distilled explanation.

To wit, I upgraded to Classic without difficulty. I've set various collections to sync with Mobile, and the images do seem to appear there. However, when I check the usage on Classic OR on the web (Lightroom.adobe.com/library/xxxxx), I get the message "0 B of 1 TB used" even though images ARE visible there.

As an aside, I am rather confused as to the difference between storage in "mobile" and "Creative Cloud Archive". Are these the same, or do the images live in different places?

I am grateful for your help...consider it your good deed for the day!

[Jao vdL]

First...When I created the newer catalog from the images in the folders section (/Sam/Pictures), do all corrections made previously propagate to the newer catalog?

They should propagate when you export to a new catalog from Lightroom Classic.

Second...can I create "sub" catalogs to the catalog containing all pics?

Not sure what you mean. When you export a subsection of images to a new catalog, it creates a new catalog file that you can open from Lightroom Classic or migrate to Lightroom CC. There won't be a hierarchical relationship. When you change anything in this new catalog it doesn't propagate to the original catalog it originated from. However, when you migrate this sub catalog into Lightroom CC and you are still syncing in Lightroom Classic from your main catalog, it should sync all changes in Lightroom CC back to Classic to those images.

Third...Can the migration be set to leave the photos on the hard disk exactly where they are? In other words copy the images to the CC but not move them.

No, Lightroom CC makes a full copy of all files into its local storage location. Then it uploads them into the cloud. It can't just refer to the images already there. This is a major problem for many people migrating indeed. After that has happened, it will slowly start deleting the images again depending on what you selected in the Lightroom CC preferences. If those are set to store local copies of everything, it doesn't do anything but if it is set to only store upto a certain amount on your local hard disk, it will start deleting local copies so that it obeys your preference setting.

[nucleon2]

OK, I need to clarify the third one... IF I set the migration to "store local copies" will it leave the images on the hard drive where they now live?

Am I the only one having trouble understanding all this?? 

[Jao vdL]

Yes it will leave them there. You’re one of many many people having trouble with this. It is quite confusing.

[nucleon2]

Adobe says:

What's in a catalog?

A catalog is a database that stores a record for each of your photos. This record contains three key pieces of information about each photo:

1. A reference to where the photo is on your system
2. Instructions for how you want to process the photo
3. Metadata, such as ratings and keywords that you apply to photos to help you find or organize them

So if I create a "clean" catalog by reimporting the images from the hard drive, the edits won't follow.... What are my options here? I want to keep the edits I've done over the years but want to clean up the catalog...for example, doing the fresh import of my /sam/pictures/ folder (on disk) yielded about 10% fewer pics...

[nucleon2]

Ah, OK...I've discovered Import Catalog...we'll see what happens...

[nucleon2]

And that worked sort of, but added a -2 to every picture, invalidating the old catalog folders.....

I'm getting quite frustrated with this!

[Jao vdL]

nucleon2, not sure what you are trying to do. If you export a catalog, you can simply open the new catalog from Lightroom Classic. It should have all the images in it and all the edits. You don't want to reimport it into the same catalog as you will indeed get duplicate images.

[nucleon2]

And that's probably what I did, although I don't have duplicates per se, I have copies that have an additional -2 on the file name. I think I did that by importing the old catalog and specifying import and move, but I'm not sure.

This should NOT be rocket science!!!

[nucleon2]

Fortunately I have Time Capsule running, so I can undo much of the damage I've done...