Offline Copies

[Murwin]

I absolutely love the ability to finally use Lightroom offline. It might be what finally allows me to move away from Classic and to the new versoin fully.
One thing I don't understand is why if you want to save a copy locally from whats already in the cloud, it only archives and removes it from the cloud.

For example, if I import a shoot to my iPad, its going to upload them and I am going to be able to edit them. When I get to my desktop I want to pull them down locally so I have my own copies and right now that requires me to archive them out of the cloud,  save them locally, and then go to local, and re-upload a copy to the cloud. It seems like it would be much easier if alonside the option of archive (for when you want to pull them out) there was a "save a local copy" so I can pull them down to my desktop but leave them in the cloud.

Ultimately what I would love is for none of them to need to be saved in the cloud and that its only used to sync across my devices locally, but I know thats a pipe dream.

[Rob_Cullen]

I don't understand 'why' you would want to move away from Lr-CLassic

Lightroom-Classic  will automatically sync all photos from the Lr Cloud (ie. any you import to mobile devices- iPad), then in Lr-Classic they can be easily deleted from the Cloud in the [All Synced Photographs] catalog collection (after they have downloaded to LrC!).

Lr-Classic also has added functions that Lr does not have- eg. Printing.

COMPARE LIGHTROOM & LIGHTROOM-CLASSIC FEATURES

I see the only need for a Catalog in Lr-Classic as the only 'hurdle' to its use (that is the ift quoted reason to dislike)

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Archive Locally is designed for when you say "I don't want these photos in the cloud anymore".

If you just want to cache the originals locally in addition to being in the cloud, you want the Store Locally options. You can store albums offline (using the right-click menu > Store Locally. Or if you want everything cached locally, look in Preferences > Cache for "Store a copy of all originals at the specified location". Don't mess with those folders outside of Lightroom as Lightroom manages them.