Export Catalog from Lightroom

[Henley264136778c9o]

My cloud storage space is filling up, I have albums in there that I no longer need to edit. I'd like to export them as catalogs to free up space and archive them but there's no obvious way to do this in Lightroom, what am I missing?

[Ranjisha Sengupta]

Hi @Henley264136778c9o 

Thanks for reaching out.

So basically, you want to manage your files in the cloud storage to make some space, right? 

You can download the files to your local storage or add more storage by upgrading the plan. 

You can also export albums as DNG to include the full-size with embedded edits. Later remove the images away from the Cloud.

Feel free to update us if there are more questions.

Best,

Ranjisha 

[Henley264136778c9o]

I already have the RAW files so just need the catalog with the edits, that's all. If I download the DNGs with edits then it's going to double up the files locally as I already have all my RAWs.

[Jim Wilde]

There is no way that you can export "the catalog with edits" from the Lightroom desktop app. You can export the albums using the "Original + Settings" option, which produces files in the original raw format and includes XMP sidecar files which contain all the edits. The DNG option works similarly, the original raw data is stored in the DNG "wrapper", but the XMP data is not stored in an adjacent sidecar file.....it is instead incorporated into the header of the DNG files.

[Henley264136778c9o]

Thanks for your response. I feel like Adobe are just trying to lock people in, in order to expand their cloud storage and spend ever increasing money with them.

I have a NAS which I'd rather use to serve my photos and then just use Lightroom to edit them. If I could save a basic catalog file of the edits to each RAW file, that would be fine. A lot like it used to be with Lightroom 4 etc.

Is there any way to do this? I know there's confusingly another version Lightroom, is that one non-cloud? If so, then I'm sure they have some other crazy pricing for it. I used their online chat and was on it for way too long and got no answers so am pretty salty at the moment and in a 'I hate Adobe with a passion' mental state right now... 😄

[Rob_Cullen]

If you want to store your photos 'locally' then I suggest you should be using Lightroom-Classic ("non-cloud").

Lightroom-Classic v12.3 is also the most recent version upgrade to the 'old' (perpetual) v4.

"some other crazy pricing for it"- Well no, in fact, there is the (best value) Photography Plan (20GB) that includes Lightroom-Classic (the Lightroom Plan does not include LrC)-  $9.99 PHOTOGRAPHY PLAN (USA) 

Lightroom-Classic has the ability to download all images from the Cloud storage into a Lightroom-Classic Catalog, after which you could close the Lr Cloud Catalog.  But, investigate the details, with more questions, before you take any action.

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