P: Support third party cloud storage

Report · Nov 14, 2017

I'm guessing this is a non starter, for many reasons!

As an Amazon Prime subscriber, I get unlimited photo storage, so I feel a little begrudged that I have to then pay for photo storage with Lightroom CC. It'd be great if you could choose your cloud service provider in the settings.

A couple of issues off the top of my head:

What would you do if you wanted to switch cloud provider in the settings? Would it need to download all the files and then upload them to a different provider?
You can obviously manage/delete/move the files directly in the cloud, which would play havoc with Lightroom.
I expect there could be issues with managing space.

I do however think it would be a real selling point for the service. Essentially using Lightroom CC as the front end and allowing users to manage the files in the cloud their way. It would also make backing up locally easier.

Report · Nov 14, 2017

I think the whole point of LrCC (apart from the customers buying storage and a simpler UI) is to reduce the problems of sync, missing files etc. that many less experienced users may have had with Lightroom Classic.

They’re selling it as we’ll back up and look after your photos. You can do the organising.... but they won’t go missing.

I don’t see what Adobe would gain from it as it would be lost income and control.

No harm in asking though! (As the cost is more than I would have liked, after coming from their previous Cloud solution).

Report · Dec 16, 2017

Team,

Many of us have existing workflows and storage setups we're unlikely to change. Many successful SaaS vendors play nicely with cloud-storage providers.

It would benefit your user experience to incorporate support for OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, Google drive etc.

Is this in the roadmap?

Report · Feb 15, 2018

I've got ~2tb of stuff in OneDrove. The fact that I'm lazy and not wanting to spend months re-uploading files to Lightroom CC is stopping me from using this service and sticking with Classic.

Report · Apr 06, 2018

Now that NAS are supported via drive mappings, the features are there in LR CC desktop for us to use a local path to our cloud of choice.

Our cross-device experience won't be great.

I suspect they could leverage the LR CC sync feature and add functionality for authentication/authorisation to a third party cloud. Once the "on behalf of" or "delegate of" model is in place for sync to a third party service, it's not vastly different which service you use.

'll pay for a product and service, but I won't pay for storage in one ecosystem when I have my organisation setup to use another storage platform.
I have taken steps to secure and retain my data, I know it's safe. I don't believe Adobe have the maturity to match it nor will I pay twice.

If Adobe take their customers seriously and have undertaken basic research, I'd expect LR CC to support third-party clouds before it reaches feature parity.

Once we step from (example) LR CC iOS & OneDrive for Business to LR CC Desktop & OneDrive for Business, they will need to ensure that the user experience is optimised and sync works seamlessly. The challenge will be whether they treat the third party cloud as the source of authority or not.
I've seen it done before by smaller companies who put their customers first and am sure that Adobe have the skills and resources to implement the functionality.

Report · Apr 07, 2018

I think what some people are missing is the fact that the Adobe cloud is far more than a simple storage solution. As the heart of the sync ecosystem it is also a powerful processing engine, being the place where much of the AI-related search stuff is run, along with auto-tagging, and where control of what the user requests on the local system is managed from, e.g. generating smart previews to replace local originals. It also contains the "master catalog" to control syncing of changes from/to all ecosystem end points (and manages recovery of all required data, images and changes, collections and albums, in the event of local loss).

I have no idea how easily, or even if, that processing could be done if the image data was actually stored on a third-party cloud. It's certainly not something I'd be happy to see happen.

Report · Apr 29, 2018

Underneath everything you described is storage. 🙂

Report · Jul 09, 2019

It would be great to be able to use my Google Drive cloud in Lr.I have more photographs than adobe Cloud can store

Report · Jul 10, 2023

Make a feature to sync with other cloud in lightroom like Google Drive, Dropbox, One Drive etc.

Report · Sep 29, 2024

Hi,

I use the "new" Lightroom on my iPad Pro (I'm a scuba diver and have an underwater camera, although I don't describe myself as an underwater photographer quite yet and use Lightroom to process photos back to proper colours etc).

I have 100Gb of cloud storage with Adobe, which I've used about 35Gb in the last 18months. I have 1Tb in my OneDrive.

I'm quite OK with the Lightroom app doing everything via the Adobe Cloud - means that all my photos are cloud backed up.

What I would like to do though is copy them to my OneDrive so that, when my Adobe Cloud starts to get full, I can remove older ones and free up space, but retain everything in my OneDrive where I have much more storage.

Is this possible?

Thanks

Colin

Report · Sep 30, 2024

Such integration between apps/services is not available at this time. I converted this thread into an Idea, so that other users can chime in and vote for this, to inform the team on user needs.

Report · Oct 02, 2024

Just to be clear about what I'm suggesting / asking for here:

- I totally get that all the "magic" of the new Lightroom happens in the Adobe cloud (particularly all the AI powered features) and that it would most likely not be possible to have these features if something other than the Adobe Cloud Storage was being used.

- It's it though nice to see that I'm not alone in my feelings that, why should I pay for cloud storage somewhere when I have more than I could ever need in a service I already have (and in most cases, already pay for).

So:

- I'm more than happy for all the "magic" to happen in the Adobe Cloud.

- All I would like to happen is that, after a while, I can move photos and what have you over to my OneDrive to clear out space on the Adobe Cloud for new stuff. So, Adobe becomes the sort of "working storage" and OneDrive (in my case) just an archive or so.

Thoughts?

Report · Dec 02, 2024

I happen to have OneDrive storage. I also have iCloud and Lightroom Cloud. I know others have things like Google Drive, Amazon space and, Dropbox you name a few. I still can't work out why all my Lightroom use requires me to use LR cloud when I am on my other devices. Why can't I just tell it to use my preferred cloud service?

Please allow me to choose my cloud rather than force me to use yours.

Report · Dec 02, 2024

My post got merged into this one. I've just read through the replies. From what I see my favoured version, LR Classic, now labelled as "legacy" has a limited lifespan before it slowly dwindles so I'm looking to the future.

Outside of my images: I can currently get all my documents for my business and home, all my information on my iPhone/iPad/two PCs and one Mac via OneDrive. That's great. One point for all that I do. And then there's my images.

I have many TB of data for my business on mirrored archive drives and other mirrored live drives. LR Classic doesn't care which drives I've got them on. As long as it knows where they are it is happy.

I've written problem posts about the synchronisation features in LR and suggestions to improve it. I don't think it really works very well at all. I don't trust the LR cloud system and am pretty irritated to have to pay for it to synchronise just a small portion of my imagery that I might want to show to potential clients when out and about.

If I had no "extra" 1TB cloud the AI features would still work. The idea that we therefore need to pay for a 1TB (or bigger) cloud just so AI can work is a non-sequitur.

The idea that Adobe backs up everything safely for us - again my issues that I've seen with synchronisation make me not agree with this (I nearly lost data as a result of thinking it was "in the cloud safely" - thankfully I had backups).

The concern that we might move our data from one cloud service to another is real - but we could move, in LR Classic, our data from one drive to another and it get disconnected. There's even a mechanism to re-connect our data in this scenario. Surely moving from one cloud to another cloud provider is no more complex? Surely if we are on, say, Dropbox and move to, say, Amazon file storage, then we simply need to tell LR that our data is now on the new service and it reconnects to it.

I'm honestly irritated and amazed that we can't already simply put our data where on earth we want to and tell LR that "this is my stuff, please help me organise it". The partisan "this is our silo" mentality feels somewhat archaic in a modern connected world.

Report · Dec 03, 2024

>I'm honestly irritated and amazed that we can't already simply put our data where on earth we want to and tell LR that "this is my stuff, please help me organise it". The partisan "this is our silo" mentality feels somewhat archaic in a modern connected world.

it would be awesome if this was possible but you have to realize that there is a lot of backend programming on the cloud side that needs to be implemented for something like Lightroom to work. You can't just plug anything into this. Much of the work is done on the server side and not on your device. You can't really avoid that. Adobe won't let their server code run on OneDrive, etc. Instances. That's just not a realistic expectation.

Report · Dec 05, 2024

@Jao vdL

I note that your userid lists you as a "Community Expert". That could be that you're genuinely "in the know" or it could be that you're generally a regular contributer. I've no idea how this forum does things in that regard. I don't intend to be rude with my reply here and am genuinely curious.

>>I'm honestly irritated and amazed that we can't already simply put our data where on earth we want to and tell LR that "this is my stuff, please help me organise it". The partisan "this is our silo" mentality feels somewhat archaic in a modern connected world.

>it would be awesome if this was possible but you have to realize that there is a lot of backend programming on the cloud side that needs to be implemented for something like Lightroom to work. You can't just plug anything into this. Much of the work is done on the server side and not on your device. You can't really avoid that. Adobe won't let their server code run on OneDrive, etc. Instances. That's just not a realistic expectation.

Do you know that for certain? I mean are you one of the coders/architects to say that? Or is this your assertion based on various other posts in here and general information?

I ask that because I'm very curious. Here's why. On my iPhone I can open Lightroom and at the bottom I an choose "Device" or "Lightroom".

If I choose "Device" it is using the files on my device. That seems a reasonable thing to do. No "you've got to use the cloud" there. If I can use "Device" why couldn't I use "OneDrive"? No Lightroom Cloud involved there either.

If I cloud must be involved for AI processing (one of the things I've read which I don't know if it is true or not) or for, as you put it, "backend programming" then why must I buy a 1TB cloud, or bigger, why will the default one not be sufficient for individual files being processed and then put them back on my "Device" or on my "OneDrive" (or other storage medium of choice)?

As I say, not intended to be rude, I appreciate that you may have knowledge that most end-users do not. I'm just questioning that if I can edit files on "Device" on my phone then I ought to be able to edit them on "OneDrive", also connected to my phone, or on Dropbox, also connected to my phone (if I were a Dropbox user). I could happily leave the synchronisation of files to OneDrive (in my case) and my PC, or iPad, or iPhone or Mac could know that it should look for my files on that cloud of my choice.

To me it doesn't seem like a hard thing to change.

If work needs to be done on server side that shouldn't be dependent on where the files end up being saved. I can edit files on a PC and they can be saved on a NAS. I can edit them on a different PC and they can be on the same NAS. Or I could edit them on the same PC and move them to a different NAS. It will still all work. It's just a place to store the files.

Report · Dec 05, 2024

No worries, happy to share knowledge. If you want to use a cloud library that has to involve a database server on the cloud server instance. So you can't use a library based approach on any cloud server than Adobe's instances. Of course those would likely be running on a AWS backend (I actually don't know the details but I think this is the case) but it has to involve that in order to be able to have multiple instances of Lightroom Cloudy accessing the same library. So if you want a library-based approach this is true. However, if you are talking about the local editing features, you can already edit of a OneDrive, icloud, google drive, DropBox drive right now just fine. Just switch to the local browser and work it that way. This is basically like using (the much more full featured than Lghtroom ) Bridge+camera raw combo. It stores all the edits in xmp sidecar files and doesn't use a central library. This will work perfectly fine but won't allow you to use any of the library features in Lightroom Cloudy. For example, you can't add images to albums (except by now uploading them to the Adobe cloud right away), you can't search outside of the immediate folder you are in and also the AI search features won't work. The other catch is that this only works on desktop operating systems and won't work on mobile devices. So you can't run the cloud library from other cloud services than Adobe's, that's what I was referring to. It has to use Adobe's backend. I know this indeed from inside knowledge but also from knowing how these sort of cloud based database services are programmed and how they necessarily have to work. They can't work without code running on the server. Of course if you're just using this as a cloud drive and using the local browser mode in Lightroom cloudy, there is nothing stopping you. It will just work but only on Mac OS and Windows.

If you are actually talking about using the local device browsing mode on OneDrive, iCloud Drive, DropBox, etc. but with mobile devices, you are absolutely right that there is no good reason why Adobe couldn't enable that. In iOS it is just enabled by using the standard files app hook for example and it would allow access to any of the cloud based drives as well as even local smb based file servers like a NAS on your network. Similar OS based services exist in Android and they should work the same. So if that is your feature request, that wasn't clear to me.

Report · Dec 05, 2024

@Jao vdL thanks for that detail. I'm honestly not entirely sure what the implementation of what I am after would be. In my head the "catalog" side of things could exist on the small Adobe default cloud, so I could create collections for example, but the huge files themselves I would think existed on the cloud of my choice. A sort of hybrid between the two you describe. As it stands I have to pay for a huge cloud for Adobe to move my files around (which it does poorly between my devices). I would rather another cloud system looked after the actual file storage but that Adobe knows about those files and can access them when needed for editing/viewing. Therefore I can see Adobe needs cloud functionality but it feels like that shouldn't need to be as big or expensive as it is.

Put it this way: MS Office 365 is £80 a year in the UK. It gives me all my email and Word and Excel etc plus 1TB a year.

On the other hand Adobe charges me £19.97 per month or £239 per year for a 1TB service.

Yes, MS has more users allowing for lower fees, but the disparity is exactly why I would like to free myself from the 1TB yearly fee and go to the £9.98 per month LR+Photoshop option which is still £120 a year.

If I add to a collection on a PC in LR Classic then I would like to be able to see the collection on my phone or iPad but for it to actually source the file from my OneDrive when it needs it. Similarly I would love to save a picture (download to my phone during a wedding for example) and save it to my OneDrive but to create a collection on the phone of the wedding day.

It may not make "sense" from your knowledge of what is *currently* possible but that is what I would like.

Report · Dec 05, 2024

In my head the "catalog" side of things could exist on the small Adobe default cloud, so I could create collections for example, but the huge files themselves I would think existed on the cloud of my choice.

That is technically possible I am sure, but my guess is that Adobe needs to recuperate the development costs of the software somehow and you're not just paying for storage space. That said, what you want can exactly be done in Bridge already. You can store your images anywhere (even mix and match cloud services) and create collections across them and search across them. Bridge is desktop OS only but this works great and is much more suitable for multi user scenarios than Lightroom is. Bridge comes with the photography subscription that coes with Photoshop and Lightroom Classic. Also Lightroom Classic works OK with images stored on cloud drives and the catalog being local bt Bridge is more multiuser friendly. Bridge has a steeper learning curve than Lightroom but it is extremely powerful.

If I add to a collection on a PC in LR Classic then I would like to be able to see the collection on my phone or iPad but for it to actually source the file from my OneDrive when it needs it. Similarly I would love to save a picture (download to my phone during a wedding for example) and save it to my OneDrive but to create a collection on the phone of the wedding day.

When you sync a collection from Classic, it does not take any space in the cloud since it only uploads smart previews, so this is already not a storage space issue. The smart previews are more than good enough in general to show images and edit them. Only if you upload full resolution images through a side channel does it take any cloud space. This is actually a big annoyance of mine as you can see here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-should-be-able-to-sync-full-raw-files-to-th...

But yeah technically they could absolutely do the thing you're asking for with the library in their own cloud using references (they're just URLs to the cloud storage anyway) to other cloud services but as I said that probably breaks their revenue model. I don't know that for sure but it would make sense. They're not selling storage, they're selling access to a program and service. The cloud storage is probably only a small part of their actual cost.

It may not make "sense" from your knowledge of what is *currently* possible but that is what I would like.

It is absolutely possible to do what you describe here. You just couldn't have the library at another location than a Adobe server. So this is more a business decision than a technical decision and while this would be cool, I don't think they would charge any less even if they enabled it. That said, really look into using Classic and sync from there (again zero storage required for that), or look into using Bridge. These can do what you want now. Classic allows you to see collections (albums in Lightroom Cloudy language) on any mobile device without needing to store enormous files in the cloud and Bridge allows you to collectively work of any kind of cloud storage with multiple people at a time but is not mobile device friendly.

Report · Dec 06, 2024

@Jao vdL ,

>That is technically possible I am sure, but my guess is that Adobe needs to recuperate the development costs of the software somehow and you're not just paying for storage space.

I agree it's probably trying to recoup development costs - which seems rough to therefore weight it onto those who might want to actually use the system. I found I maxed out the default cloud space fairly fast, sadly.

>That said, what you want can exactly be done in Bridge already.

I used to use Bridge before Lightroom. I liked Lightroom as an "all in one" space to work.

The thing is, if I were to move away from Lightroom - I'd probably move away from Adobe completely. I'm nearing the end of my productive career so I'm looking ahead at what I'd do "in retirement". Those would be mostly personal projects and would end up with very little editing so there are alternatives out there.

I would rather stay with Adobe but the expense of a cloud option is not insignificant.

>This is actually a big annoyance of mine as you can see here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-should-be-able-to-sync-full-raw-files-to-th...

The synchronisation mechanism is poor, IMHO. I've moaned about it before myself.
https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-ecosystem-cloud-based-discussions/synchronising-sporadic-sl...
and also the idea that I raised as a result
https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-ecosystem-cloud-based-ideas/p-synchronize-the-counts-images...

Indeed if you search for my ID you'll see a few threads raised about the sync between platforms.

> but as I said that probably breaks their revenue model. I don't know that for sure but it would make sense. They're not selling storage, they're selling access to a program and service. The cloud storage is probably only a small part of their actual cost.

Indeed.

For me there's more to it than just cost involved though - if I upload ALL of my files to OneDrive (or any other cloud storage service) I can be confident that ALL of my files are uploaded and backed up in one place. I can look for my documents, or my spreadsheets, or my images. I don't have "some" in one place and "some" in another mechanism.

Did it upload just a preview or the whole RAW file or what? On Adobe Cloud who knows. On another cloud of my choice then I can be more confident that the files are uploaded and safe.

If it comes down to the Adobe revenue model they'll never change it. If it comes down to simplicity for the users then maybe they might consider it.

Report · Jun 05, 2025

If I could link this app up to my Google drive or OneDrive, I'd actually use this version. I have far too many photos to store on the default 100GB storage on Adobe and I cannot justify paying for another 2TB of storage on yet another cloud storage provider. It makes no financial sense as a hobbyist photographer.