Synchronizing catalogues across two PC's

[Travelling Tony]

Perhaps I am being a bit dumb but I have gone through how catalogues work and photos are stored with sidecar .xml files etc. I have a photography plan with 20 Gb of storage. I am in the process of syncing my catalogue in Lightoom CC on my Win 10 PC as instructed in one of the videos assuming this goes to the Adobe cloud storage. Once I have finished the sync will this then be automatic for all future edits additions etc.?

I am then hoping to be able to view and edit my photos on my new laptop pc using Lightroom. I'm having trouble understanding how this works if the original images are only available on my original PC. Am I just editing the JPEG's and metadata that are kept in the sidecar .xml file? 

Help would be appreciated.

[dj_paige]

I assume you are talking about Lightroom Classic catalogs. These cannot be synchronized across two computers. You could use an external hard disk, with the catalog file on this external hard disk, and move the external disk from computer to computer.

If you use the new program named Lightroom (the cloud-based version), then you have access to all of your photos, edits, metadata, on any supported device, including two computers.

[Travelling Tony]

Thank you so much for your response. Yes I am talking about Lightroom CC. I was thinking I might be able to run CC on my main computer and the new Lightroom on my laptop. I am guessing that I would have to replicate my photos on the Adobe cloud for that to work? I really do not want to spend money on that as well as Microsoft, 

I had a futher thought. I have my photos replicated in Microsoft One Drive cloud. This is replicated to both PC's. Does anyone know whether this might work. Does Lightroom use physical or logical disc addressing? 

[dj_paige]

Yes I am talking about Lightroom CC.

As there is no software currently called Lightroom CC, I do not know what software you are discussing. There is Lightroom and there is Lightroom Classic.

You can run Lightroom on both computers and have access to all of your photos via the cloud. If you run Lightroom Classic, you cannot sync the photos with another computer.

There are many people who have tried to make this work via Microsoft One Drive and similar services, and you can search for the mostly unhappy results.

[Travelling Tony]

Yes, I am using Lightroom Classic and I will no longer follow this thread if I am going to be treated so impolitely. I am here as someone learning asking for help.  You say "access to all of your photos via the cloud". One Drive is a cloud storage service. I assume you are talking about Adobe's cloud? I did a search for cloud service solutions and One Drive before I posted but could not find anything helpful or relevant. I always search first because I do not like wasting peoples time. We all have to learn, you did once. I am new to this and I am deeply sorry for accidentally calling something by the wrong name. Please don't treat me like an idiot and don't bother to answer if you can't have a little patience with someone who is learning. Thank you.

Lightroom Classic version: 9.2 [ 202001311240-2d026470 ], License: Creative Cloud, Language setting: en
Operating system: Windows 10 - Home Premium Edition, Version: 10.0.18362, Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64, Logical processor count: 8, Processor speed: 1.9 GHz, SqLite Version: 3.30.1
Built-in memory: 32601.7 MB, Real memory available to Lightroom: 32601.7 MB, Real memory used by Lightroom: 716.4 MB (2.1%), Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 695.6 MB

[GoldingD]

In Lightroom, whatever app you are running, Click on Help, click on System Information. Click on Copy. Paste at least first 12 lines in a reply.

This will clear up confusion on products.

[Travelling Tony]

Thank you so much for this. I had no idea all that information was there.

[JP Hess · Accepted solution]

If you choose to share collections of images from your Lightroom Classic, those collections will be shared as smart previews and will not impact your 20 GB cloud allotment. Then, install Lightroom (the cloud-based version) on your laptop, and you will be able to edit those smart previews. Any adjustments that you make to the smart previews using the laptop will be applied to the master images in Lightroom Classic. Additionally, if you choose to install Lightroom on any other mobile devices such as your mobile phone or tablet, you will be able to access those images from those devices as well. The only time the 20 GB cloud storage allotment will be impacted is when/if you choose to import images directly into the cloud version of Lightroom. When you do that the full-sized images are then in the cloud as well as in Lightroom Classic on your other computer. The same would be true when you take images with your mobile phone.

[Travelling Tony]

Jim, what a gentleman. Thank you so much for your advice. I thought that it worked that way but was scared that my images from my Nikon 850 would go into the Adobe cloud. Fills up fast! Thanks again.

Tony