Using iCloud or Google Drive as an alternative to Lightroom Cloud Storage

[sapsig32154141]

Hello,

Lightroom CC is turning out to be a very nicely design product. What however is the intended design?

Do i keep lightroom CC classic and its associated catalog (many thousands of DNG/RAF files) and use Lightroom CC to do edits

on some files (and then sync back to the desktop catalog)

or

Do i use Lightroom CC exclusively and the cloud storage contains all my thousands of DNG/RAF files. If so, my account has 20GB

of Adobe Cloud Storage, but i personally have 2TB of Apple ICloud Storage and 2TB of Google Drive storage. Cannot Lightroom CC use

those cloud providers to as their cloud storage backend?

I dont wan't to shell out more money for yet another cloud storage(albeit for image editing use only).

Cheers

Saptarshi

[Jim Wilde · Accepted solution]

In terms of the "intended design" then I would think that's really up to the individual users to decide for themselves how they want to use the various applications. I guess that's why there are a couple of different options under the Photography Plan, so that you can choose which works best for you. Adobe would probably prefer that you use one or the other, and not try to use them together in a form of hybrid workflow.

Regarding the use of other cloud storage providers with your LRCC assets, I think that's extremely unlikely. You need to remember that LRCC is a lot more than a simple cloud storage system, a lot of the LRCC processing is actually done on the Adobe servers, not on the local systems....so that functionality needs access to the images on those servers.

[sapsig32154141]

Yes, i forgot that adobe does a lot of backend processing with the. images and would probably need fast access to the data.

With that said, and maybe this is for another post,

- i took a photo

- transferred it to iPad and imported into Lightroom

- edited and synced to cloud

- on my desktop it was synced but not kept in my catalog (which is on an external drive) rather "Show in Finder" reveals a file in my ~/Library/...

How can i add this photo to my catalog (just in case i lose access to the cloud)

[Jim Wilde]

It depends on which desktop app you're talking about: LR Classic, or the LRCC desktop app?

If LR Classic, you can specify a different location than the default, see the Preferences>Lightroom Sync tab>Specify a different location for Lightroom CC's ecosystem's images (which can be on an external drive).

If LRCC desktop, by default the images are kept only in the cloud, However, you can use the option in Preferences>Local Storage tab>Store a copy of all originals at the specified location (which can be on an external drive).

[sapsig32154141]

Excellent. Thanks so much.

[99jon]

I agree with Jim. LR Classic would sync your smart previews from collections giving you greater use of your 20GB limit as those files will take up less space than original raw files.

You would not want to be referencing the same files in iCloud (which I don't think is actually possible) if using the Apple Photos app and Lightroom together. That could corrupt the Photos Library.