Lightroom CC with Lightroom Classic Flow

[kwheath]

I've used lightroom 'classic' for years, but always found it difficult to find an online backup other than dropbox. I ended up keeping 40k+ photos on 2 separate external drives, with one as a backup. Enter Lightroom cc and their online storage, which I've signed up for. My issues, then my question:

• LR CC is great at automatically grabbing photos from my wife and my phones, and even syncing to LR classic. 
• I now have LR cc, and I can sync to LT classic, if I choose.
  • As I started to do this, it was taking days to sync from cloud to my new external drive through classic.
  • I was told that I can't really sync entire files from LR classic to cc, whch I want to do because I can import those files much quicker with my drives and laptop. Somthng about it only sends a preview.
  • I stopped that sync for now (cloud to classic).
• LR cc has no duplicate technology to recognize a dupe, so if I try to add all my pictures to cc, it will pull in dupes.
• I'm thinking of:
  • deleting all files (40-50k) on cc
  • Importing all files into classic 
  • Importing all files into cc separately
  • Turn on sync
  • iphone photos will come in via cc and go to classic
  • camera photos will need to be imported into CC (assuming it recognizes cameras)

I simply want a great photo storage editing software(LR), where I can have secure online storage so my picutres are protected and can be accessed by my family(ie LR cc). I've read so many articles, but I haven't found any that describe what I think should be simple. My apologies if I made this more confusing than it is. I'm a photo rookie and have been for yrs.

Call me crazy. Thanks!

[JohanElzenga]

Actually, Lightroom CC does have technology to recognize a duplicate, and it can even do more than that. Lightroom Classic syncs smart previews to the cloud, not originals. If you have a synced smart preview in the cloud, and then you import the original into Lightroom CC, then Lightroom CC will recognize the duplicate and replace the smart preview with the original.

[kwheath]

Joan - Thank you. I must be doing something wrong. I just uploaded a duplicate intentionally and it let me, so now there are dupes. I tested it because I want to import a large folder to cc, which I know has duplicates, but concerned it will just create a dupe. This is outside of smart previews. I understand what you are saying, but it seems it's related to knowing a dupe was actually smart preview. Am I completely missing the duplicate detection somewhere.

Thank you.

[kwheath]

Sorry for the autocorrect to Joan. Thank you Johan.

Kirk

[Ian Lyons]

Rather than allowing Lr cloudy to import duplicates, which when synced to Classic will, as Johan describes, create virtual copies, I would spend some time doing some house keeping. That is, spend time outside of Lightroom finding the duplicate images, then move them to a folder that won't be imported. This will make life a LOT simpler when you eventually do import the images and sync them to the cloud.

[kwheath]

Thanks- I did that already and now have relatively duplicate free external drive of photos. My issue is I'm out of sync w/cc and I want to import that external drive of photos(about 47k) into cc, which has about 38k photos. When I did that in classic, it didn't show dupes. I'm concerned cc will just dupe them.

Do any of you do 1:1 consulting? I would enjoy talking to someone to knock this out for an hour or so and would be happy to compensate. I hope I'm not breaking any posting rules by asking. 

Thanks.

[JohanElzenga]

You have to import the original image, not a copy. Use 'Photo - Show in Finder (Explorer)' in Lightroom Classic to locate the original and drag & drop it onto the Lightroom CC icon. That will work. I checked it again yesterday before I wrote it.

[kwheath]

Thank you - Can I just use the + icon in cc and go to the location of my files and import? 

[JohanElzenga]

Yes, just import the original from its original location. Do not export a copy (also not a copy using 'export as original') from Lightroom Classic.