Mobile and Desktop, Avoiding Duplicates

[Diddy82]

I’m hoping for some advice on setting up a new workflow and organization system.  I transfer original photos from my SD cards onto my computer, organized in folders by category, e.g. Iceland.  I will primarily do the editing on my desktop in Lightroom CC or if needed, in Lightroom Classic and/or Photoshop.  If I don’t want to wait to get home and I transfer photos onto my phone and edit them in the Lightroom CC app, would I then duplicate the original photos in Lightroom when I transfer them from the card onto my computer?  I’ve watched and read a bunch of tutorials, but I can’t wrap my head around how this would work. 

[Theresa J]

If you edit images with Lightroom CC, those images get uploaded to the cloud. You have access to all images in the Lightroom cloud (referred to as Lightroom eco-system) from any connected mobile device with the Lightroom mobile app. There is no need to transfer images, or make duplicates. Lightroom CC on a desktop and Lightroom mobile on a phone or iPad access the same catalog of images in the Lightroom eco-sytem.

Now here’s the confusing part....

Lightroom Classic acts like a vacuum. It wants images to reside on a local hard drive. If you sync a Lightroom Classic catalog with Lightroom mobile, it will automatically start downloading everything in the cloud to a hard drive. By default the images get copied to the pictures folder. You can change the location in the preferences. The images that Lightroom Classic downloads to your computer are duplicates of the images in the Lightroom eco-system. Lightroom Classic and Lightroom CC are not intended to be used together because of this.

[Jim Wilde]

Diddy82  wrote

If I don’t want to wait to get home and I transfer photos onto my phone and edit them in the Lightroom CC app, would I then duplicate the original photos in Lightroom when I transfer them from the card onto my computer?  I’ve watched and read a bunch of tutorials, but I can’t wrap my head around how this would work. 

Which version of Lightroom (in bold) do you mean? If you mean LR CC, then there would be no need to add them again from your desktop when you get home.....they will automatically appear there when the sync upload from your phone has completed.

If you mean LR Classic, the answer to that depends on the sync status of the Classic catalog. If it IS sync-enabled, then as TheresaJ explained, those images that you added to the phone will also be automatically downloaded into your Classic catalog (complete with the phone edits), so there would be no need to try to import them into Classic from your desktop. But if the catalog is NOT sync enabled, then they won't be added to the Classic catalog, therefore you could safely import them and there would be no risk of duplicates in that catalog. However, in that situation, any editing work that you did on the phone would not appear in Classic, though it would in LR CC.

[Diddy82]

Thank you for your reply.  Let's forget about Lightroom Classic for now to make this less confusing ...

My goal is to avoid duplicates.  What happens if I edit a select few photos on my mobile device in LR CC, then I get home, insert my SD card, and transfer ALL photos from the SD card onto my computer in the appropriate folder (e.g. Iceland) and into the LR CC catalog?  Would the originals of the select few images that I've already edited in LR CC on my mobile device become duplicated?  (One file in my Iceland folder and one in the LR-CC synchronized folder)  Would they also be duplicated in the LR-CC catalog or would LR identify that the image is already in the catalog when I'm importing?  

In summary ...  What's the best organization method if I'm going to be editing a few photos from my SD card in LRCC on my mobile device and then transferring ALL photos on that SD card onto my computer when I get home?

[Jim Wilde · Accepted solution]

Let me try to explain how the LRCC desktop app works, which should then answer your question about duplicates:

When you add images to LRCC desktop, whether from a memory card or existing hard drive folder, it first of all COPIES all the files being imported into it's own "space" on the local hard drive (the default would be the system drive, but it's possible to change this location in the app preferences). Once copied into it's own "space", the images will then start to upload to the cloud, using that copy. The original images on the card or hard drive folder are no longer used by, or of any concern to, the LRCC app, and it's the user's responsibility to "manage" those, i.e. keep or delete as required. If you are only intending to use these images in LRCC and the cloud, you might therefore consider whether there's any point in going to the trouble of copying them from the SD card to a carefully named folder on the hard drive, rather than importing directly from the SD card.

Getting back to the LRCC desktop app, once the images have been synced up to the cloud the decision on what to to about the copies in the LRCC's space is determined by the choice the user makes regarding the option in Preferences>Local Storage tab>Store a copy of all originals at the specified location (the location being either the default or user specified as mentioned earlier). If that option is checked, the newly added photos will be retained as the local copy, if the option is unchecked the newly added photos will be eligible for deletion by LRCC which will happen gradually over time.

That explanation should answer part of your question, i.e. if you copy the images from your SD card to hard drive, and them add them to LRCC, then at that point yes those images will exist as duplicates on the drive.

The second part of your question is about what happens if you've added some images to LRCC on your phone before you attempt to add the entire contents of the SD card or hard drive folder to the LRCC desktop app. Provided the upload sync from the phone has completed, then my expectation is that when you try to import/add the same images to the desktop app, LRCC will not allow that for those few already-synced files, as it will correctly identify them as duplicates. So I do not believe you would end up with duplicates in the LRCC catalog. You may want to test that, but that should be easy enough to do.

[Jao vdL]

>In summary ...  What's the best organization method if I'm going to be editing a few photos from my SD card in LRCC on my mobile device and then transferring ALL photos on that SD card onto my computer when I get home?

You should not have to do anything special organization wise. Lightroom CC should automatically recognize which images have already been imported into Lightroom CC on your mobile device and not import those but just import the images that haven't been imported yet. This is how it is supposed to work. Do recognize that Lightroom CC is not very good at recognizing duplicates and this doesn't always work reliably and sometimes you still end up with duplicates but that is what it is supposed to do.

[Diddy82]

I did some testing to find out what would happen in a couple of different scenarios ...  Here's what I found out:

What would happen if I try to add a photo in the LR-CC desktop application that I’ve already added to LR-CC on a mobile device?

The LR-CC desktop application recognizes the duplicate during import.  The duplicate will be greyed out, without a checkmark, and on mouse-over will say “Previously Added”.

What would happen if I try to add a photo to LR-Classic that I have already added to LR-CC?

If you’ve activated “Sync with Lightroom CC” in LR-Classic, then LR-Classic should identify this photo as a duplicate, and it will be dark and not selected when you attempt to import photos from the card or folder where that image resides.  (Note: If the image is renamed, it will not be identified as a duplicate) 

What would happen if I try to add a photo to LR-CC that I have already added to LR-Classic?

If that photo is in a collection in LR-Classic that is synched with LR-CC, then LR-CC will not allow you to add the photo and instead you’ll get a “Skipped importing duplicate” message.  (Nice!)

However, if that photo is not in a synced collection in LR-Classic, but you’ve activated “Sync with Lightroom CC” in LR-Classic, then the LR-CC photo would become a virtual copy of the existing photo in LR-Classic, but the actual image itself will not be duplicated.    I’ll explain this in greater detail below …

In LR-Classic, after syncing with LR-CC, the photo would appear in the “Synched Duplicates” collection in the Catalog menu.  If you single-click the image, then go to “All Photographs” in the Catalog menu, the duplicates will be highlighted.  The photo from LR-CC will become a virtual copy of the photo that was already in the LR-Classic catalog.  In this case, the original image will not download to the LR-CC download location on your computer, since you already have the image on your computer.  

If you delete the synched LR-CC photo in LR-Classic, which is considered a virtual copy in LR-Classic, the photo will be deleted in both LR-Classic and Lightroom-CC.  Undo delete will not bring it back in LR-CC but it will bring back the virtual copy in LR-Classic.

If you delete the LR-Classic photo, that photo will be deleted, AND the synched LR-CC photo will be deleted from both LR-Classic AND Lightroom-CC! Again, undo will not bring it back in LR-CC. 

Your best option is to either do nothing if the photo has different edits applied to each version and you want to keep both, or keep only the LR-Classic photo and put that in a collection that is synced with LR-CC.  If you prefer the edits of the LR-CC photo, copy/paste the edits from the LR-CC photo to the LR-Classic photo before you delete the LR-CC photo.  

If I’ve activated “Sync with Lightroom CC” in LR-Classic, where are the files downloaded?

The images are downloaded to wherever you specified in LR-Classic Preferences à Lightroom Sync.  If you want to move the images to another folder after they’ve downloaded, you can do so in Lightroom Classic, but not outside of Lightroom or else it won’t be able to find the images.  Changing the LR-CC downloads location will only impact future downloads.  It will not move or impact the images that have been previously downloaded to another location.