there is no original backed up to the cloud, but a smart preview is available.

[AdiM]

Some of my older images show this "there is no original backed up to the cloud, but a smart preview is available." at the bottom right... I just installed Lightroom CC and are also using Lightroom Classic at the same time, both latest version.

What can I do to have them synced and backed up like the rest?

Thank you

Alex

[99jon]

You would need to migrate your catalog from Lr Classic.

Launch Lr CC and go to the menu:

File >> Migrate Lightroom Catalog

You will need to ensure you have sufficient disk space.

[AndyBarnes]

If I migrate my catalog, and I have bad internet. Will it just sync as and when it can? I expect it'll take days/weeks to start with? I don't need to migrate all in one go?

Edit: Will edits made in Classic that don't (yet?) exist in Lightroom CC (e.g. facial tags, split toning) be lost in the migration, or will they be retained somehow so that if they are introduced to Lightroom CC, they will be available?

[99jon]

What is the size of your catalog and how many images do you have in Lr Classic. The migration process involves copying all your originals (temporarily) to get them up to the cloud and to write data into the Lr Classic catalog to match and maintain integrity.

[AdiM]

In LR Classic I have 60034 images and 43392 images sinced...

In LR CC I have 43392 images...

I imagine I will need to sinc the missing images in LR Classic first, but how do I do that?

Alex

[99jon]

There is no need to sync the images first in Lr classic. The migration process will take care of that. If you don’t have enough space internally to temporarily duplicate all 60k images (smart previews will be replaced with originals in the cloud) you may wish to set up an external drive in Lr CC Prefs. I suggest running the migration when you don’t need your computer for other tasks e.g overnight or at weekend.

[AdiM]

Thank you for your help.

I have more than 1TB available so that should not be an issue.

I have noticed that the images that are only smart previews in LR CC and not sinced are scans from film that have been imported over the years into LR... Like all the digital images the film scans originals reside in folders on the same hard drive which is always online and accessible by LR Classic, so I don't think there is a difference between how the film scans and digital files are entered in LR Classic... But they are not synced!

Alex

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

Lightroom Classic only syncs images that are in collections that are set to Sync with the cloud so I would guess those images are simply not in a collection that is being synced. For those images it will only sync smart previews. If you migrate your catalog to Lightroom CC those images that were not synced before will all start syncing in Lightroom Classic too as soon as they are uploaded.

[AdiM]

Thank you... How do I find images that are NOT synced in LR Classic?

Alex

[Jao vdL]

Don’t think there is an easy way to do that. You can go to the synced images collection. Select all, then go to the all photographs collection and invert the selection. That should show all non-synced images selected.

[99jon]

Alex, I don't know to be honest. My impression is that you need to leave it running.

[Jao vdL]

It will copy everything over to Lightroom CC and then should slowly upload to the cloud as upload bandwidth becomes available. You can also migrate piecemeal by exporting parts of your Classic catalog as new catalog files and migrating those. Hard to make sure you get everything over in the end though doing that.

[Electric_neighbors1587]

I do have the same concern and I'm afraid to migrate the catalog for that reason as I imagine it would be difficult/impossible to go back. Like you I have Classic and CC running in parallel with 70% of my pictures in synced collections. Without changing any setup, it looks like most of my pictures less than a year old are backed up but none of the ones older than that.

[AndyBarnes]

Probably about 500GB. Although, I'm running a 128GB MacBook Pro, so will need to do it to an external hard drive as recommended in the help files.But if to start with I only sync 50GB. Can I safely close Lightroom and reopen tomorrow to sync a further 50GB, and so on?

[JMAC34]

Adjacent question. I switched computers a while back and have access to my old computer. So, I was trying to figure out why my old photos on my new computer also so "no original backed up..." Am I going to have to go to new lightroom on my old computer, migrate from lightroom classic and then sync? (I checked lightroom classic on my new computer and there's not a single photo there, so I'm assuming it's on the old.)

Seems stupid but I'm only asking since there's the option to migrate from Lightroom Classic on my new computer. Just, if that's going to migrate a catalog that is empty, I don't want to mess things up since it says i can only migrate once.