How can I download ALL my originals and edited photos using Lightroom Downloader?

[richardk3000]

Hi all,

After using Adobe's Lightroom Downloader for MacOS 11.4, the downloader report shows it downloaded Smart Previews for 97% of all my photo's – see attached screenshot.

I would like to download all my photos: full resolution originals and edited versions.

How can I do this?

Thanks!

[richardk3000]

Just to clarify: I'm not asking for the remaining 3%, but how to get all originals instead of smart previews.

[Jim Wilde]

My assumption from that report would be that the majority of your images in the cloud were uploaded from Lightroom Classic. As Classic only uploads smart previews of the originals, not the originals themselves, then of course that's all that are available to be downloaded from the cloud when using the Downloader. 

However, if you think that you have originals of ALL your images stored in the cloud, then obviously something else is going on which we need to try to figure out. But for now, please let us know if that 97% came from Classic or some other source.

[richardk3000]

Hi Jim,

Yes, I've been using Classic for years and only recently started using the CC version.

[richardk3000]

Also, when I started using CC, I chose to automatically import iPhone photo's as well, so the 97% would be Classic and 'other sources'.

My main concern is retrieving the photo's that came from Classic.

[Jim Wilde]

The iPhone photos are probably the 3% that are originals, as that's what all of the Lightroom ecosystem client apps upload. Only Classic uploads smart previews.

My main concern is retrieving the photo's that came from Classic.

What do you mean by this question? The originals should still be on the local drive being managed by Classic, or have you stopped using Classic completely? If you've stopped using it, what did you do with the catalog and local files?

[richardk3000]

Allow me to give you more information than you ask for, because I thing I can vaguely see where this is going 😉 and also 😞

For years I used Classic. On Oct 27, 2019 I started my Lightroom CC plan, about the time I bought my iPad Pro. I used the CC and Classic versions side by side for a while, imports from my camera's where always done through Classic.

Because I enabled 'sync to cloud' (hopefully, with all the right settings), I assumed every original would also be uploaded to Adobe Cloud.

When I transferred to a new Mac in April this year, I therefore didn't make a backup of my local Lightroom directory.

The last backup I made of the local Lightroom directory was in July 2019.

The July 2019 backup contains DNG files and Lightroom 5 catalog files.

Today's download contains smartpreview.dng files for the period until 2018.  From 2019 it's all .RAF files (Fuji's raw format).

So I guess the question has changed to how can I salvage as much pixels as possible.