Lightroom 5.4 to Lightroom Mobile sync is soooo slow - why no local sync?

[x2mt]

I am testing the new Lightroom 5.4 with Lightoom Mobile. What really annoys me is the fact that all photos are going up to the Creative Cloud. I have private pictures which should be private. Always. No upload. No Cloud sync. It is important!

Speed is the next major problem. LR 5 is way too slow for a fluid workflow. But this is mentioned from other users.

What absolutely makes me sad ist the sync speed of LR5.4 to LR Mobile. 100 Photos took up to 4 hours. On a typical wedding I have 2000+ images. Depending on the speed of the first 100 photos I have to wait 80+ hours? Are you kiddding me? This makes LR Mobile unusable. My clients are expecting results fast. Speed is one factor to the next contract.

Overall, I don't want to sync anything into the Cloud. I want a to use my fast local sync via WiFi or USB. Only those two options. I want to sync photos even without any internet connection successfully and quickly.

I'm fine with authentication with Adobe servers for licensing verification. But that's it. The rest should be configurable by the users whether they Cloud sync or not.

[RomChron]

The bottleneck is the preprocessing developed by the adobe dumb monkeys.

Honestly, this is in par with the rest of the soft. I use LR only because C1 is not at the same level for DAM.

Here is a good tip to speedup the process:

1) Build the smart previews

2) Disconnect the drive containing the original RAWs (or just rename temporarily the folder)

3) Do the sync

It will be much faster (including the step 1!!).

It seems the preprocessing before sending the files is optimised the adobe way. Of course LR6 has done nothing to improve it

[Swedrone]

‌I don't follow. Can you more in detail describe how you are doing? How does moving the RAW files affect the synctimes and why?

I import från a memorycard in a cardreader which creates a folder with todays date. Then I select the photos to synch and create a collection and mark that for synch with mobile. Renaming the origination folder doesn't change  the connection to the RAW files.

[RomChron]

The sync time is slow because of some unknown checksum or calculation done with the RAW file.

It has nothing to do with the Internet connection (except if you have a really slow one).

Start by building the smart previews at or after the import. This is the only data needed.

Then disconnect the RAW files. Changing the folder name does it. You can still work on them in LR because of the smart previews.

Then mark your collection as synced and notice how much faster it is to upload them: LR can't do the calculations, but the smart previews needed for the sync are there.

Reconnect the RAW files when done.

[Swedrone]

Tried it and there was clearly a huge difference Thank´s for the advice. Waiting for "workaround" to be incorporated in the product!

[Matt M Johnson]

Note that when you follow the process outlined by RomChron you will end up doing all the 'calculations' against the smart previews rather than the master files (we don't skip them). Because the smart previews are smaller these do happen more quickly.  Among the issues you may see from this method are possible artifacts in the previews you will see in Lightroom web and Lightroom mobile. These are the thumbnails and larger images you seen when you're doing anything other than editing on these clients - slideshows, galleries, etc.  This is because they're being generated from a downsized smart preview rather than the original.

Matt

(one of the "Adobe dumb monkeys"...thanks...)

[Tangible]

Thanks, Matt.  I've just installed Lightroom cc/6 and the newest Lightroom Mobile apps.  Should we expect better performance with this new generation?  The desktop LR is running on a new Macbook Pro Retina with a 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7 processor and 16 GM of RAM, so I would hope that if the bottleneck was CPU power things will be much better than what's been described in this thread.

True?

[Swedrone]

‌Lr 6 utilizes the GPU, check under settings, so it should be faster. The sync also seems a bit faster

[anandm16934909]

So you are saying the large master files are uploaded with the small preview files, hence the slow speed.

I typically import my photos to my main computer, and expect to sync them to my iPad, for easier editing.  Given that all the heavy processing is done to create Smart Previews when I import to the my main machine, taking lots of time, I've already waited once.  That makes sense though given where the storage and processing muscle is greater - until iPads take over the planet in 2023.  However, the slow sync then kills the usefulness of the Lightroom Mobile product to my workflow.  I thought that was the whole point of creating these Smart Previews in the first place.

Can't we as customers have a choice though?  Would be win-win if we can decide when to trade off quality for speed.  Lightroom Mobile could become a practical part of my workflow now, and us users aren't dumb monkeys either - please make it happen!

[rajahsulayman]

Don't have the time to read through the entire thread but just to be clear — that's still an official "Nope" on local sync?

Sadly, "Get access to a faster connection" isn't an option here in the Philippines where the average connection is around 1-2Mbps. I don't even try to sync RAWs, I just load JPGs onto my tab on the road (then load the RAWs at home and sync the settings via a plugin) but even that takes days to upload and days to download on my home computer.

I get that the cloud is necessary to ensure that everything is synced up across platforms nice and neat, but isn't there some way to have the mobile app say "Hey, Cloud? Yeah, the desktop and I are on the same wifi right now, so we're just gonna do our thing here and bring you up to speed when it's done."?

[RobA1701]

For me, it just takes too long to sync local photos into the Lightroom App Repository. Adobe might want to rethink this mechanism to reflect something similar to what Dropbox does.

[PieterBaert]

‌I've invested in a Synology (NAS) to host my entire photo archive. It's accessible via wifi at home. I have a lightroom running on the Synology and one on my lapto. I've downloaded Lightroom mobile but have to sync via a paid web service. Why doesn't adobe allow me to access my NAS drive in my home network over wifi? Now Lightroom mobile has no use for me.

[fulldecent2]

Sony got hacked and all the actor's salaries were published along with unreleased movies and other private information. And of course even Apple got hacked / The Fappening.

Can you imagine how many photographers' careers would be ended if their clients' private boudoir / nude photos were collected by Adobe and then leaked or hacked?

I am sure that Adobe is less secure and less warrant-proof than Apple. Adobe does not take security seriously. This is demonstrated by the fact that when upgrading to Lightroom CC from the non-CC version it has a default-on checkbox to upload all your photos to the cloud. Also, there is a link for "MORE INFORMATION" which is just a sales pages and fails to actually provide any more information.

Am I a crazy conspiracy theorist or do other professional photographers share this thinking?

[parallaxphotos]

This thread is 2 years old, but it seems like still no option for local sync (please, tell me I am missing something?).

I see a lot of questions about security and privacy, and they are legit.

But to be honest, just the sheer time required to sync to cloud makes lightroom mobile unusable.  I think the argument can (and should have, 2 years ago) begun and ended at that point - it will take hours to sync even a modest sized connection if you have to go over the internet back to Adobe's cloud servers and back... compared to minutes if you sync over a local network.  Until that is fixed, lightroom mobile will be, at most, a toy that gets tried out once and forgotten

[cforcalvin]

Sigh. An old, old thread. And now that they've implemented Raw editing on iOS (finally), this ancient issue becomes more prominent now than ever.

- Why does exporting a photo to camera roll take 5-10 seconds each?  It takes Photoshop Express 2 seconds per photo.  Can you guys maybe talk to Photoshop's team, maybe ask them how they optimize?

- Because it takes so long to export Raws to the camera roll, and it takes forever to sync 200+ photos to the cloud, can you make a way so we can export the originals + edits to iTunes?

What's the reason for not even allowing exporting of originals, period?

[barbaral30716908]

After careful researching, I thought I'd finally found the perfect solution to lighten my travel load while improving my workflow. It appears that I'm wrong. I've never seen anything upload so slowly. Adobe, Adobe, Adobe, when will you listen to what really matters to people? Syncing to the Cloud is unreal. It has been days (not hours) and It's still going. Only 40 synced overnight while I was sleeping. My Wifi is fast, no one else was on it, LR Mobile was up and running, my brand new iPad Pro was plugged in with a strong signal. Anyone have any idea on what else I can do? In 7 hours only 40 photos uploaded.

[Victor Belle]

I, naively, had posted a question regarding this issue.  I've had no replies and not a peep out of anyone from Adobe.  Why no local sync???  You sure can with an Android phone but not with an Apple phone.  I just don't understand why the iPhone is treated so differently.  I'm on the fence for even keeping my newly acquired 7+ as I'm within the 14 day return period.  This whole thing just makes me shake my head........

[dploher]

it is the year 2017 now. I love lightroom desktop and I love lightroom mobile as it seems to be the only app to really support RAW/DNG for the iPhone 7/ 7 Plus. I also like the workflow.

However.... the nervwrecking slowness of sync through adobe cloud makes Lightoom Mobile absolutely useless. It takes days and days and days to sync 200 images and nothing happens. Sometime this little animated cloud on the top right seems like the wheel of death on a crashed mac.

Since this is no option at all, I thought I will move the photos from Lightroom mobile to the apple photo gallery so I can then locally move the pictures to the desktop.

However... here you are limited to 15 images at a time... and it's so freakin' slow !!!!!!!!!

The jpgs that the iphone 7 /7plus camera app produces are so ugly with watercolor effects and smushy skin texture. And the only app that makes good use of the RAW advantage (Lightroom mobile) can't sync pictures without causing imense frustration. I am at a point where I will just buy a small camera to take photos and a "normal" sized iPhone.

Please Adobe.... make local sync via the lightning cable possible. No cloud and no WiFi, just cable.

[caleblopezphoto]

Have you heard anything from Adobe since you've posted this? I just got CC on my phone so I could use the RAW editing software and was super stoked to learn that it would sync with my desktop CC library as well.  But apparently not, I should have read these forums first and realized that's just a fairy tale.

[LightNotions]

You can absolutely sync with your phone and your LR on your , but you have to do so using the Adobe creative cloud and the Lightroom Cc subscription. There is no way to sync directOy.

With Fibre which I have now, I sync around about 36,000 images currently and I i love it. syncing individual images works quickly And If I have a large shoot over a couple of days, it takes a couple of hours to sync about 3000 images.

i am happy these days, but it required fibre.

[chrisPhoto89]

Still no update with local sync? Guys we are paying for Lightroom. As soon as any other company offers an iOS app for culling and basic editing in combination with a local sync to my desktop, I will switch!

Why don‘t you collaborate with a well established NAS brand (e.g. QNAP/Synology) and provide an app to sync via NAS? That would even include easy backups at the same time. You could still sync edit settings via Adobe Cloud and feed them into Sensei if that’s what you need Adobe Cloud for...

[jmm0202]

Its only recently that I have eralized how nice LR mobile is. I use a cable from my camera into the Ipad and process the images.

But like everyone here is saying - the sync via wifi is so slow.  I know this is probably Adobe's way of making sure everyone has a Licence to use this great feature to sync back to LR on the desktop but surely they can see that it would be so fast if we could sync locally via a cable.

Either that or make LR mobile powerful enough with options like Presets WHILE importing and being able to publish to Flickr and Instagram direct from Mobile.

[Michael J. Hoffman]

With the size of raw files ranging from 20 to 50Mb and more, syncing an entire photo shoot can take some time, and you may run into trouble in situations where you have shared WiFi, such as a hotel. I recently shot 550 raw photos with my Canon, imported them to my iPad and then to LR Mobile, and they were synced by the next day. That’s upwards of 16Gb of raw files.

You have to remember also: when you import to your iPad Photos app, the iPad immediately starts syncing those raw files to iCould at the same time. So, you could have two sync operations competing for bandwidth, and you end up sending twice as much data as you thought.

Mike