Correct sync procedure

[heirloombob]

A friend has a Mac and a MacBook. Currently, she loads her images onto her Mac, does her edits, watermarks the images and exports a copy to a subfolder of her date folder, for later uploading to Facebook. Her filing system is a date folder for the originals and then a Watermarked subfolder for her edits. So far so good and this  is working out just fine.

Now she goes out of town and takes her MacBook. The workflow will be the same. Load images onto a date folder on her MacBook, edits, apply a watermark and then exportd to her Watermark subfolder. Again...a straightforward process. But now she needs her original date folder and Watermark subfolder to sync back to her Mac from her MacBook.

Is the process she needs to do is to drag her date folder and Watermark subfolder on her MacBook, to Collections, in order to sync them to her Mac?

Will they then appear on her Mac as a collection that will require her to move the date folder and Watermark subfolder from Collections onto her Mac folder hierarchy?

My personal workflow (Windows 10 and PC) has been to load and edit on my laptop and then export the date folder and subfolder as a Catalog, then import that catalog onto my desktop. It works but the LR sync feature would be a more streamlined process. So I am really asking the questions for both of us. 🙂

[Jao vdL]

You cannot use the sync feature to sync between two installs of Lightroom Classic. You can only make it work between installations of Lightroom Desktop (a completely different program). However that is not compatible with the workflow you describe your friend using which is a mix between a Lightroom Classic workflow and a files and folders workflow (a mixed workflow is something to generally avoid but can work for people). There are two reasons for this: 1. Lightroom Classic only uploads smart previews to the cloud so you won't get the full res files to sync, and 2. you can only sync a single Lightroomn Classic catalog. The workflow you describe at the end is doable indeed. Another way to work is to place the folder onto a synced disk such as a dropbox folder or another cloud syncing service. Turn on automatic xmp writing in Lightroom Classic and the files and folders will be synced through the cloud. There are some gotchas with this and your export of subfolder to catalog is probably the most reliable way to do this.

If you are able to use Lightroom Cloudy (Adobe calls this Lightroom Desktop - the cloud based photoservice) you can do all the syncing but you have to completely give up on the local files and folder workflow as everything has to be in the cloud. You will also miss many essential features from Classic sucn as printing, publish services, virtual copies, etc. that haven't been moved over to Cloudy yet so for most people it is not a good solution yet.

[Heirloom Bob]

Good iunfo and thanks for the help.