P: Folder structure mirrored and synched both in the cloud and locally

[sébastienk77039119]

Last year I moved from LR Classic to LR (cloud-based) for several reasons : 

- All my originals are backed-up in the cloud, and I can download them on any devie ;

- I can edit and organize my work on any device at any time ;

- I like the design of the interface better (yes, I'm silly) ; 

- I don't really need the missing features that LRC has, and anyways, the LR app is improving with every update. 

There is just one thing that I find very disappointing, and I know I'm not the first one to bring it up. 

If I want to store all my original files locally, I can do that, but the folder structure is not mirrored on the hardrive like it's the case in LRC : the originals are stored in a year/month/day structure. 

So if I want to go to my hardrive and select all the raw files from a same trip (that are in the same folder in LR), I can't do that... 

I just don't understand why it's not possible to have the folder structure synched and mirrored both in the cloud and on the hardrive. 

Other peolple fell the same way ? 

Are there alternatives ? I can think of some, such as using both LRC and LR, but why would I pay for two apps when I only need one? Or I could just stop using adobe cloud and get a google drive subscription for cloud backup, but the library would still not be synched in the cloud and on the drive. 

Will this be solved in a future LR update? 

Thanks a lot for the input!

[Jim Wilde]

If I want to store all my original files locally, I can do that, but the folder structure is not mirrored on the hardrive like it's the case in LRC : the originals are stored in a year/month/day structure. 

So if I want to go to my hardrive and select all the raw files from a same trip (that are in the same folder in LR), I can't do that... 

I just don't understand why it's not possible to have the folder structure synched and mirrored both in the cloud and on the hardrive. 

You're really comparing apples and oranges. The type of "folder structure" that you see in the cloud is unrelated to the folder structure that you see on your local hard drives. In the cloud "folders" are simply containers for sets of albums (which themselves are a virtual grouping of images, not a real physical grouping), whereas folders on local disk drives are actual containers of assets (sub-folders or files). We have no idea how our images are physically stored on the cloud servers, we only ever see the virtual arrangement that we ourselves create. In all probability the images are physically stored either in a date-based folder structure or in something more complex which allows for duplicate files to be created and stored.

Given that our folders and albums in the cloud are virtual arrangements, potential issues could ensue if the locally-stored copy of our originals was indeed stored in a physical folder system which tried to mirror the virtual folder/album organisation of the cloud. Adding images to a new album, or moving them from one album to another, or copying them from one album to another, all those actions (which are just database entries in the cloud) would require a physical copying or moving of the images from folder to folder on the local system.

It all sounds like a lot of work needed to achieve that, with associated risks from the potential high rate of churn trying to keep the cloud and local store in sync. And to what benefit? You say you want to be able to go to a local hard drive and select all the raw images from a trip, but you don't say WHY you would want to do that. Remember that Lightroom (and Lightroom Classic) are non-destructive editors, i.e. our raw files are never changed and all edits and metadata changes are just database entries which are used to apply those changes to a derivative file type (Jpeg or Tiff typically) during the export process. So once you have selected the raw files, what would you expect to do with them given that they would not reflect any of the changes that you might have made to them?

The main purpose of the option to store a copy of all originals locally is to provide a means to carry on working in the Lightroom desktop app when there is no network available, i.e. using a laptop on a road trip. Some users think of them as a form of backup, but given the aforementioned fact they are simply a copy of the unedited originals I view that as a pretty poor backup, so on my system I keep that option turned off.