P: Should be able to Sync full raw files to the cloud, not just smart previews

[Jao vdL]

Lightroom Classic, like Lightroom CC (what a confusion this naming causes!) should be able to upload full raw files to the cloud and not just smart previews. This is clearly a missing feature. This is especially handy if you mainly use Lightroom Classic because of its much more powerful editing and ability to actually print but would love to edit the full image from other machines.

[tjeerd paulj59535807]

The main reason you want this is so you can open and edit a full res image from your LR classic library in a iOS image editing app, like Affinity Photo, for retouching on an iPad..

Importing your raw images twice or importing them in Lightroom CC to get this to work is not a workflow but a messy workaround.

You should be able to sync a collection in Lightroom Classic in full res to mobile without doing these kind of steps when Adobe gets your money every month.

[Tyrven]

Personally, I'm fine having Lightroom CC work off of the Smart Previews. They're smaller, faster, and high enough resolution to do nearly all edits. Given this, I have two primary concerns with the inability to upload the full-resolution RAW files to the cloud:

1. Backup: This doesn't allow Lightroom CC to act as a backup. For this, I use Amazon Drive (which supports unlimited RAW files). But that introduces its own headaches. It'd be easier if this were all handled by the Adobe cloud since that infrastructure is already in place.
2. Publishing: This prevents Lightroom CC from sharing/exporting full-resolution copies. This is a big issue since I often (prefer to) do publishing from Lightroom CC, since it integrates nicely with other apps.

Ideally, for me, this would be setup as follows:

1. Each Collection has the option to upload Smart Previews or full-resolution RAW files.
2. By default, Lightroom CC downloads (and caches) the Smart Previews for doing edits.
3. When sharing/exporting, Lightroom CC gives the option to download the full-resolution RAW file from the cloud. Obviously, this option would necessitate a network connection.

I could also imagine the ability to "Download full-resolution RAW image" for any one photograph—or even an entire album if using the "Store Locally" option—if someone needed to do e.g. pixel-level editing. Personally, I've never encountered a scenario where the Smart Preview wasn't sufficient for doing edits on my iPad, but the type of photography (and edits) I do may not have yet pushed the boundaries of the Smart Previews. 

Jeremy

[Julio.Bouza]

How frustrating that after  2 years of this post, Adobe has still NOT enabled this functionality.

I have been a Aperture user on the Mac for several years until of course Apple decided several years ago not to support Aperture and now with Catalina out in the public I got semi stuck.  All my photos were stored locally as well as on the Apple Photo iCloud until Apple completely hosed the Photo application and my library got to big that I gave up on the Apple Photo Application.

So I decided to give Adobe a try and it has been somewhat frustrating so far with this lack of functionality.  The way I see it is:
1.  Lightroom Classic has all the bells and whistles which users leverage to manage their photo library .
2.  Lightroom CC is a dumb user version and not as robust.
3.  Lightroom CC has full integration with their cloud infrastructure.
4.  Yet Lightroom Classic does not?
One would have thought Adobe would have taken advantage when Apple gave up on the Aperture user base that also want to have their full resolution photos stored on the cloud, that they would enable this functionality in Lightroom Classic.  But NOOOOOO why would they want to do that?  I would have no challenges paying for 1TB or higher to have all my library stored in the cloud in additional to having a local copy.  At this rate I can see Adobe giving up on the Lightroom Classic user like Apple did with Aperture and pushing everyone to their less robust Lightroom CC and that would be a shame.  What a bad decision and clearly they are not listing to their user base; go figure. 

[TimJWatts]

The ridiculous this is that the Cloud already supports everything required. It's just LR Classic that doesn't.

I used a plugin to list out all the filenames in a collection (usually my 2 stars and above), I run that through a perl script on my Mac to symlink the original files to a new directory, then I upload everything in the new (temp) directory through LR Cloud. Which recognises the photos exists in the preview version and replaces them, without duplicating any metadata, in the cloud with the originals.

It works but it's a silly faff to go through when LR Classic could just have a knob to say "sync the originals for this collection".

[Julio.Bouza]

Is even worse that for users that want to use Lightroom Classic as their photo management tool but ALSO want to backup their photos in the cloud with full resolution either we have to create dumb work arounds OR manage the photos also in Lightroom CC; is dumb as hell.  Add to the mix that trying to sync photos from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom CC doesn't sync up all the data, like faces, etc.  I would understand if it was 2 softwares from different vendors but is the same company.  SIGH.  Enabling the darn full resolution sync to the cloud can't be THAT difficult especially in 2019 lol

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Images imported into Lightroom Classic CC should fully sync between Classic and CC/Mobile. Not just the smart previews. The full images. While I understand how syncing the metadata/previews could be helpful it also means exporting from multiple locations is not possible when ingested via Classic which is the only Professional Grade product.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I vote for Classic to sync original files to CC (not smart previews); or at least provide the option.  I have already rated images in Classic and I only want to sync the rated photos to CC (to save space, time and bandwidth).  I add the rated photos to a collection and sync.  Since it only uploads the smart previews, I have to manually import the rated photos.  This process requires a ridiculous amount of time: manually write down the file names on a piece of paper of the selected images inside of Classic, then open CC to Import, and then browse to the computer folder and manually pick those individual files for import.  The addition of this feature would save several frustrating hours for a step that otherwise would take seconds (or a default option via preferences).

[Rob_Cullen]

We may never see 'Full-size' files synced to Cloud from Lr-Classic.
As a workaround to reduce that "ridiculous amount of time" create an Export Preset in Classic!- (saves the writing of file names!)

-Export to a specific Folder,
-Export as DNG Full-size,
-In Post Processing : Open in other application/App = {Lightroom.exe}

When Lightroom opens-
- [Ctrl+Shift+i] will open the Lightroom Import panel - choose the File/s individually or from the Folder (set in the Classic Export).

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

This is an excellent suggestion, but I'd love more details or step by step on how to achieve it... do you know of any guide (written, video, etc) that covers this? or perhaps you could make one for internet fame 😄

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I use Lightroom Classic and I also have some b/w sky images where smooth gradients are so compressed that they do not look very good (they look quite bad) when they are synced to the cloud. 

So it would be great for selected fotos to be synced with a higher quality 🙂

[Marieke Feenstra]

Hi, where should I put my Lightroom CC sync folder? I have it set in Dropbox, but that does not work well. Any suggestions?

[Califdan2]

I put mine under the same master folder where all my other images are.  

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Definitions: LR = Lightroom, LRC = Lightroom Classic, & AC = Adobe Cloud

As of now, in order to get photos to AC, you have to put the photos in LR. Then, to edit them (comprehensively), you needs to sync them in LRC using Smart Collections (??). Then after you edit them in LRC, they DO NOT go back to the AC unless you manually put them there (a process that is extremely confusing); thus they are stuck on your hard drive taking up space that you do not have and then you cannot share them (if it is possible, it is not intuative).

There needs to be a way for LRC to communicate DIRECTLY with AC, edit the photos, and then to save the photos DIRECTLY to the cloud without jumping through whoops, using two apps to get ONE JOB done.

[Antoine HLMN]

Hi Jerry,

Your situation is another example how LR does not respond to a photographer's need. But Adobe has already said it over and over: don't expect any Cloud update do LRC, so you're stuck with what's there: Classic for editing and cataloging.

However: When you edit them in LRC, the edits DO get synced to AC (if you haven't unsynced them, obviously).

So why not this workflow:

1. Import through AC (being mobile or web) in order to have the full res files in AC
2. Wait for LRC to sync all those image -yes, this takes ages- and there is no alternatives yet
   
3. Edit, sync and organize in LRC

So you have best of both worlds: full res in AC and full control in LRC

(note, this is roughly my workflow when I'm on the field, but here are still lots of design issues they need to deal with. So basically, I'm not using LR on the field anymore)

Hope it helps 😉

[jeffk1964]

Allow Lightroom Classic to sync the original files, instead of smart previews.  This feature is so obvious and its absence is very frustrating.  The workarounds are unsatisfactory and should be unnecessary.

The problem is compounded by the removal of a feature in Lightroom Desktop CC, which used to allow one to reimport the photos and force the originals to be synced to the cloud's archive.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Fascinating nobody from LR product management seem to care about it. Cloud storage plus an API vendors can integrate against us such an obvious fundamental market gap.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

> The problem is compounded by the removal of a feature in Lightroom Desktop CC, which used to allow one to reimport the photos and force the originals to be synced to the cloud's archive.

This is still working as expected for me, so further details in a separate thread (just on the original replacement being broken) would be worthwhile, if you can still repro.

[jeffk1964]

Okay.  I will make a thread.  Or, perhaps, I am misunderstanding the cause of the issue. Whenever I attempt to reimport (add photos) with Lightroom Desktop CC the ADD photos button quickly turns from blue to grey, presumably detecting duplicates and preventing the operation.  I will try to repro in a new thread. Thanks!

[jeffk1964]

Yes. That is the workflow that I am using. But, what do I do with the thousands of photos have already worked on in Classic?  Will I not lose all my edits?

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

If the photos are showing as smart previews in Cloudy (having been synced with Classic), then importing them into Cloudy from the existing location should work. Perhaps there's something different in the workflow, perhaps the photos in a different folder?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

At the time, a 2560x2560 max dimension probably seemed like a reasonable limit. The issue is panoramic images, as well as cropping.

A modern iPhone will take panoramic of 16380 × 3646. When scaled down to fit a max 2560, that panoramic is 2560 x 570 and takes us back to the 1990's!

If you do a tight crop on a large 4896x3264 24Mpix image, that crop is re-applied in the cloud to an upscaled 2560x1760 image in the cloud, and the result is terribly jaggy (my daughter would say "janky"!)

Allowing entire Collections and/or images inside to be synced at full rez would fix this. As has been pointed out, dragging the source into a Lightroom (CC) Album does exactly this, and reasonably consumes quota.

I'm confused as are many others... what is the reasoning not to implement this simple fix?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I will always be a Lightroom Classic user simply because of the volume of images I have amassed. No question about it. However, I like the ability to edit specific photos on my iPad. Because iPad resolutions are so high now, I find that smart previews are no longer enough. I would like to be able to sync full-res images to the Cloud.

In the future, for any synced album in Lightroom Classic, I would like to see the option of choosing between Smart Previews or the full-res image. It's then the choice of the user on which they prefer but also saves on storage space when needed.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

This thread is being merged into an existing authoritative thread for better tracking and response. Please review the official answer (if any) in the second post on the thread for more information. 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Sharing of photos via link in LrC is only possible with a resolution of Smart Previews.

If a customer or a friend needs the photos in high quality there is no solution in LrC.

The workaround via export to LrM and enabling sharing in LrM creates redundancy and is cumbersome.

Please enable an optional full resolution upload to the cloud in LrC.

[JohanElzenga]

There are lots of threads with suggestions like this in this forum already. Unfortunately, Adobe has said years ago that Lightroom Classic will not get any new sync features, so I wouldn’t hold my breath.