PLEASE HELP - Workflow of shooting RAW files, online photo ratings and cloud storage space.

[Waters Tang]

Hi everyone,

I usually shoot RAW file only, and I am new to Lightroom. Recently I'm confused about Lightroom cloud storage. I want to rate my photos using my iPad, so I need to upload my photos on my laptop. I didn’t shoot JPG files, but the 20GB cloud storage space can’t hold many RAW files.

I tried to export JPG files in Lightroom Classic, then upload these JPG files to Lightroom. This save a lot of space, but when I finish rating these photos, I find it hard (or maybe impossible?) to relink to my original RAW files.

What is the recommanded workflow of shooting on RAW and rating them on remote devices? I do not need a RAW quality for just rating a photo. So I think it's meaningless to upload all my RAW files. Can Lightroom only upload preview quality files of my photos?

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen · Accepted solution]

If you upload from Lightroom Classic, it only sends smart previews to the cloud which don't count toward your cloud storage. So, import photos into Classic, add them directly to All Synced Photos or add them to a collection and mark it to sync, then edit happily ever after on your iPad. Those edits sync back to the Classic catalog and are applied to the full size raw files. 

[Waters Tang]

Thanks Victoria. You help me a lot. I will try it out now.

[Waters Tang]

I'm just curious, why don't photos uploaded from Classic occupy cloud space? Is this a temporary bug or some kind of policy?

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

It's kind of historical grandfathering. When sync was introduced, there was no cloud space limit, so when the space limit was introduced, they continued to allow Classic to upload with no limits.