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Participant
June 23, 2021
Answered

How to transfer pictures/images from one Lightroom account to another?

  • June 23, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 28375 views

Hello, I have been using an adobe account that I made a long time ago and want to transfer all 7000 pictures I have from my old adobe account onto my new adobe account.   Besides downloading all of my pictures and re-uploading them to my new account, is there a way I can do this that is built into adobe? 

 

Thank you

 

 

{Thread title edited by moderator}

Correct answer Jim Wilde

My advice would be to ignore the Downloader option, there's just too much stuff that it doesn't download. Instead, assuming both accounts are still currently accessible, you could do the following:

 

1. Login to your new account, open Lightroom and create a new empty album and set it to be shared. Use the "Invite Only" option under "Link Access", then enter the email address that's related to the old account, use the drop-down list under the "eye" icon and choose "Can Contribute" then press the Invite button.

 

2. Then logout of Creative Cloud and log back in using the old account details. Find the email that you've just sent to yourself and click on the link. That will open the shared album in a browser window, which is how the authorisation is accepted. Now open the Lightroom desktop app (still using the old account credentials), click on the "Shared" tab next to the "Albums" tab below All Photos, then click on the "Shared with You" tab. You should see the newly shared album in the list, if you do click on All Photos to populate the grid with all of the 7000 images in the library. 

 

3. Depending on your operating system use Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (Win) + A to select all images, then either drag them all (by dragging from the centre of any one of the selected images), and drop them on to the new shared album in the Shared Album list. Or right-click on any one of the selected images and choose "Add photos to Album", using the flyout list to select the new shared album.

 

4. When you add the images to that shared album you'll see a dialog box asking you to select what attributes you want to include, so make sure you check them all. Then wait until Lightroom finishes syncing (i.e. the blue spinning circle disappears from the Cloud icon top right), after which you can close Lightroom and logout of Creative Cloud.

 

5. Log back into Creative Cloud using the new account details, launch Lightroom and you should see that the shared album now contains all of the 7000 images that you "contributed" from the old account, and you are now free to organise them as you wish. CARE: there's a 48-hour window for the contributor to change their mind and delete those images from the shared album, so don't do anything drastic such as closing down the old account until that 48-hour window has passed.

2 replies

Jim Wilde
Community Expert
Jim WildeCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
June 26, 2021

My advice would be to ignore the Downloader option, there's just too much stuff that it doesn't download. Instead, assuming both accounts are still currently accessible, you could do the following:

 

1. Login to your new account, open Lightroom and create a new empty album and set it to be shared. Use the "Invite Only" option under "Link Access", then enter the email address that's related to the old account, use the drop-down list under the "eye" icon and choose "Can Contribute" then press the Invite button.

 

2. Then logout of Creative Cloud and log back in using the old account details. Find the email that you've just sent to yourself and click on the link. That will open the shared album in a browser window, which is how the authorisation is accepted. Now open the Lightroom desktop app (still using the old account credentials), click on the "Shared" tab next to the "Albums" tab below All Photos, then click on the "Shared with You" tab. You should see the newly shared album in the list, if you do click on All Photos to populate the grid with all of the 7000 images in the library. 

 

3. Depending on your operating system use Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (Win) + A to select all images, then either drag them all (by dragging from the centre of any one of the selected images), and drop them on to the new shared album in the Shared Album list. Or right-click on any one of the selected images and choose "Add photos to Album", using the flyout list to select the new shared album.

 

4. When you add the images to that shared album you'll see a dialog box asking you to select what attributes you want to include, so make sure you check them all. Then wait until Lightroom finishes syncing (i.e. the blue spinning circle disappears from the Cloud icon top right), after which you can close Lightroom and logout of Creative Cloud.

 

5. Log back into Creative Cloud using the new account details, launch Lightroom and you should see that the shared album now contains all of the 7000 images that you "contributed" from the old account, and you are now free to organise them as you wish. CARE: there's a 48-hour window for the contributor to change their mind and delete those images from the shared album, so don't do anything drastic such as closing down the old account until that 48-hour window has passed.

Participant
July 22, 2025

I've just done this with my modest collection of photos, and I have the shared photos in my new account.  However, they seem to be tagged as shared with an icon in the lower right even after I placed them in new albums on the new account.  Does the new account have a copy or just a link to the original.  And if it just a link how do I get a copy? 

Jim Wilde
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 23, 2025

When someone contributes images into a shared album (owned by you) they are tagged with the icon representing the avatar of the contributer. IIRC, there is no way to hide that icon, but the fact that you are seeing it does mean that you do have a copy of the original in your library, it's not a link to the original in the other account.

nikunj.m
Legend
June 25, 2021

Hi,

 

We're sorry but we currently do not have a way of transferring images/data from one Lightroom account to to another. You can download the images using the Lightroom downloader & then upload them to your new account once you have signed in to the app.

You can check out the Lightroom downloader here: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/kb/download-lightroom-photos.html

 

Regards,

Nikunj