How do the current LR programs really work?

John gave you a great answer already. The important modifier in the questions document is the "for desktop" qualifier. That said, even that works just fine. In effect, the very best way to think of Lightroom CC on the desktop as opposed to the real Lightroom (i.e. Classic), is that Lightroom CC is a port of the mobile version of Lightroom to the Desktop. This is exactly what it is. It doesn't do much more and works basically the same. What I will do is take a small laptop (or even smaller my iPad Pro) with Lightroom CC on trips and import and edit there and when I get back all my files show up downloaded, edited and all in my main Classic catalog including anything I shot with my phone as opposed to the DSLRs. What I do then is unsync all these files in Classic and they will disappear from the cloud but are nicely preserved and edited in Classic and subject to my normal backup routine and not take up gobs of cloud space. Only problem is the keywording indeed.

99jon​ Thanks for the help. What you described makes sense. Adobe's marketing and FAQ material had me completely on the wrong track.

Jao vdL​ Thanks. It's fairly clear that CC's replicated filesystem (i.e. cloud) isn't mature. File deletion that allows the user an "Oops!" has been around since the 80s. It's daft to deploy a filesystem without it, especially one that replicates permanent deletion. While I can envisage how to use it that would be adequately safe, I'd rather avoid the complexity of managing copies in the CC and elsewhere with real backups.

Iiuc, the Lightroom version that works on mobile is tied to the could filesystem, so I won't be using that either.

Looks like the only part of the Photography Plan useful to me is Lightroom Classic CC but without using the CC. I don't see an obvious advantage over my current arrangement with Capture One Pro, rsync for local backups, Backblaze for remote backups and Google Photos for cloud sharing the jpeg products. I'd just be swapping out C1P for LR Classic.

Thanks all for guiding me out of my confusion.

Another really pernicious thing is that Adobe describes the process as automatically backing up all your photographs when using Lightroom CC. This is really dangerous language as it really isn't a backup at all. The cloud image becomes the main image. If you import into Lightroom CC from a memory card or somesuch, Lightroom uploads this image to the cloud and by default after a while deletes the copy it maintained from your hard disk to save hard drive space. This is NOT a backup and I think it is really dangerous that Adobe describes this as creating backups. Worse, if you delete an image from Lightroom CC it immediately deletes it from everywhere. There is not even a "deleted images" area like other cloud photo services have where deleted images are kept for a while.

We've seen quite a few people on this forum that lost images this way because they naïvely thought that Lightroom was creating backups in the cloud.

Your computer files will not be cloned. That is not the intention. In this case All means everything added directly into LRCC. So if you import photos to the desktop version of LRCC, or using a tablet or phone, they will all be uploaded to the cloud.

It sounds as if you have a comprehensive folder structure and independent backup routine. So you are probably better sticking with LR Classic.