How to keep all photos in the cloud while editing in Lightroom classic

[samdavies338]

Hi there. I'm new to using Lightroom and still trying to find the best ways to perform my workflow. I started off using lightroom cc before moving to lightroom classic as I wanted to make use of the additional features from the original software. I do all my editing on my MacBook Air with a relatively small hard drive. What I liked most about lightroom cc when I first started using it was that all of my files are being stored in the Creative Cloud and not on my machine. Last week I did a shoot and imported my photos into lightroom cc. I then closed that app down and opened up Lightroom classic to do my editing. That worked fine, and I was able to edit my photos on the cloud using the fixtures and layouts of the classic software, with none of the files staying on my disk. As I said, I have a small hard drive, so it's brilliant that it was all on the cloud. Yesterday I did another shoot and tried to do the same thing. It was a more extensive shoot this time, so I had to dump 2SD cards into lightroom cc. I left it overnight to sync to the Creative Cloud. This morning I opened up lightroom classic to begin my editing. As I attempted to start editing, I noticed that not all of my photos were in lightroom classic, but were all in Lightroom cc. For some reason, some of the images that I imported stayed on my disk, and lightroom classic is pulling them up in Finder. What I want to be able to do is delete all of the pictures off my hard drive and still be able to edit them in Lightroom classic. I wanted to see what would happen if I removed one of the photos from Finder directly. Sure enough, after I deleted it, I wasn't able to edit it in Lightroom Classic but had no troubles in Lightroom cc. 

I hope what I'm asking about is clear enough as I'm still struggling to work out precisely what I'd call this problem. Thank you in advance. 

[Mohit Goyal]

Hi there,

We're sorry for all the trouble with Lightroom Classic. When you import your images in Lightroom cloud, do you sync them over to Lightroom Classic via collection to edit? If that's what you doing then, your workflow is fine. When you did your last import, you must have uploaded all the images in Lightroom Cloud and which should be synced over to Lightroom Classic. If you don't see all the images in Lightroom Classic then, you should go back to Lightroom Cloud and check what all the images didn't sync properly.

You can also, login to Lightroom web and check the synced images. Here's the link: https://lightroom.adobe.com/

If I come back to your original question. The only way to keep all the images on cloud and edit in Lightroom Classic is: Import the images in Lightroom Cloud and sync them over to Lightroom Classic via collection.

Thanks,

Mohit

[Patheo26]

Thanks for your reply. But that's not the issue.
I am working in the library module and development-module and have already
import my images.
The problem is when i am working in the library or development-module or
only looking then regular the importscreen appears without any intervention
by me.
I have already reloaded the lightroom classic but thats brought no solution.

[JP Hess]

It is not possible to edit "cloud only" images in Lightroom Classic. They must be on the local hard drive. If you want to have images only in the cloud then you should use Lightroom, which some users refer to as Lightroom CC.

[Jao vdL]

To expand on Jim's correct answer, it is simply not possible to use Classic with Cloud-only images. In the workflow you describe what happens is that ALL cloud imported images using Lightroom Desktop (the official name of the cloud version) will get downloaded by Classic to the local disk and then you can edit them in Classic. Only the edit changes will get synced back to the cloud. If you now delete the local copy (which will be the original image for Classic), Classic will have no way to access the image. It will not redownload a copy from the cloud, it simply thinks the image is missing and ignores there is another copy in the cloud it could access if needed. All images are always local in Classic. We all would love a version of Lightroom that has the features of Classic but can use the cloud in a way similar to Lightroom Desktop. Adobe is not going to make it. They offer a version of Lightroom that misses 90% of the essential features of Classic but is cloud based and a version that is not cloud based at all but has all the features one needs. Adobe is very slowly adding Classic-like features to Lightroom Cloudy but this will take many years.

If you want to use Classic and have a tiny internal hard disk, the way to do that is to offload older images to an external hard disk or to a NAS server on your own network. Do this inside Lightroom and what will happen is that if you need to edit an image that has been offloaded already, you just plug in the external or connect to the NAS server. This works just fine. I have several terabytes of images (too much for Adobe's cloud solution anyway) and I store older images on a RAID array that I connect to when needed.