Multiple Accounts in Lightroom CC (Business & Personal)

[RomanSima]

Hi there,

Any way to implement an in-app account switch in Lightroom CC (cloud) that would allow switching between two accounts in a fraction of a second?

I have a business account of all apps from my workplace and a personal account for my Lightroom CC (1TB) plan. The only way I can separate them (on a Mac) is through user switching which is extremely frustrating. Why isn't there a seamless option to switch between accounts?

[JP Hess]

The short answer, the long answer, and the only answer is, because there isn't. It is only possible to associate your cloud account with a single Adobe user account.

[RomanSima]

Then why is Lightroom CC is available as a sanboxed app thru the Mac App Store? And why is it signing me in automatically in the business account instead of allowing me to choose one? If Adobe requires to sign out of the business account to get it to work, that's idiotic and needs to be fixed.

[Jim Wilde]

I don't understand what you mean when you say "it" is signing you in automatically to the business account....what is "it"? Is it the Adobe Creative Cloud desktop app, or the Lightroom desktop app? I also have two accounts, and although I rarely need to switch from one to the other on the same MacBookPro, whenever I do that I simply sign out from the Creative Cloud app, then sign in again using the second account credentials. Yes, it's not a fraction of a second, and it's not an "in-app" switch, but it still takes less than a minute to do. Once logged into either account, those credentials remain "sticky" until the next time I need to switch.

I don't work for Adobe either, so I have no knowledge of how difficult it would be to do an "in-app" switch (I suspect it would be non-trivial), but I'd also imagine that the number of "dual-account" users is rather small in relation to the whole user base, making it more likely that scheduling such a change would be rather low priority. But I'm only guessing, so why not use the link that Jim Hess provided to make a formal feature request, which would allow the community to vote on the request. The more votes, the more likely Adobe would consider re-prioritising such a request.

[RomanSima]

Here's the scenario on one Mac with one user account:

1. Download and sign-in into Creative Cloud for Mac and install all apps.

2. Go to the Mac App Store and download Lightroom CC.

3. Open Lightroom CC (the one above as in the Mac App Store version)

4. (the issue) It signs me in automatically into my business account above. Why?!

Account switching is cumbersome as you also lose the cache in addition to the frustrating procedure. Plus, what if I need to use the rest of the apps while using Lightroom CC from my personal account?

[Jim Wilde]

If I'm reading your posts correctly, I think part of the issue is that you have two separate installations of the Lightroom app, one "licensed" by Adobe via the Creative Cloud desktop app, and the other "licensed" by Apple via their App Store. To be honest, I don't know if it is possible to log into and out of both accounts using the single Creative Cloud desktop app....being able to do that would greatly simplify the switching between the two accounts (and should preserve the caches for both accounts independently of each other). It might be worth trying at least, but there'll be no way round the problem of being unable to maintain access to the Business account apps when logged in to your personal account. For that you'd need Adobe to make some changes, and for that you'd need to log that feature request.

[shintetsu]

he's right - the UX sucks, other modern apps allow you to manage multiple accounts easliy. look at Slack, Figma as prime examples to see how it's done properly

[JP Hess]

Lightroom allows you to have ONE account, and allows you (if you choose to) synchronize ONE catalog from Lightroom Classic. That's the way it works. I'm a user, I don't work for Adobe, I have no connection to Adobe, I can't tell you why anything and Adobe works the way it does. This is a user to user forum. If you have issues that you would like to discuss with the developers then bring it up on the forum where the developers monitor more closely, and possibly will give you somewhat of an explanation to your concern:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/categories/photoshop_family_lightroom_cc 

[Theresa J]

You could use Lightroom on the web for your personal Lightroom account. It does most of what you can do with the Lightroom app. This will allow you to stay logged into your business account for the other apps.

[RomanSima]

That's my current workaround, but I'd very much like to use the hardware acceleration and the full feature set of the desktop counterpart. Also, the web app doesn't allow photo caching, whereas the desktop app does.

[Christin268093632mmq]

Make sure all Adobe apps are closed out of (Lightrooms, Photoshop, Premier Pro, etc). Open the Creative Cloud app and log out of your account. Now log into the account you do want to use 🙂