Lightroom CC albums in the Finder Window on my MacBook

[howardbrafman]

I have saved Lightroom CC albums to the “Pictures” file in my Finder Window, but, when I try to open the Lightroom album on the Finder Window, I get a message that I’m not connected to the server And none of the pictures show up?  What am I doing wrong?  Howard

[Akash Sharma]

Hi howardbrafman,

Sorry that you cannot access your Lightroom CC library as you're getting an error message that says " you're not connected to the server".

Could you please provide us a screenshot of the error message you're referring to? Also, which exact version of Lightroom CC are you using?

Thanks,

Akash

[howardbrafman]

Howard Brafman

Sent from my iPad

[howardbrafman]

Hi Akash,

I am in a trial period for the purchase of the new Lightroom CC app. I’ve downloaded 2250 pictures, edited all of them and separated them into 11 albums. I then took 5 of the albums and clicked on “Share” and chose “Pictures” on the Finder Window. They album names appeared on the Finder Window, but none of these files could be opened. The first file showed up the screen shot I sent to you. The other four have one, two and three dots alternating as if they are trying to load the pictures, but nothing shows up. What did I do wrong? I plan to purchase the Lightroom CC software on a monthly basis, but I need to be sure that my pictures stored on the Lightroom CC app can be accessed for other applications on my MacBook.

Howard Brafman

Sent from my iPad

[howardbrafman]

Akash, did you receive a copy of my screenshot and my follow-up clarification of my use of Lightroom CC?

Howard Brafman

Sent from my iPad

[selondon]

If you are using the Lightroom CC Desktop these are the instructions you should follow:

Store album locally, save your photos to a hard drive, or share as web gallery

[howardbrafman]

Selondon:

I went to the link you provided and followed the directions to “save” an album. I clicked on “store album locally”. I’m not sure where the “stored locally” albums are actually stored. I then went to the Finder Window on my MacBook and saw the files named, but when I tried to open them, I received the message “No connection to server. Attempting to reconnect . . .” Why can’t I see the photos in the files (Lightroom CC albums) stored on the Finder Window? If not, where else are the “stored locally” albums really stored so that they can be accessed?

Thank you.

Howard Brafman

Sent from my iPad

[Jim Wilde]

I'm not sure I understand what exactly you are trying to achieve. There is no "Save Album" option in LR CC, so what did you do when you said you have "saved albums to your Pictures file"? Using the "Share" option only generates a URL which you can share with other people so that they can get to see your album in a browser on their computer. There is no option to "Share" to a folder such as "Pictures", though you can of course "Save" individual photos to your hard drive, but that's something else entirely. So I'm rather confused about what you did, and what you are trying to achieve.

"Store Album Locally" is an option that is mainly designed to store a local copy of the original images that are held in the cloud, having them locally would improve performance when trying to use the images for editing. It is not designed for other applications to access those local images.

There is no screenshot attached to any of your posts, so if you have something that's relevant please try to post it again. Note that you can't include screenshots if posting from an email, you have to do it using the web-site.

[howardbrafman]

Jim:

It’s really quite simple (but also complicated):

1. We went to Africa on safari and I took 2250 pictures, which I saved on a different camera memory card for each of the 5 parks that we visited.

2. I chose LRCC at the suggestion of a friend who is a pro photographer. I downloaded the app on a trial basis. I’m still in the trial period.

3. Memory card by memory card, I downloaded the photos into an individual “album” on the LRCC app for each memory card. Then I proceeded to edit each and every one of them. The largest album has 545 photos. Then, I created a “Best of” album for each of the original 5 albums into which I transferred the best of the photos from each album. I then had 10 albums of stored and edited photos on my LRCC app.

4. My goal is to choose from among the photos in each of the 5 “Best of” albums and, using my MacBook, upload them onto templates in an app to create a hard copy commercially-printable photo album book for me to keep as a memento of our trip.

5. What I cannot figure out is how to have the app (for the photo album that I’d like to create) access the photos in my “Best of” LRCC albums and upload selected photos from the LRCC album to the templates on that photo album app.

6. Alternatively, can I migrate selected photos from my “Best of” LRCC app (or, preferably, an entire “Best of” LRCC album) to a place (for example, the Finder Window) on my MacBook where they can be accessed by an app that I will use to create that printable photo album book?

That’s my dilemma and my concern that, using the LRCC app, although wonderful for organizing and editing my cherished photos from our trip, may not allow me to access and export certain of those photos to create a permanent printed photo album utilizing another commercially available app on my MacBook.

I hope that this makes clear what I am agonizing over. If you can provide me with a “road map” within the LRCC app to achieve my goal, I would be most grateful. Irrespective of that, I still plan to subscribe to LRCC on a monthly plan.

Thank you.

Howard Brafman

Sent from my iPhone

[Jim Wilde · Accepted solution]

OK, first thing is that the app cannot access your images directly within the LRCC environment. So that rules out point 5. The solution is basically point 6, i.e. you do not "migrate" your original files, you export derivatives (usually in Jpeg format) of the images to somewhere on your hard drive, which your other app can then access.

So, in LRCC select one of your "Best of" albums (though if you are printing just one book, wouldn't a single "Best of" album be better), then do Cmd+A which will select all the images in that album. Then click on the "Share" icon (top right near the cloud icon) and choose the "Save to" option. In the resulting dialog box choose Jpeg for the file-type, choose a location where you want the images saved to (probably a good idea to create an empty folder in your chosen location before you do this Save To, so then you'd select that new empty folder as the location), then decide what size you want the exported files to be. There is limited choice at the moment, but "Full Size" would give you the full cropped dimensions of the originals. When the Save To operation is completed, then you simply point your photo-book app to the files in the folder.