Decided to migrate from Classic to CC – how to handle the photos already synced?

[athoresson]

Hi!

I've been using Lightroom Classic for a couple of years, but I'm considering a move to Lightroom CC. Up until now, I've been hesitant because I want to have all my pictures in a folder hierarchy based on Year/Month/Date and not stuck in some proprietary format. But over the last two years, I haven't had time to tag my new photos and I can see the benefits with Sensei search, face recognition and having all my images available on my mobile devices.

Since storage prices are becoming cheaper and cheaper I'm now considering a solution where I switch to Lightroom CC but also store all photos to an archive hard drive with the hierarchy above. That would give me all the benefits from Lightroom CC now, but won't cause any lock-in in the future, should I want to use some other DAM then.

But before I decided that Lightroom CC is the right choice for me, I've done some tests syncing a couple of Collections from Lightroom Classic to Creative Cloud and Lightroom CC on both iPhone and iPad.

What I seeking advice on is how to make the full migration from Classic to CC, with some but not all of my photos already in the cloud.

Is the best option to wipe my CC account, delete all photos and start over? If, how is that done without also deleting the images from Lightroom Classic on my computer?

Or should I leave the photos already in the cloud there, and just import the remaining images? What would be the best way to do that? Should I just use the migrate function in CC?

There are some tags assigned to my photos that I would like to migrate over to CC, but not all. Any recommendations on that? Would it be easy to delete tags once the catalog has been migrated?

I also would like to disconnect Lightroom Classic from the cloud and keep that catalog as offline only, in case I don't like Lightroom CC in the end. How do I do that?

Thanks,

Anders

[athoresson]

I realized that this could be rephrased in a simpler way: What happens if I use the built in tools to migrate from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom CC and already have images synced from Lightroom Classic to the cloud?

[99jon]

I would like to think that the migration system is smart enough to match things up but I haven’t tried it personally. There are some preparations you can make before starting migration. See link below.

Click on the next link under next steps to find out how you can smooth the migration e.g. by turning named folders into collections, which then become Albums in Lightroom cloud version.

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/how-to/feature-differences.html

[Theresa J · Accepted solution]

Before you make this move make sure that you really understand how files are managed in each app. I’ll try to outline the basics here.

1. Classic sends smart preview images to the cloud. The full resolution file remains on a local hard drive. If you delete the smart preview in the cloud, it does not delete the original on your drive.
2. Lightroom CC uploads originals to the cloud. All master images are in the cloud. They do not retain a link to the local hard drive after uploading. There is no way to selectively have some images in the cloud, and some stored on a drive. Storing images locally from CC simply creates a mirrored synced local copy.
3. You can disconnect Classic from the cloud by turning off the sync option found under the nameplate. It’s probably a good idea to do this if you are going to put all your images in the cloud. When Classic is connected to the cloud it will start downloading everything it finds there. This creates redundancy that may be confusing.
4. Lightroom CC does not have a folder structure. Albums in CC are the same as Collections in Classic. If you care about your Classic folder structure you should make a collection for every folder before doing the migration.

[athoresson]

Thanks! I had missed that Classic only sent Smart Previews to the cloud. Understanding that sorted things out for me. Thanks!

[selondon]

Just as a note, if you want the full res in the Cloud, you can overwrite the lower res Smart Previews by dragging the Full Res into Lightroom CC.

[Jao vdL]

The migration system is indeed smart enough to notice that the already synced images are the same and will connect the two. It will also automatically turn off the sync in Classic when you migrate a catalog. That said, I would add some more caution to Theresa's explanation which is that you need to be aware that Lightroom CC misses many features that you might not realize. One is that it cannot print. This is a major problem for many people that they only discover after migrating. Second is that it can't selectively sync, it can't do smart collections, it can't geotag, it can't do slideshows, it can't do complex searches for metadata properties, etc. etc. These might not be showstoppers for you but I have noticed that many people are unpleasantly surprised when they discover all those are gone.

[thuyhtruong]

I actually made this switch from Classic to CC about 2 months ago.  Like you, I've been hesitant because I like my images to be in a particular folder hierarchy but in the last 4 years or so I haven't the time to sort and organize my photos so they've ended up in multiple locations and folders that I can't really find them.

I didn't have any albums synced in Lightroom Classic but I did have images manually uploaded to Lightroom CC from when I was testing it out years ago.  I deleted those and started over from scratch.  And instead of switching all at once, I actually followed Brian Matiash's video to export a few albums at a time out of Classic and then import into CC.  I found this way was much easier for me to manage the albums and create the new collections in CC.  I have about 50,000 photos and it took me about 3-4 weeks to completely moved to CC.  Here is the link to the video if you are interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKBl3Rlr5fg

Is It Worth It? Switching From Adobe Lightroom Classic To Lightroom CC - YouTube

What I like about CC is that now all my photos are all in 1 location in the cloud and then backed up on my NAS.  Photos taken from mobile devices are imported and synced to the cloud via Wi-Fi and I don't have to manually copy them to my hard drive and then import to Classic. Photos can now be in multiple collections in CC and not locked in just an album in Classic.  I can sort and organize my photos from multiple devices and don't have to be in front of my main computer to sort.  It is still a slow process with sorting and organizing my photos but I am getting better at it because the photos are much more accessible than before.  Adobe Sensei is helpful but it is not all that great yet.  Last month I cancelled the 20 GB photography plan and switched to the 1 TB Lightroom CC plan and so far I have not regretted it.

[Jao vdL]

thuyhtruong  wrote

What I like about CC is that now all my photos are all in 1 location in the cloud and then backed up on my NAS. 

How are you backing up? Do you use the local storage option in Lightroom CC to save images to your NAS? If so, note that this is NOT A BACKUP AT ALL! If you accidentally delete an image on your phone from the cloud for example, it will immediately get deleted from this location too with no way to get it back. Adobe does not provide any way to get images deleted from the cloud back and the local storage option does not help whatsoever. It is all too easy to delete images from the cloud. The only way to get usable backups with Lightroom CC is to use the local storage option and then to backup that local storage to another location. Just cautioning here as I see many people assume there is some safety associated with the cloud thing. In fact there isn't at all.

[thuyhtruong]

Yes I use the local backup option in Lightroom CC to backup to my NAS. And my NAS is being backed up to CrashPlan with file versioning so files can be restored from any point of time.

[Jao vdL]

Perfect! Just making shure. Adobe’s marketing materials are a bit

misleading on this I think

On Sun, May 12, 2019 at 3:30 PM thuyhtruong <forums_noreply@adobe.com>