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jeremyr19634019
Participant
June 7, 2019
Question

Lightroom: Store Local = Full Raw Files?

  • June 7, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 2918 views

I am just getting started with LR (non-classic) on Windows. I was under the impression that if I wanted to store an "album" locally, it would only store smart previews, not the full files.

I just clicked "store locally" on an album of 18 36MP D810 files, and LR tells me it will take 720MB of storage, which tells me that it wants to store the entire raw file.

Am I correct that LR will download all of the files?

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    A
    Anonymous
    October 22, 2020

    Seems like a good place to provide an update as of 10/22/2020 on this question.

    Lightroom CC for desktops uploads original image files to the cloud.

    Lightroom CC for mobile "Store locally" will download Smart Previews if "Only download Smart Previews" is ON

    Lightroom CC for mobile "Store locally" will download original image files (including RAW) if "Only download Smart Previews" is OFF

    Warning: You have to let it download Smart Previews and THEN turn off "Smart Previews" to get ito download original images. Trying to download originals from the beginning will stall forever which is a bug I will try to report to Adobe...

     

    Jim Wilde
    Community Expert
    Jim WildeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 7, 2019

    LR will download a copy of the files, provided they exist as originals in the cloud. If you synced files from LR Classic to the cloud, only smart previews would have been uploaded in that case, so they would be saved/downloaded as smart previews in the previews cache, not in the specified location for downloaded originals.

    But if you imported images into any of the Lightroom cloud client apps, they'll be held in the cloud in original form, so would be downloaded in the same format when you use the "Store Album Locally" option.

    Your misunderstanding may have originated from the Lightroom mobile app, which has the option to "Only Download Smart Previews". The Desktop app doesn't have that option.

    J
    jeremyr19634019Author
    Participant
    June 7, 2019

    So from my desktop I clicked "Sync Collection To Cloud". My understanding was that by doing that, I only uploaded previews, not the full raw file...

    JP Hess
    JP Hess
    Inspiring
    June 7, 2019

    If you're going from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom CC, that is true. In that case, only smart previews are sent to the cloud and those smart previews do not impact your allotted cloud storage. However, if you have imported the images directly to Lightroom CC (the cloud-based Lightroom), and then want to store local copies of those raw images the process will create full-size copies of those raw images.

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