P: Lightroom Ecosystem: Selective Sync

Report · Oct 19, 2017

I'm not a professional and have only used Lightroom for less than a year. I do love the redesign and I want to use it but I don't like the auto-sync. How hard would it be to implement an option that prevents auto sync and instead enables manual sync?

My idea is to add a manual sync option in the settings and when you want a photo to be uploaded to the cloud you should be able to click on the cloud button and hit "Sync" or "Upload". Taking away people's ability to choose doesn't just scare away the pros but also the beginners.
Also, some advanced features from the original Lightroom need to be added. One of them is the export function. The new export function is terrible. I only see "Small, Full Size, and Custom". The original Lightroom has a lot more export functions.

Report · Jul 25, 2018

You cannot, currently there is no selective sync, everything syncs to and from the Cloud throughout the Lightroom CC Ecosystem.

You can vote for the feature here though:

Lightroom CC: Selective Sync | Photoshop Family Customer Community

The additional photos shouldn’t take up much space on your mobile device though if you never access or edit them.

Report · Aug 07, 2018

The lack of selective sync is what stops me from making the move from Classic. I want to be able to add all the photos I've taken to Lightroom, but I only want photos I'll work on synced to the cloud otherwise I run out of space very quickly. Syncing Albums/Collections is basically what I'm after. Unused photos are good to have on hand but aren't required on all devices.

I'm not about to manually remove all other photos, and I'm not about to pay extra for 1TB either as I have my own backups including unlimited PrimePhotos storage (I'd definitely pay extra for Prime Photos integration though!)

For now I'm happy to stick to Classic.

Report · Aug 24, 2018

I absolutely do not want everything in one place. I use my phone and my desktop for very different purposes and I want to maintain that distinction. I guess I'll have to remove lightroom from the phone.

Report · Sep 01, 2018

I don't want all photos uploaded to CC. I take a lot of snapshots and reserve LR and PS for more professional work so don't want the two sets intermingled. I want to be able to sync only the collections I choose to.

Report · Sep 06, 2018

I really like having all my photos uploaded to the cloud. I recently transferred over to the Lightroom CC only option with 1TB of storage (£9.94)

This gives me offsite back up of all my photos and the ability of having them locally storaged and locally backed up.

However I notice that Adobe charge such a large amount for cloud storage. This seems to be the real issue here rather than selective sync. My subscription is £9.94/month but that is also the same price of an additional 1TB which is quite a lot compared to other cloud storage companies.

Storage is really cheap now and I think it would be better for Adobe to lower the price of the per TB storage so more customers can benefit from the syncing and off site back ups. Also maybe including it on more plans. That seems to be what a lot of people are talking about here.

I would like the ability of priority upload for a selection of images and pausing sync on the rest as sometimes you want to be working on a certain set of photos across devices and don’t want to wait for everything else to upload first.

Report · Sep 20, 2018

As suggested by others I'd like a Hybrid solution so that I can use the cloud selectively and not for my whole library.

Report · Sep 20, 2018

Agreed. For $10/month we get 2TB to share in iCloud with Apple Photos. I’m curious to see how LR CC develops, but long term, I will not pay $20 / month for the features in both CC and Classic and the 1 TB of storage.

Report · Oct 21, 2018

Good suggestion.

Report · Oct 27, 2018

I use LR CC mainly on my phone. I am on a lot of Whatsapp groups which on any given day send 100s of irrelevant pictures/memes/mailers etc. All these land up in my phone gallery and get synced to my Creative Cloud account automatically. I don't want that. Can I have control over what I need to be synced to cloud since I'm paying for that?

Report · Oct 27, 2018

Oh man that would drive me nuts. Surely the devs thought of that?

Report · Oct 27, 2018

You can turn off auto import in Lightroom Mobile and then choose which photos to import. Are were you looking for a way to select a specific album in Photos to import from? I believe that may be an iOS limitation.

Report · Oct 27, 2018

That's what I've done now. I was under the impression that the app would only auto import images clicked by the camera or camera apps. As of now, it imports all images that make their way into the Android Gallery on the phone and this includes all the useless memes that are passed around on whatsapp. This is where auto import of only albums designated by the user would make sense.

Report · Oct 27, 2018

Yes this is an auto import issue. Just go into Lightroom on your phone, click on the ... At the top right corner, -> settings -> import -> turn off "auto add from camera roll". When you want to edit a photo in LR you'll add it from your camera roll from the main screen in LR and it will be added to your cloud storage.

Report · Nov 09, 2018

Like others said I want to select things I want to sync on the cloud because your storage price is crazy insane and I don’t want to work with both classic and Lightroom CC at the same tine.

Report · Nov 10, 2018

The storage price is too high and I just don't need all my Photos in the cloud. I have Terabytes of Raw Images. It would take months to upload them. Maybe I could split my photo library into multiple libraries and just upload one of them, but I want everything in one place. So I will stay with Lightroom 6 (2015) as long as possible.

Report · Nov 10, 2018

Mathias, Lightroom Classic is the evolution of Lightroom 6 and does exactly what you want. No need to think about moving to Lightroom cc. For most people Lightroom cc is not a viable option. It might be somewhere in the distance future but that’s a long way away. Mean time Lightroom Classic is getting a lot of development and new features.

Report · Nov 10, 2018

Thats true, but I want the cloud feature, because sometimes I want to develop and manage photos from my library on my iPad, when I'm "on the road".

Report · Nov 10, 2018

It works pretty well with just the smart previews that Lightroom Classic syncs and if you import on the road on your iPad, the images get synced down to Classic. Only thing missing is to enable full raw sync from Classic which I asked for here:https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-classic-should-be-able-to-sync-full... Make sure you add to vote to it as it would be the perfect way to do this.

Report · Nov 10, 2018

That's not the only thing missing. Keywords also do not sync (because there is no keyword hierarchy in CC/mobile), nor do collection hierarchy.

There are also other sync features that are missing in Classic. I have outlined the ones that matter to me in this post: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/a-more-robust-lightroom-classic-sync

Report · Nov 25, 2018

You must have selective sync and do it yesterday. As is it is right now, the LR storage starts to exceed the phone storage of most phones, Over 20% of my storage is occupied by Lr and I am not happy about that. Perhaps a pro would, but not a casual user. I am thinking of not renewing just because of this. Just because you compete with Icloud, dropbox, ever and onedrive, you should not coerce your customer to go to your server but that is what you in essence are doing. Fix it soon or I will hit my delete button and not renew. Sorry, there are other open source photo editors.

Report · Nov 25, 2018

> As is it is right now, the LR storage starts to exceed the phone storage of most phones,

Michael, just to be clear, phones don't download all of the files. They only download the metadata initially, then thumbnails as needed, then small smart previews as needed. They don't download originals unless you ask it to, and you can clear the smart preview cache to free up space too.

_______________________________________________
Victoria - The Lightroom Queen - Author of the Lightroom Missing FAQ & Edit on the Go books.

Report · Nov 26, 2018

Just as a general comment, in this era of A.I. and superpowerful hardware the sync of Lightroom feels like stoneage to me. I wonder if they are aware of this and working to fix it or if they just think it is good enough.

Report · Nov 26, 2018

This is the second most popular request thread in the Lightroom CC category - and yet, apart from one clarifying comment from "Victoria Bampton - Lightroom Queen, Champion" above - absolutely ZERO response or action from Adobe themselves or Moderators.

So folks - get the message? - no point contributing and commenting here for anything - let alone for a mighty handy improvement to their Lightroom CC offering by enabling some sort of selective sync.

Victoria's clarifier above is fine for consumers - but hopeless for serious photographers with huge photo collections. Yes - Lightroom Classic is an alternative [and the only usable one for photographers] ... however it lacks several features currently available only in LR CC see the Adobe website for details. https://www.adobe.com/africa/products/photoshop-lightroom-classic/lightroom-cc-vs-lightroom-classic....

Un-subscribing from this forum - views are clearly not taken seriously by developers.

Report · Nov 26, 2018

All of the requests are taken seriously, but it's not like rubbing a bottle to get a genie to appear to grant your wishes. Sync needs to be completely rock solid before they consider making it even more complex, and most of the customers who want selective sync also need other more advanced features which could do with being in place first.

It's unusual to see people complaining that Classic doesn't have features that CC does... what is Classic missing for you?

_______________________________________________
Victoria - The Lightroom Queen - Author of the Lightroom Missing FAQ & Edit on the Go books.

Report · Nov 26, 2018

I’ll speak from my own experience, but LR Classic is missing hugely in the Sync department. You can’t Sync hierarchy or tags between Mobile and Classic. You can’t Sync presets to mobile, you have to manually add them via LRCC Desktop. You can’t sync folders or collection sets. And using two computers is a huge pain if you’re using Classic. You can’t access original images from Mobile if you synced them from Classic. And there’s no easy way to sync all your photos from Classic to Mobile.

And I don’t think those complaints are unusual. Here’s my own post as well as others on these topics. Plus folks have been asking for expanded Sync features in Classic since before CC Desktop existed.

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photos...

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photos...

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photos...

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photos...

P: Lightroom Ecosystem: Selective Sync

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