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154

P: Lightroom Ecosystem: Selective Sync

LEGEND ,
Oct 19, 2017 Oct 19, 2017

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I'm not a professional and have only used Lightroom for less than a year. I do love the redesign and I want to use it but I don't like the auto-sync. How hard would it be to implement an option that prevents auto sync and instead enables manual sync? 

My idea is to add a manual sync option in the settings and when you want a photo to be uploaded to the cloud you should be able to click on the cloud button and hit "Sync" or "Upload". Taking away people's ability to choose doesn't just scare away the pros but also the beginners. 
Also, some advanced features from the original Lightroom need to be added. One of them is the export function. The new export function is terrible. I only see "Small, Full Size, and Custom". The original Lightroom has a lot more export functions.

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Android , Chrome OS , iOS: iPhone , iPadOS , macOS , Web , Windows

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correct answers 1 Pinned Reply

Adobe Employee , Oct 10, 2023 Oct 10, 2023

Selective Sync (by keeping select items local) was released in the Local Storage Feature today on Lightroom Desktop. 

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New Here ,
Nov 26, 2018 Nov 26, 2018

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Forget the genie - a simple response from development that a concept requested and commented on by so many is "under consideration" - or impractical to develop due to technical constraints ... would be a welcome acknowledgement that Adobe values the suggestions or concerns of its customers.

I don't believe any "complaining" about Classic vs CC was mentioned - the author simply pointed out the differences - which I assume you are familiar with - or have at least read the link provided where the main differences are clearly set out.

Facetious comments from a "Moderator" are not helpful.

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LEGEND ,
Nov 26, 2018 Nov 26, 2018

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I think Jon Anscher here above and in the links provided describes very well the situaton. in particular “...there’s no easy way to sync all your photos from Classic to Mobile....” .
There actually are ‘difficult’ ways, that I found out after two months of trial and error and with some help from Victoria Bampton, but they are cumbersome and time consuming. That the reason for my comment above about the ‘stone age’ feeling.
Let’s see if somebody from Adobe will let us know they are working on it, or if they simply don’t care.

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Community Expert ,
Nov 26, 2018 Nov 26, 2018

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Unfortunately they have announced in a few places that there will be no improvements on the syncing capabilities of Classic in the future. Not sure how hard and fast that is of course but clear that that is not their focus.

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New Here ,
Nov 26, 2018 Nov 26, 2018

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Thanks Jao - this is what I suspected - just a pity no one from Adobe Development had the courtesy to respond to this thread and tell it like it is !

I have used Lightroom for over a decade - since version 1.0 - and have thoroughly enjoyed the refinements, improvements and added features over the years. However I am clearly not alone in becoming increasingly concerned that, having switched to a subscription model - Adobe is beginning to appreciate its user base less and less.

A shift in attitude and approach would be welcome - and easily achieved by being more responsive to the efforts of users to contribute to the efficacy of their products.

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Community Expert ,
Nov 26, 2018 Nov 26, 2018

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Hi kernol, yes, I'm very well aware of the issues and differences. I was responding to John Wallace's comments that comments here are essentially ignored (which is not true), and interested to hear which CC features he's currently missing in Classic, as it's very unusual to hear it that way round. The more limited sync capabilities in Classic are the obvious one, but John seemed to be suggesting there were more.
______________________
The Lightroom Queen - Author of the Lightroom Missing FAQ & Edit Like a Pro books.

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LEGEND ,
Nov 26, 2018 Nov 26, 2018

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@Jao

This entire thread is in regards to Lightroom CC, not Classic. Everyone already knows that ALL of the Classic products are being removed, so they can charge more for Software As A Service, and deliver inferior products. Companies tried this several years ago, and it was a major failure. Hopefully, it will fail again. It is the lack of syncing options in Lightroom CC, that make it useless. Not to mention the numerous features in Classic that don’t exist in CC.

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New Here ,
Nov 27, 2018 Nov 27, 2018

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@Victoria

I can see that you do an amazing job interacting with this community by the number of posts and likes - so nothing personal - but the user-base does not seem to share your view that their comments are taken seriously ... or indeed at all.

As an "insider" you may well know better - but I assume even you are prohibited by Adobe policy from giving any indication about which features, if any, are actually under consideration or development ... and which are not.  

It is simply actual FEEDBACK from Adobe that will break the feelings of neglect expressed by so many members of the community.

All that we mere mortals can do is hope that you, our "Lightroom Queen", can carry these "complaints" to the powers that be ... and encourage them to engage more with their own community.

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Community Expert ,
Nov 27, 2018 Nov 27, 2018

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Absolutely @kernol, I'd love to see Adobe be more open with their customers. In the early days of Lightroom, the user base was much smaller and the product much simpler, and it was much more of a two-way communication. These days, everything is so much more complex, and they've become quieter as a result. Josh Haftel (LR mobile/web manager) commented on it towards the end of this thread: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/are-the-professionals-being-ignored
______________________
The Lightroom Queen - Author of the Lightroom Missing FAQ & Edit Like a Pro books.

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Explorer ,
Jan 07, 2019 Jan 07, 2019

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Or at least it could work on a date basis, for example you could store originals locally from 1 month and newer, 1 year or newer etc..

CC already splits all your photos into dates, and "store locally" functionality is there for the shared albums, why not apply the option to the By Date structure?

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LEGEND ,
Jan 14, 2019 Jan 14, 2019

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This is top of my request list too.   I'm not a professional photographer, but have to dip in and out of photo editing.    I need to start collating photos from various devices and storage including an old Aperture library.   However that library alone would exceed my Adobe storage and it's not viable to upgrade my Adobe storage when I have a perfectly good Synology NAS at home which looks after (and backs up) all my other data and is accessible wherever I have to work.
I'm going to have to download LR Classic but would much prefer integrating a cloud option with selective sync.  
Please Adobe, listen to your customers.   This option seems to have a lot of support so please acknowledge this and look to add features that people are desperate for.

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LEGEND ,
Feb 14, 2019 Feb 14, 2019

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Add the feature for manually photo sync and i will use Lightroom CC.

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Explorer ,
Apr 02, 2019 Apr 02, 2019

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Hello All!

I have been trying to figure out how to choose which lightroom CC albums are synced to my Adobe CC cloud and which ones are just stored locally.

I am using Lr CC (non-classic). I have well more than the 100GB of cloud storage in saved photos, but I only want to sync the ones I am actively working with to the cloud for editing on the go. The issue is that I have tons of photos I don't want or need access to from mobile that have auto-synced to the cloud as they were imported from my desktop into lightroom.

Is there a way to tell Lightroom which photos, folders, or albums you want you want to backup in the cloud and which ones you just want to edit / have accessible? If not, this seems like a feature a lot of people would take advantage of.

I constantly have to delete photos out of lightroom on my desktop to make room for more recent uploads to sync.

Thanks!

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Community Expert ,
Apr 02, 2019 Apr 02, 2019

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Everything you import into LRCC is synced to the cloud - that's its fundamental concept.

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Community Expert ,
Apr 02, 2019 Apr 02, 2019

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lost_art_photography  wrote

I am using Lr CC (non-classic). I have well more than the 100GB of cloud storage in saved photos, but I only want to sync the ones I am actively working with to the cloud for editing on the go.

That's basically how Lightroom Classic works.

But with cloud-based Lightroom, the cloud is considered the master storage area, so all images go up there, and all devices (phones, tablets, computers…) only store images which are cached on demand. Selective sync sounds like a good feature request​ so that it might happen in the future.

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Explorer ,
Apr 03, 2019 Apr 03, 2019

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That may be it's fundamental concept, but it's certainly not a true statement. If you pay for the 100gb subscription and import 120gb if photos, then everything you import is not saved to the cloud.

What I was looking for was to be able to keep my full library accessible through my desktop Lr, (say 200 gb of different projects), and to only keep 2 or 3 active projects on the cloud (under 100gb) for mobile work.

It sounds like LR Classic CC may have this functionality. My current solution is to export the RAW+settings files to my hard drive and then if someone asks for them I have to re-import which just seems to be an unnecessary amount of hoop jumping.

I think many users could benefit from being able to select multiple photos > right click > 'store locally only / do not sync to cloud'

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Explorer ,
Apr 03, 2019 Apr 03, 2019

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Now that LR Classic has also become cloud-based, (LR Classic CC), is it still possible to get that functionality?

Sadly I already learned and cataloged in LR CC but I could make the switch before I get any deeper.

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Community Expert ,
Apr 03, 2019 Apr 03, 2019

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lost_art_photography  wrote

Now that LR Classic has also become cloud-based, (LR Classic CC), is it still possible to get that functionality?

If you mean, is it still possible to sync individual collections or images from Lightroom Classic, the answer is yes. I sync images up to the cloud in the latest version of Classic. There is one difference in that since Classic is desktop-based, it only syncs smart previews of raw images up to the cloud. Cloud-based Lightroom uploads the whole raw file, since the cloud is master storage.

By the way, it looks like you're not alone, there is an existing feature request:

Lightroom CC: Selective Sync | Photoshop Family Customer Community

It's got 82 votes and a comment thread. That's more votes than a lot of other requests, so Adobe probably knows there's interest. But there are no guarantees on when it might make the cut for a future release.

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LEGEND ,
Apr 03, 2019 Apr 03, 2019

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This is going to be a long post but my frustration with the new Adobe Lightroom CC is well founded.

I've been using Adobe Lightroom for years, I think since Lightroom 2 or 3? It's a powerful tool in my workflow and I truly can't see myself without the software. When Adobe switched to the subscription based Creative Cloud I was hesitant but followed. If Photoshop CC wasn't included I wouldn't have made the switch to the subscription model.

When Lightroom was renamed to Lightroom Classic CC I was worried but figured I'd try the new Lightroom CC. It was awful, lacked many of the tools I had relied on and it felt like using a mobile app on a computer. SO I switched back and lost a lot of faith in Adobe's vision for Lightroom.

I got a new phone last year and downloaded the Lightroom CC mobile app so I could take RAW photos and edit those photos. I had seen that the apps capabilities had been vastly improved since I last used it. I was starting to become a bit more mobile in my photography and wanted to revisit using Lightroom CC on my computer so I could also edit on my phone, web, and eventually a tablet.

Now, I don't do photography as a career but more of a passionate hobby. I exported about 600 photos that I had recently taken to a new Library Catalog so I could import into Lightroom CC. To get my toes wet, so to speak. Imagine my surpise when I ran out of Adobe Cloud storage space.

I looked all through Lightroom CC's settings, looking for a way to limit the number of days I could have in the cloud at once. I discovered it's simply not possible. Every photo is uploaded to Adobe Cloud. I'm not a fan. I came back to Lightroom CC after seeing the clear improvements made, but Lightroom CC was not the Phoenix I expected it to be. Now my faith of Lightroom's future in my workflow is even lower.

I have 3TB of photos going back 8+ years. I'm probably never going to editing those photos again, let alone ones from 2 years ago or even 6 months ago. I'd have to pay $50/mo for 5TB of space, because 2TB is the last option before 5TB. As a hobbyist, I'm not paying that. Amazon let's me upload photos for free, even RAW photos. I'm not going to pay $50 a month for the privilege of editing with Adobe's latest Lightroom CC. No. You've lost me there.

I already have an online back up in place, I don't need to pay for another back up solution. It's prohibitively expensive for me to switch to the latest and greatest Lightroom.

So, let me select how many photos to keep in Adobe CC. Maybe I decide to keep 30 days? Maybe 3000 photos? Maybe the last 3 imports only?

But Alex, what if you want to edit photos from 5 years ago?
Two things can happen, and ideally a combination of these.
  1. The desktop version of Lightroom CC can edit all my photos because it's connected to the hard drive/network the photos are stored. Not sure if phone, tablet, and web versions of Lightroom CC can connect to network drives but as long as I'm on my network, and connected to my NAS (or physically to a hard drive), I think it's reasonable that the desktop version of Lightroom CC can edit all of my photos.
  2. Create a "Lightroom Server" that runs on a NAS or computer that the client (the desktop, mobile, and web) versions connect to. If I want to edit a photo that's not in the cloud, then the server software running at my home will upload the photo directly to my phone/tablet, so I don't use any additional Adobe Cloud space.
If I upload photos from the field to Adobe Cloud from my tablet then the Cloud should talk with the server software running on my NAS and remove the older photos from Adobe Cloud, ensuring I keep the last X days/imports of photos online and the rest locally on my NAS at home.

I feel priced out, and that I'll need to find a solution that isn't Adobe.
I love the software, I do, but if this is the stance that Adobe is taking with Lightroom I can't recommend Lightroom to my friends. I'm starting to look at other solutions. There's nothing quite like Lightroom CC yet, but the moment something exists I'm taking my business there.

I know I'm just one voice in a sea of millions to you guys but I strongly feel Lightroom CC isn't the solution Adobe advertises it to be. Revenue and shareholders will continue to drive Adobe one way while alienating users like me; hobbyists who simply want to have the freedom to edit on their tablet, phone, or web, when away from their computer and library without having to sacrifice a goat because we have terabytes of photos that Adobe insists on uploading and charging us space for.

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Explorer ,
Apr 04, 2019 Apr 04, 2019

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This is a related problem. With 110K pictures and movies, LR CC slows down noticeably on my 4.3GH *6 desktop, and becomes useless on my Surface Book 2 with 8GB and 256GB of memory.
In both cases my pictures and videos are on USB3 external drives.
If I could restrict LR CC database to a period of time and geography, I would have full use of LR CC without the delays involved in large databases. Is this possible? 
The same can be accomplished if I can specify which files are within LR CC and which are not on the Web.

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Community Expert ,
Apr 06, 2019 Apr 06, 2019

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Alex, you're exactly Lightroom Classic's target audience. Even IF it were eventually to go away, that's not likely to happen until CC was a viable alternative for most users exactly BECAUSE Adobe's so profit oriented. I'd suggest you stick with Classic for now and see how things play out.
______________________
The Lightroom Queen - Author of the Lightroom Missing FAQ & Edit Like a Pro books.

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LEGEND ,
Apr 07, 2019 Apr 07, 2019

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Top of my list of features is selective sync. Australian internet makes cloud storage completely useless, and therefore the idea of editing in multiple places also useless unless we have selective sync. If I added even half the photos I took per year to lightroom, that's a terabyte of RAW files. On Australian internet, that'd take about two years to upload. There's no way to tell which RAWs it uploads first either, meaning if I want to upload RAWs, I've got to wait for all the photos I add to upload before I can edit the most recent on my phone. This is a ludicrous system and makes the whole thing the opposite of convenient.

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LEGEND ,
Apr 08, 2019 Apr 08, 2019

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I did some more exploring and discovered I can sync albums in Lightroom Classic to Adobe Creative Cloud, allowing me to edit on the go in Lightroom CC from mobile. It's unfortunate that I can't sync Smart Albums but doing the sync manually isn't a huge inconvenience due to the low volume of photos I capture.

Thanks Victoria!

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 23, 2019 Apr 23, 2019

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Hey,
I'd like to know if there's a way to only sync specific albums on Lightroom CC... I know you can do that in Classic, but I prefer the interface on the non-Classic one, so I'd like to know if it was possible to do this...
This is a problem mainly because I shoot RAW, and I have albums for specific events, which end up maxing out my storage pretty quickly (I've got the photography plan and no aditional storage). Also I'd like to do this for privacy reasons, as I'd like to be able to control what goes and what doesn't go to Adobe's servers.

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Community Expert ,
Apr 23, 2019 Apr 23, 2019

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This is not possible unfortunately. Much requested feature (see https://feedback.photoshop.com) but Adobe hasn't acted on it.

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 23, 2019 Apr 23, 2019

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Wonder why... Just a theory I have, but I think they might have some sort of god complex that makes them want to have as many pictures from as many people as possible...
Yet again, not defamation, just a theory...
For any hitmen out there doing research on me because Adobe sent them... It's just a theory...

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