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Participant
April 9, 2023
Question

Syncing changes to desktop

  • April 9, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 328 views

I'm brand new to Lightroom. I installed LR and uploaded many photos from my desktop and would prefer to edit them in LR, but none of the changes I make are reflected back on the photos I have in my desktop. This is important because I share photos with my daughter's school over One Drive. I don't mind uploading the photos to the cloud, but how do I sync back to my desktop? Or should I just throw in the towel and revert to LRC to keep everything on my desktop?

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3 replies

F. McLion
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 9, 2023

You could also share an album (collection in LrC) and allow download of the jpg.

That works with both solutions. The main point is if you'd like to have the originals local or in the cloud.

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DClark064
Inspiring
April 9, 2023

LR and LRC are "non-destructive" editors.  The edits you make to an image file using LR or LRC are not visible in the original file.  LR keeps a list of all the edits you make to the image file in its database, and the edits are shown in LR but the original file is not modified (it's non-destructuve).  If you want a file that includes all the edits you must "Export" the file.  When you export you make a new file that shows all the edits.

 

Participant
April 9, 2023

Thank you all for your responses.  This helps me understand the way Lr works.  
So to streamline, I could import all photos into Lr directly from my camera card, and then when I'm done editing all of them, I could export the entire folder to my desktop.  I'd prefer to have the finished product backed up on my desktop than the originals.  Let me know if you would suggest a differnet path.

Ian Lyons
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 9, 2023

If your preference is to have the entire folder of edited files on your desktop (or any other local disk), then I'd stick with Lr Classic. 

Ian Lyons
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 9, 2023

The files you've retained on your desktop are not used as working files. The files that Lr Desktop accesses for editing are located in the Adobe cloud. If you require edited versions of the files on your desktop, then you'll need to export them from Lr Desktop.