Starting from Scratch with Lightroom CC

[Ailia]

Maybe some of you can give me good advice to prevent me from time consuming mistakes. This is my wishlist:

1 main computer with a hard drive containing all original photos. The photos are organized in Windows folders.

The main computer should always keep a copy of the original photos though they are copied to the cloud.

1 secondary computer. Used as a backup and should work with cloud only. No local copies of cloud contents due

to lack of drive space. Changes should be stored in cloud and synchronized with main computer.

1 cellphone that is used occasionally to upload photos to the cloud which are then synchronized with main computer.

My questions:

1. Can I do this with Lightroom CC?

2. Can I import all subfolders from main computer within one big session? It seems that Lightroom can only import
contents of a single folder in one session. The folder info which could be a great album name gets lost while
importing.
3. Can Windows folder names become automagically Lightroom album names while importing?

4. Can I somehow check the cloud content on a file basis?

My problems:

1. Secondary computer tries to synchronize cloud content to local drive.

2. Batch imports of all sorts do not seem to work (or I'm too dumb, hopefully)

3. Don't know what's already stored in cloud.

I'd be glad hearing from you!

This post moved from Adobe Creative Cloud to Lightroom CC — The cloud-based photo service [Moderator]

[Laura Shoe · Accepted solution]

Hi Ailia,

On your main computer, go into Lightroom CC>Preferences (Mac) or Edit>Preferences (PC) and under Local Storage choose to store all originals locally.  However, you can't choose to store them in your current Windows folders - LR CC will make its own date-based folder structure for the copies of your photos that it owns. If you want to manage your own files and folders, then consider Lightroom Classic.

On your second computer, in Preferences>Local Storage set the photo cache size to 0%. (It still has to store some files, but this will keep it to a minimum.)

1. With caveats.

2. Yes - select the highest level folder in the Add Photos dialog - it will automatically import what's in all the subfolders. True that the folder name gets lost - create albums after import, or do import one folder at a time and in the Add Photos dialog choose to add the photos to an album.

3. No

4. In LR CC Desktop, the Info panel shows sync status for the selected photo. Clicking on the cloud in the top right: if it says "Synced and Backed Up" then everything in LR CC is synced to the cloud.

I hope this helps!