Deleting Originals After Import

[benl65961155]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to Lightroom so I'm currently importing all my images from my hard drive and generally trying to learn the basics.

As Lightroom CC is cloud based and I notice when importing photos that they are being synced to the cloud, I'm wondering if once they are synced, I can delete them from my hard drive as they are now stored in the cloud?

I've done a few test deletes from both my hard drive and within Lightroom and it appears the two are separate, but I notice that when I click the info button at the bottom right of the screen, it says that the Sync Status is "Local - Original File" and "Cloud - Original Backed Up", so this would suggest that Lightroom is simply referencing to the original file on the hard drive?

Not sure if it's related or not but how would Lightroom deal with files imported directly from an SD card? Would these be saved locally by Lightroom then uploaded, or just uploaded?

Also then when I make adjustments to the image, how are these adjustments saved? Uploaded as a new edits file to the cloud, saved as an edits file on my hard drive, or something else?

As you can probably tell I'm really confused, and whilst I want to save space on my hard drive, I don't want to delete the originals and find that I can't get them back again.

Thanks in advance.

Ben

[JohanElzenga · Accepted solution]

After you have uploaded files with Lightroom CC that were originally stored on your hard drive, you can indeed delete the copy that is still on your hard drive. Just as you would delete the images on the memory card from your camera after uploading. What Lightroom CC says about the Sync Status is separate. It keeps its own copies of files that have been added but not yet fully uploaded, so don't worry about that (but don't try to find those and delete those, of course).

Lightroom saves the adjustments in the cloud too. This is done fully automatic. You don't have to do anything like invoking a 'save' menu.

[Laura Shoe]

I would suggest not reformatting or reusing your memory cards until photos from them have synced to the cloud - otherwise you have no backup if your hard drive crashes before the sync is done.