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I think we need to clarify exactly what you are doing/have done before we can answer all your questions; You said:
For my purposes I THINK I want to bring my images in to the system with a card reader via my iPad pro so I have full resolution in the cloud (I'm not sure smart previews will suit my editing taste yet). In doing that I have a folder set up on my MacBook and in my LRC catalog called LR Cloud Imports, LRC also created a collection called "From LR".
Can you tell us where the folder "LR Cloud Imnports" fits into the picture? Have you by chance set that folder as the storage location for all Lightroom Synced images on the LrC Preferences>Lightroom Sync tab? If so, then any images that you import into any of the Lightroom apps (desktop, mobile, web, but not LrC) will be stored in that one folder. If that is what you intended, that's fine.
The "From LR" collection....is that actually a "From Lightroom" collection SET which is automatically created by LrC when syncing is enabled, or is it really a "From LR" collection which you would have manually created? The "From Lightroom" collection set is simply a convenient place for LrC to store any synced collections that are originally created as albums in any of the Lightroom apps. If you never create albums in Lightroom, instead you create collections in LrC which you then sync, those collections would not automatically appear in the "From Lightroom" collection set (although you can manually place them there).
Please correct me if I am wrong in any of these assumptions:
The folder on my MacBook called LR Cloud Imports is "not a sync" it is a one way import. Meaning that it will not sync any changes back up to the cloud, and along those same lines I should be editing the images using the "From LR" collection.....correct
This is an incorrect assumption. If an image is currently synced, it matters not at all if you edit it from a folder or a collection, the edits will still sync. Extending that thought further, a synced image does NOT have to be in a synced collection....all synced images will always appear in the "All Synced Photographs" special collection, but they do not also have to be in a synced collection. So if an image is synced, you can edit it and the edits will sync, no mattter what source you have selected (folder or collection or filter, if the image is synced, the edits will sync).
I don't want to store images permanently in the adobe cloud, I just want to use it to keep the images I am currently processing synced. So with that in mind, what will happen if I rename and move the images out of the LR Cloud Imports folder on my MacBook into another folder on my MacBook (not to the NAS). I think they will still stay in the From LR collection even if I relocate the images, correct? Also in doing the renaming/moving what will happen to the full-size preview in the cloud, will it still be there even if I have renamed and moved file (I assume it would as long as the image was still in the From LR collection).
Additionally, what happens if I move that same image from the "From LR" collection and place it in another collection that is also synced to the cloud. Will the full-size preview still be available?
Moving a synced image from one folder to another does not change the sync status of the image. Renaming a file in LrC does not change the sync status (and the rename will also sync to the cloud). Removing a synced image from a synced collection does not automatically change the sync status (though you would get a message asking you what to do), and unsyncing a synced collection does not change the sync status of any of the images in that collection.
Hopefully you've got the message here....you can rename or move synced images around inside LrC with no impact on their sysnc status. The one thing to be aware of is that effectively the status of the synced images in LrC is managed through that All Synced Photographs special collection. The rule is simple....all synced images must always be listed in the ASP, and thus by logic if you remove an image from the ASP then that will unsync that image. The follow-on from that is that if you unsync an image, it can no longer exist in the cloud and is therefore deleted from the cloud.
This is my thought process:
Import to ipad so I will have full size previews, then on MacBook with LRC they will show up in the "LR Cloud Imports" folder and the "From LR" collection. Keep them there until I am ready to work on them (keyword, rename, edit etc). When I am ready to work on them, move them to a folder in LRC called "Current Edits" and into a synced collection called "Current Edits". Hopefully retaining full image previews so I can keep edits synced until I am completely finished with the image.
Once the image is complete then I would move the file out of the Current Edits folder into its permanent home folder and remove it from a synced collection.
As mentioned earlier, yes the synced images will show up in whatever folder is specified in the Preferences>Lightroom Sync tab. They will show up in a synced collection in LrC ONLY if you've added them to an album in Lightroom first. Otherwise you'll have to locate then in LrC either via the folder that they are in, or via the All Synced Photographs. As mentioned, the images can be moved around within LrC however you wish, but also as mentioned if you want to remove them from the cloud you'll need to do that by removing them from the ASP....just unsyncing a synced collection does not remove images from the cloud.
You'll also need to be aware of the things that do NOT sync between Classic and the cloud. Most notable is keywords and location data.
Okay I think one thing that may be confusing me is the "All synched photographs" that is in the "Catalog" tab in LRC's left menu. You call it a "All Synced Photographs special collection" but I see it sitting in the Catalog window.
It currently shows 174 images, while my folder that I have designated in LRCs preferences only shows 169 images. So I have 5 images I can't account for as to their exact physical location.
Obviously the LRC collections are just pointers to the files physically stored somewhere else, is the "All synched photographs" work the same way? And looking at the numbers above would I then have 5 images that obviously are synching but not located in my folder I designated in LRCs preferences for synching.
All the items that you see in the Catalog Panel are "special collections", i.e. they are collections that are created by LrC itself, not by the user. So All Photographs, Previous Import, Quick Collection, Previous Export as Catalog, Missing Photographs, etc. can all be seen in that panel whenever they are created by LrC as needed (some are always there of course).
In terms of the difference between the numbers in the ASP collection and the numbers in your designated downloads folder, remember that the downloads folder only contains images that have been added to the cloud from one of the Lightroom apps and downloaded into LrC. It does NOT contain images that you may have synced TO the cloud from LrC, but of course the latter are also included in the ASP.
Wow I did not realize this! So how do I find those 5 images, and how do I unsync them? Or even a better question since I am dealing with LRC, what specifically determines if an image will sync. How do I turn it on/off for a specific image.
In my research in setting this up I mis-interpreted that for LRC to send an image to the cloud it had to be added to a synched collection and removing it from that collection would un-sync it.
Finding the 5 images is possible, but a little klunky. Start with clearing the Quick Collection (in the Catalog Panel!), then select your sync downloads folder and do Cmd+A to select them all. Then, leaving all those selected, click on the All Synced Photographs collection. At that point all the images are still selected apart from the 5 that aren't in the downloads folder. You can manually scroll through the grid to find them, but it's easier to go to the Edit menu and select "Invert Selection". That changes the selection so that the 5 previously unselected images are now the only selected ones. At that point press the "B" key on the keyboard and those 5 images are added to the Quick Collection, so you can now deal with them from there. It's likely that they are images that you have synced from LrC to the cloud at some point.
Managing the syncing on/off process is best done from the ASP....if you remove a synced image from the ASP it will be unsynced (and if it was in a synced collection it will be removed from that collection also). Adding an image to be synced can either be done by adding it to the ASP or by adding it to a synced collection.
Regarding your final point, it was initially the case that images could indeed only be synced from LrC by adding them to a synced collection, but later the ASP was introduced which now allows images to be synced without having to be in a synced collection (and also means removing an images from a synced collection doesn't "unsync" that image unless it's also removed from the ASP).
At this point I just want to clarify a few points to see if I understand:
It does not matter where an image is on my computer, if it is in the all synced photographs it still syncs until I remove it.
The folder I designated in LR preferences for my images downloaded from mobile will add the downloaded mobile images to the "All synced Photo" collection, but that LR download folder does not do any synching itself (in other words if I have an unsynced image and place it in that folder and do not add it to the "all synced photos" collection nothing happens, correct?
Yes, correct on both points.
Folders cannot be set to sync in the same way as Collections, so only the images in that folder can be synced by either adding them to a synced collection or manually adding them to All Synced Photographs.
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