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ricky_8833
Participant
May 5, 2025
Answered

Why are my SYNCED images from laptop showing up as the wrong images on my desktop?

  • May 5, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 392 views

My situation is, sometimes i'm on the road so I need to upload photos to my laptop and edit. Other times i'm at home and edit on my desktop (much faster). I need the work flow to transfer back and forth so i sync my collections i create to edit on both computers and the history of the edits trasnfer back and forth via sync. 

 

The problem i'm running into is, I've synced 1 collection from laptop to desktop lrC. I have a bout 5 different collections synced under my From Lightroom tab. For some reason, on this new collection i synced, it replace about 25 photos with photos from another already synced collection. It shows the correct photos in the collection on my laptop, but on the desktop it shows a portion of photos from another collection instead. 

 

Attached are screenshots, you can tell which photos go with what. The "orange" photos belong in a totally different collection from a different date. But they replaced the highlighted photos from laptop below and they're no where to be found on my desktop. 

 

Correct answer JohanElzenga
quote

My workflow is: Upload photos to a collection under a collection set. Once uploaded on the left side of the collection set I hit the sync button. Top right of lightroom under cloud storage it shows photos syncing. This enables me to sync the collection, along with any edits i've done to the photos in this collection, from one computer to the other.


By @ricky_8833

 

Nope, not from one computer to another computer, but from one computer to the cloud. And that's where things go wrong when you try to sync the cloud to the other computer. Lightroom Classic can only sync one single catalog with the cloud, not two catalogs on two computers. So when you enable sync on the second computer, you automatically disable sync on the first computer. This can create unexpected downloads, because the new computer may see the same images as new images and start downloading them. This could well be the explanation for what you are seeing.

 

1 reply

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
May 5, 2025

The problem i'm running into is, I've synced 1 collection from laptop to desktop lrC

 

There is no "sync" from one PC to another PC with LrC. Perhaps this explains the problem you are having, things are not synced. Please explain further what you mean and exactly how you did this.

 

The fact that 1234 doesn't match is irrelevant, the numbers are not what is important here, it is just a sequence number. The file names are important and so you need to display the file names in the grid.

R
ricky_8833Author
Participant
May 5, 2025

My workflow is: Upload photos to a collection under a collection set. Once uploaded on the left side of the collection set I hit the sync button. Top right of lightroom under cloud storage it shows photos syncing. This enables me to sync the collection, along with any edits i've done to the photos in this collection, from one computer to the other. It's just syncing smart previews. My raws are on a harddrive I use from one computer to the next. That's exactly how I do it. If theres a correct way I can have a workflow where what I do on one computer, updates lightroom on the other, please let me know! 

As for file names, it's showing the same file name on the "orange" photo as the orignal photo in this collection. So it's acting as if it has the same name but it is not. 

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
May 5, 2025

There is no method to sync photos from one computer to another computer with LrC.

 

So whatever your concerns are, I think the problem is that you are expecting something to happen that the software doesn't actually do.

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