With LR v7.0, Is it now possible to edit local photos with both Lightroom and Lightroom Classic?

[peterw89047271]

Hi, with LR v7.0 desktop, Adobe announces we are now able to "Access, edit, and organize locally stored photos in Lightroom without importing them".

So does this imply that I can now work on locally stored photos with LR Classic and LR v7.0 in parallel? Are there any restrictions or will changes made on either side synch seamlessly?

Don't want to mess up anything ...

Many thanks,

Peter.

[Rob_Cullen]

Maybe not entirely "seamlessly" .

Apparently Lr saves the edits as XMP which LrC might use when Importing to the LrC Catalog.

But, for me, for existing photos in LrC, reading Metadata did not update the LrC preview to be the same as the Lr Preview.

I don't think anything will "mess up" if you don't [Copy photo to Cloud].

But this feature is 'Magic' for people wanting to use Lr with only local files.

[Conrad_C]

So does this imply that I can now work on locally stored photos with LR Classic and LR v7.0 in parallel? Are there any restrictions or will changes made on either side synch seamlessly?

By @peterw89047271

Not exactly seamlessly…but close. What will help to understand it is if you have ever transferred edits between Lightroom Classic and Adobe Camera Raw or Bridge, because basically, it’s the same workflow as that: You must manage the XMP sidecar files that carry the edit metadata. If you are already doing this with Camera Raw/Bridge, you already know what to do. If you don’t already know…

Camera Raw, Bridge, and now Lightroom (in local mode only) read and write any changes to the XMP sidecar files they create with the same base filenames as their images, stored in the same folder.

But, Lightroom Classic reads and writes any changes to its currently open catalog database by default, not out to XMP sidecar files.

So, by default:

• If you edit in Lightroom local mode, Camera Raw, or Bridge, the changes won’t be visible in Lightroom Classic until you select the images in the Library module* and choose Metadata > Read Metadata from Files. 
• If you edit in Lightroom Classic, the changes won’t be visible to the other three applications until you select the images in the Library module* and choose Metadata > Save Metadata to Files. 

If you are going to do this often, you probably want to open Lightroom Classic Catalog Settings, click the Metadata tab, and enable “Automatically Write Changes into XMP” so that you no longer have to manually save to the XMP sidecars.

What this also means is that changes you make in Camera Raw, Bridge, or Lightroom local mode should show up in the other two easily. But maybe not immediately, because some don’t update continuously. Sometimes you have to force them to read/write metadata, but they don’t all have commands for that.

*If you’re in the Develop module, the metadata commands are on the Photo menu.

[peterw89047271]

Great, thank you for the precise explanation, that helps a lot!

Just to get it right. My older photos are in local folders managed by LR Classic, with selected photos synched to the cloud via synched LR Classic collections. So I can already change them in LR7 via Smart Cloud Previews (not eating up cloud quota).

Does LR7 recognize that a local image already is synched, and consequently work on the smart preview? Or does it change the local and write to XMP?

[Conrad_C]

Does LR7 recognize that a local image already is synched, and consequently work on the smart preview? Or does it change the local and write to XMP?

By @peterw89047271

I might have to make sure I think this through, but I think that in Lightroom 7, an image is either local or cloud, never both.

If it’s local, it has no connection to what’s going with Smart Previews through the cloud. If it’s cataloged by Lightroom Classic and synced to the cloud, I think it will only get updated from the cloud side by Lightroom Classic.

If it’s in the cloud (in Lightroom 7), then I don’t think Lightroom 7 writes to XMP for any cloud imported images.

Again, that’s provisional and there might be a mistake in there, but I think that’s how it works…

[Harrison Liu]

Hi,

Conrad is essentially correct in how syncing is being handled.

Lightroom 7 does maintain a 'link' between files available locally and in the cloud, if that file has either been imported while in Cloud mode in Lr7, or by being 'copied to cloud' while in Local mode in Lr7. Unfortunately there isn't any other form of linking files existing in the Cloud already (like your Smart previews uploaded from Classic) to the files that may exist on your computer locally.

You can see this by going to Lr7, entering Local mode and viewing a file that has not been uploaded to the Cloud yet. If you are in detail view, the button at the top will say 'Copy to the Cloud'. If you click on that button, the file is then available in the Cloud (you'll see in in Cloud mode in 'recently added' and any other client connected to the cloud you have) and the state of the button should change to 'update edits to the cloud'.

Any further edits you make to that file that you've copied up to the Cloud can be uploaded and they'll be saved as versions.

Additionaly, any changes you make to that same file while in Cloud mode (or in any other client) will not sync back down to your local copy in Lr7.

Hope that helps.

Harrison Liu
(Lightroom QE)