Yet another question about "you can only sync a single lightroom catalog" for a travel workflow

[nutmix5]

I have a main workstation with my catalog with 1TB of phots.  It has LR classic (version 7). It has a few collections synced to cloud, primarly as a lazy way to get photos onto an ipad to show to builders etc. I found the sync thing usless for sharing with family becase I have may be 10,000 collections, and would have to share each one individually, and send an email with 10,000  links which is crazy.

I am traveling through africa with a temporary laptop, and want to sync my new pics so my family and friends can see them as I go.  I just installed LR classic version 8 on it.   I could of course go through the tedious steps of uploading the photos to my zenfoio account each day, but dont have the time and bandwidth on my travels, and would rather do this when they are properly edited when I get back home (the laptop is poor for editing as the image is too small on the screen to see edits properly).

If I try to enable syncing, I get a distrubing message which starts: "you can only sync a single lightroom catalog... would you like to sync this catalog instead"?  This shoulds bad.

I read the "more info" link, which didnt really give me any inforation about what concequences this might have down the road.

I read a lot of posts saying never do this - it deleted work and photos etc. I also read that this has been "imporoved" in LR 8.

1) If I sync my travel catalog, what happens exactly? I would be happy if it deleted all my existing synced files, and just synced the new ones.  Anyway, I assume that it will some how put the old synced images onto my laptops LR classic, although this would be odd as I would have though this only work with the mobile version.

2) When I get home, and I import my africa photos into my main machine (and try to import my edits), and want to sync that main catalog again, its going to download the exising synced files from the temporary laptops catalog  (i.e. the originally synced files plus the africa trip), so when I want to share the africa photos again, I will actually have many duplicate synced files (assuming it always copes first).  I.e. what happens if you change the catalog you sync, then change it back to the original one?

Then I ahve the issue that when I fire up LR on my machine at home, it will be running version 7, which may have a different idea of what to do with cross catalog synced files.

Anyone have any suggestes based on trying this?

If Adoble allowed you to sync multuple catalogs it would me much easier.   Or the option to delete (aka unsync) the currently synced ones to avoid duplication and coruption down the road.

I consiered using the cut down browser based  mobile version of LR whilst traveling, but then I will lose all the editing work when I later import the original images into my desktop LR when I get home, so this is a non starter.  Also you only get 20GB, and ill probably shoot more than this in the next 2 weeks, I have no idea if you can get it to use the lossy copies which LR classic uses, or can only upload the originals, and if there are any options  of getting edits to work on the oriingals when they are imported back into the main catalog later.

I have no idea how to do a travel workflow for a LR classic user, and woul not dream of experimenting or trying options for fear of corrupting or losing my work in my main machine (which repreents 20 years of work)

[Jao vdL]

You can only sync from a single Classic catalog to creative cloud. If you change this to another Classic catalog, it will delete all the synced data that is already in the cloud, so you probably don't want to do this.

One trick is to only use Classic on your home machine and have that catalog sync. Than on your travel machine use Lightroom CC (the port of the mobile app to desktop OS). This will sync all the images you load in it to the creative cloud and when you get home, your Classic installation will already have all your images downloaded. This presupposes you have significant bandwidth where you are traveling and have enough storage in CC to store all the new raw files. If not, don't try this as it will just be frustrating.

Second trick is to copy the main catalog and previews you are using to an external SSD disk. You don't need to copy all the raw files. You can get tiny 1TB USB 3 or USB-c disks for little money nowadays that are fast and very convenient. Have this main catalog set to sync. Use this on your travel computer and import to it in Classic and keep it syncing the images you want to sync. Then when you get home, copy the catalog and new images back to your main computer and you can keep running. You can also simply run this main catalog always from the external regardless whether you are on the main machine or on a laptop.

[JohanElzenga]

@Jennifer34502269xogp I know you mean well, but do you really have to revive a five years old thread to post something like this? Just post it as a new thread if you want to do this as general advise for anyone who may read it. If you posted it as an answer to a question in this thread, then do check the date of such thread before you answer.

[Earth Oliver]

Looks like the "user" is probably a gpt bot of some sort. 

[JohanElzenga]

You could be right. Or somebody who used ChatGTP to create the post. That was what I thought.