Lightroom CC - How does it handle RAW files?

[ricoyvr]

Hello,

Forgive me if my question is posted somewhere but I could not find it. I am a former Lightroom 5 user and am contemplating subscribing to the Photography plan and have a question about Lightroom CC.

What happens with RAW images when using Lightroom CC Desktop (or even IOS)?

I have spent over an hour searching and watching the Adobe video tutorials and there is no mention of it anywhere. All that's covered is how to select images from your SD card or local drive and then it adds them to Lightroom and uploads them in the background. UPLOADS THEM AS WHAT? Do they remain as RAW or DNG files? Are edits to the photos stored in sidecar files created and stored somewhere on Adobe's servers or are RAW's converted as DNG and then edits stored within the file like in the old Lightroom Classic?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Rico

[JP Hess · Accepted solution]

Lightroom CC desktop enables you to import your raw or JPEG images directly to the cloud. The raw images are not converted to DNG, there isn't even an option to do that in the program as yet. Changes made to images are stored in a catalog that is not available to you. It is part of the online ecosystem. If you have Lightroom Classic CC installed on your computer it is possible to migrate one catalog of your choosing to the cloud. All images that are in that catalog will be copied to the cloud. That means that full-sized images will be stored in the cloud, and will then be available for viewing and editing on all your portable and mobile devices. There is not an option in Lightroom CC to store changes to raw files in XMP files. All changes are stored in the catalog, which you do not really have any direct access to other than through using Lightroom CC online.

An ideal way to use Lightroom CC is to have it installed perhaps on a laptop computer with Lightroom Classic CC installed on a "main" computer. Images that you import to Lightroom CC will automatically be downloaded/imported to Lightroom Classic CC. It is not a good idea to try to use the two programs together on the same computer.

There's a start. Digest that for a minute, and then ask more questions.

[ricoyvr]

Hi Jim,

Thank you so much for the prompt reply. That answers my question for sure - the files go into "never never land" so to speak.

I like your suggestion of having different versions on different computers, however, I only have a MacBook and would only want one version installed as you advised. Perhaps the CC product is not possess the maturity/feature set at this time. I was used to some of the features of the Classic version such as virtual copies, the ability to create/store DNG files, etc. I would be willing to convert my RAW files to DNG first before importing into Lightroom CC, but the advantage to that would have only been if CC would write the edits into the files - not into an non-accessible database.

I will give this some consideration.

Best regards,

Rico

[JP Hess]

Lightroom CC does have a "Save to" option. And one of the choices is to save in the original format plus settings. I have never tried it, but I assume that if you had converted the images to DNG before importing them to Lightroom CC and then used that save option, it would save the DNG to your hard disk with the changes included. Of course, a raw file would then have an XMP file associated with it.

[Kathryn0013]

Hi Jim - when I pulled a RAW file to Lightroom CC, in the preview window, it shows ”JPEG” in the bottom left corner of every photo.  I can’t find anywhere what this means, but I’m assuming it means the raw photos I’m importing are being imported as JPEG? Is this a functionality of just Lightroom CC or also Lightroom Classic? New user - thank you!

kathryn

[qarloscuiapo]

My experience was different, when I had improted Raw files to Lightroom CC, it showed "RAW" on the bottom corner. Can only export it as JPEG however.