How do you actually get support from Adobe?

[bjashton]

I'm having the issue described in...

Lightroom CC: Ability to identify pictures not assigned to an album | Photoshop Family Customer Comm...

I've asked a perfectly reasonable question...

What is the recommended approach to sorting pictures into folders given missing functionality so you can't filter to determine what photos have not been allocated to a folder?

2 months later no reply.

How do you obtain actual support for this product? A process fundamentally doesn't work. But the only option is to raise a message in this forum. And that is completely ignored.

[john beardsworth]

You'll get support for making the app work - not so much for specific ways that you might want to use it. A bit like you can take the car back to the dealer if the power steering doesn't work, but don't expect them to tell you how to use the steering wheel. Here they can quite reasonably say "so what?" if you can't find pictures which aren't in an album. Sure, I can imagine why any organized person might want to do so, but it's not really a fundamental feature, is it?

"What is the recommended approach to sorting pictures into folders given missing functionality so you can't filter to determine what photos have not been allocated to a folder?"

If you want an answer, my first suggestion would be use terms more precisely - you seem to use "folders" for what LRCC calls "albums". LRCC uses "folders" for its mechanism to group albums. But assuming I have guessed what you want to do, there is no recommended approach. If you want to find which photos haven't been allocated to an (or do you mean any?) album, you can select multiple albums using the standard Ctrl/Cmd and Shift  modifiers. So select all the albums at once, then select all the visible images. Now go to All Photos - the unselected images are those not in any album. Maybe I am wrong but as LRCC lacks an Invert Selection command, I can't see any way (other than eyeballing) to select them. You are running up against LRCC's limited capabilities!

[bjashton]

"The cloud-based service for people who love photography, Lightroom CC gives you everything you need to edit, organise, store and share your photos across desktop, mobile and web."

[Buy Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC | Photo editing and organising software ]

Lightroom CC has Albums and Folders to organise photos. But any sensible process for sorting anything but a trivial number of photos into albums would require a check to ensure that none have got missed. So far nobody has been able to describe a process for doing that or another way to sort photos that doesn't need a such a check. So I'd argue the "everything" bit is over stated. The process of organising photos is lacking a fundamental capability.

To use your analogy of the car. This is like buying a car with gears but then discovering it has no clutch so you can't actually use them. The car drives in first. The gear box is perfectly fine. But I had very reasonable advertised expectations of higher speeds. My feeling is that in this situation I'd definitely be entitled to take it back to the dealer and ask how you are meant to use the gears.

Your approach is manual as it requires visually scanning all the photos looking for those that are not selected. While it may work for a relatively small number of photos it isn't going to scale or be practical over time.

[JohanElzenga]

A better car analogy is perhaps that if you buy a Lada, don't expect it to drive 250 km/hour. Lightroom CC is a work in progress. What you want to do isn't easily possible. It may have better functionality for that one day, but not right now. You'll have to live with that, or switch to a product that does meet your expectations.

[bjashton]

How about the Lada advertised as "for all your motorway driving needs" actually does 110Km/h?
Not 20Km/h in first.

I think what we are all basically saying is it is a work in progress and not yet ready for serious use.

[JohanElzenga]

If the Lada has 4 gears, but you can only drive in first gear, then that's a 'bug'. That is not the case here. Lightroom CC can do what it's supposed to do. It's just not supposed to be able to do (yet) what you want.

[bjashton]

RE: It's just not supposed to be able to do (yet) what you want.

Organise photos? It's meant to have everything you need to organise photos.

I'm open to suggestions as to how anyone else uses albums.

[JohanElzenga]

bjashton  wrote

RE: It's just not supposed to be able to do (yet) what you want.

Organise photos? It's meant to have everything you need to organise photos.

I'm open to suggestions as to how anyone else uses albums.

Don't start nitpicking. Lightroom CC can organise photos. It's just that one particular aspect (quickly view and select photos that are not yet in any album) is still missing. That is not quite the same as a four gear car that can only drive in first gear.

I agree that Lightroom CC is not ready for serious use. Maybe it never will be, because it's aimed at a different audience.

Enough said.

[john beardsworth]

bjashton  wrote

"The cloud-based service for people who love photography, Lightroom CC gives you everything you need to edit, organise, store and share your photos across desktop, mobile and web."

"Love" rather than take it seriously? Maybe. As for "everything", I fear Adobe have continually oversold this application and I'd certainly strike out that assertion, but terms like "organise" are pretty elastic. You can put lipstick on a Lada...?

To find all pictures that aren't in collections is pretty trivial in Lightroom Classic. Are you sure you shouldn't be using real Lightroom?

[bjashton]

I'm currently using "real" Lightroom for my Digital SLR photos and "toy" Lightroom for mobile + drone photos as a test.

It's fair to say that testing the "organisation" workflow isn't going well. Which is frustrating as the concept and app is otherwise pretty good. However my biggest concern is that there is this huge hole in the functionality. It suggests it's not being used for real. I'm also concerned that the support response is non-existent. So actually I wonder if the Product Manager even realises there is this issue and has it on their radar.

[john beardsworth]

Maybe to you or me "everything to organise" seems an unfounded claim, but to those with lower expectations? And the hype does say "everything you need" - as if organisation is in the eye of the beholder! I just don't accept that the inability to select images that aren't in albums is a huge organisational hole - no more so than the lack of smart collections, no colour labels, the omission of many standard IPTC fields, no keyword hierarchy etc. The Lada still performs to its specifications. And the hole is not in the same order of magnitude as LRCC's lack of any trash feature.

If I import photos directly into LRCC Desktop, it's a convenient / mobile way to work on them before stuff gets into my LR Classic catalogue. That's useful enough, now and then. But Adobe have said that "using both Lightroom [CC Desktop] and Lightroom Classic together in an ongoing fashion is not a workflow that Adobe recommends" - source here. It's taken them a while to say it, and they aren't saying "don't" - it's more like they aren't saying "do". It should make one cautious.

[99jon · Accepted solution]

Adobe has just released LRCC 2.2 and it is now possible to filter for pictures not in any album. See my blog for more information on the album: facet and other new features:

Lightroom Updates – February 2019