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M
merkk
Inspiring
March 30, 2018
Question

stop lightroom mobile from syncing all photos

  • March 30, 2018
  • 14 replies
  • 87162 views

Is there a way to stop lightroom mobile from syncing all photos on my phone? And to remove all the photos it's already synced without deleting them from my phone?  I only want lightroom to sync photos i specifically tell it to sync. It's already uploaded a batch of photos I didn't want it to, and if i just try and delete them from lightroom.adobe.com it says it's going to delete the photo from all synced devices as well. (who is the genius that thought it's a good idea to delete photos everywhere without giving the option to only delete locally?)

I just turned off auto add in the preferences so I'm guessing that will stop LR from adding any more photos. But how do i remove the ones it's already synced without deleting them from my phone?

    14 replies

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    md0724
    md0724
    New Participant
    August 7, 2018

    Just ran into this problem as well - supremely aggravating, especially because it never confirmed a choice to sync all old photos, and as others have mentioned it does not stop syncing even when turned off. The problem is I now likewise have thousands of duplicate images in my Lightroom desktop library and if I go to edit or change one, I can't be sure which version I may be working on, cloud or desktop, without having to check and verify this for every image, and risk putting a cloud image into a collection and then having it potentially disappear at a later date due to any bugs with cloud syncing. I don't trust having one copy of an image that exists only in a cloud managed collection as that seems to be asking for trouble if some bug in the cloud software decides to delete or move around images and then having to track that down. I prefer to know where I put all my images manually and then sync selective collections with the cloud for only a small subset of images that need to live across devices for reviews, current work, etc.

      J
      Jao vdL
      Community Expert
      March 31, 2018

      This is a real design flaw in LR CC mobile. If you enable the auto add feature, it will start uploading every single image you have ever taken with your phone and all phones before if you use an iPhone and use the iCloud photo library feature. You can't just have it automatically upload just newly shot images to Adobe's cloud which is what most people really would want. Worse, if you realize that it is doing this wrong and disable the auto-add feature, it will just keep uploading everything anyway. There is no way to stop it from doing that except for completely removing the Lightroom CC app from your phone and reinstalling it from the app store. You can tell I ran into this problem too ;-)

      Lastly, the only way to remove the images already uploaded is manually deleting them from Lightroom CC either on your phone or in lightroom.adobe.com or in Lightroom CC on a desktop computer. They will still be on the photo roll on your phone (yes it duplicates them!) and in iCloud photo library. They will only be removed from Adobe's cloud.

        M
        MontyMontgomery
        Inspiring
        March 31, 2018

        In my opinion, having all photographs everywhere is the beauty of LRCC.   I do not want to have a different collection of photos on my phone than I do on the iPad or Mac.

        Many times I am sitting at a coffee bar with friends and a topic wil arise, “Remember when we...”. Seconds later I have searched LRCC and present a photos of the event. 

        It has been a long time since I have been as excited about a program as I am with LRCC. 

        “Who is the genius....”.   The last thing I want to do is to wonder if “that photo” has been deleted on this device or that device.  What a maniagement nightmare that would be. One catalogue, one set of photographs everywhere.  Thank you Adobe,

        Monty

        PS, now, when is that next update coming?

          M
          merkkAuthor
          Inspiring
          March 31, 2018

          MontyMontgomery  wrote

          In my opinion, having all photographs everywhere is the beauty of LRCC.   I do not want to have a different collection of photos on my phone than I do on the iPad or Mac.

          Many times I am sitting at a coffee bar with friends and a topic wil arise, “Remember when we...”. Seconds later I have searched LRCC and present a photos of the event. 

          It has been a long time since I have been as excited about a program as I am with LRCC. 

          “Who is the genius....”.   The last thing I want to do is to wonder if “that photo” has been deleted on this device or that device.  What a maniagement nightmare that would be. One catalogue, one set of photographs everywhere.  Thank you Adobe,

          Monty

          PS, now, when is that next update coming?

          That's good for you, but it's not what I want. I don't need or want all my camera photos uploaded to adobe. I prefer maintaining control over what gets uploaded and what doesn't. I particularly dislike when apps like this seem to try and force you into uploading all your data to their servers. They need to give you more control over whats uploaded - and more obvious ways of managing things that have already been uploaded.

            Jim Wilde
            Jim Wilde
            Community Expert
            April 1, 2018

            merkk  wrote

            That's good for you, but it's not what I want. I don't need or want all my camera photos uploaded to adobe. I prefer maintaining control over what gets uploaded and what doesn't. I particularly dislike when apps like this seem to try and force you into uploading all your data to their servers. They need to give you more control over whats uploaded - and more obvious ways of managing things that have already been uploaded.

            LRCC is a totally cloud-centric system, i.e. any image you add into that system from whatever source is automatically uploaded to the Adobe cloud. That is currently non-optional by design, so if that's not what you want then you're probably using the wrong product (or turn off auto-add and then you can manually import just the photos that you do want to upload). But if you want the ability to add all your images to Lightroom on your phone, but have the control to only upload some of them, then you probably ought to head over to the main Adobe feedback site and add your vote to the "Selective Sync" feature request that exists over there: Lightroom CC: Selective Sync | Photoshop Family Customer Community

            FWIW, I've never encountered the problem that Jao describes, and I've been using LRmobile (on various iPhones and iPads) since it was first released, though I have seen a few reports about it. I suspect it's related to iCloud, which I've disabled for photos (can't see the point in using two competing cloud products on the same device), and I also suspect that I could produce the problem if I now enable iCloud on my iDevices, i.e. photos taken on my iPhone would appear on my iPad and if I have auto-add enabled they'd be added to LRCC on the iPad. But that's just a matter of learning how things are intended to work, and then working around any such issues.

            I'm of the same view as Monty....I don't want my photography separated by capture device, I want all my images in one centrally managed place, and the LRCC system allows me to achieve that totally automatically for all my iDevice captures. I still use LR Classic as my main image management application (iDevice captures are automatically downloaded into my preferred folder system from the cloud), but I increasingly use LRCC for "wherever I happen to be reviewing and sharing". 

            selondon
            selondon
            Community Expert
            March 31, 2018

            This is how the ecosystem is designed to work, to have access to everything that is stored in the Cloud on any device.

            Yep, turning off 'Auto Add' will help. Are the photos that are going up to the Cloud, from the Lightroom Mobile Camera or being imported from the iOS Photos App Camera Roll/Android Gallery (or whatever it is called).

            If they are originally coming from the Camera Roll/Gallery and are still present there, then deleting from lightroom.adobe.com will not touch these. Yes, they will be deleted from the Lightroom Cloud ecosystem and you won't see them in the Lightroom App but they should still be in the device operating system's photos location (unless you have cleared them from there).

            J
            jm_colorado
            New Participant
            April 12, 2019

            This is an ENORMOUS invasion of my privacy!!!!!  By default everything syncs to the web?  I didn't even know this was happening.  IT SHOULD BE TURNED OFF BY DEFAULT WITH AN OPT-IN OPTION!!!! 

              quadband
              quadband
              New Participant
              January 8, 2021

              jm_colorado  wrote

              This is an ENORMOUS invasion of my privacy!!!!!  By default everything syncs to the web?  I didn't even know this was happening.  IT SHOULD BE TURNED OFF BY DEFAULT WITH AN OPT-IN OPTION!!!! 

              This is the point of the Cloud Based Lightroom though. Lightroom Classic exists if the Cloud isn’t preferable for you. Also, you can pause sync on the Cloud clients, so you don’t have to sync anything.


              You're telling me that the "point of the ecosystem" is to upload a bunch of cell phone pictures? I find it difficult to believe that anyone is actually that brainless. What intern thought this feature was a good idea, and which lead signed off on this?

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