Lightroom and pCloud (instead of Adobe Cloud storage)

[WrkdbfGuy]

I have the Adobe Photography subscription that includes Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop and 20Gb of Cloud storage. I understand that Lightroom is Cloud based with automatic cloud backups.  But obviously 20Gb is not going to last long.  Is there a way to substitute pCloud in place of Adobe's Cloud storage?

Searches on this forum yield results, but nothing definitive.  I'd really like to use pCloud as the Lightroom Cloud storage.  Can I?

Thanks, Bill

[JP Hess]

I don't think so. If you are using Lightroom Classic then you must create collections and choose to share those collections to the cloud. The collections are shared as smart previews, not the full-sized images. These smart collections DO NOT impact the 20 GB allotment. So you can share as many collections from Lightroom Classic as you want. If you choose to install Lightroom (the cloud-based version) and import images directly to that version then those images WILL import directly to the cloud, and they will impact the 20 GB limit. Which version of Lightroom are you planning to use, and how do you plan on using your cloud allotment?

As far as using a different cloud service is concerned, I am certain that it is not possible.

[WrkdbfGuy]

Thanks Jim, that's more or less the answer I expected.  This confirms what I was thinking - that I should use LR Classic and not LR.  Cloud solutions *should* be interchangable to be truly useful.  Then each person can decide what Cloud solution fits their needs. But of course Adobe wants to make money with *their* cloud solution.  Nope, not for me.

Bill

[JP Hess]

Well, after all, Adobe is in the business to make a profit. The Smart previews work quite well. You could consider installing Lightroom for the cloud on a laptop, for instance. Then you could import images to it when traveling, and they could then be automatically added to your Lightroom Classic library. Then, if you choose, they could be removed from the cloud as full-sized images and (in Classic) added to a collection and shared to the cloud in that collection later.

The Smart previews are big enough to edit, and any changes you make to the Smart previews will impact the master images. So if you manage the 20 GB limit carefully I think you could find it quite useful. Personally, I prefer Lightroom Classic. I share a few collections to the cloud and occasionally have a few full-sized images there. But, for me, having a huge amount of cloud storage isn't really that important.

[Jim Wilde]

I think there's a lot more to it than Adobe forcing the users to use only their cloud service. Try to imagine how it would work if your images were held in say Google Drive....so you'd have your catalog manager in the Adobe cloud, your local app talks to that manager, and every time you want to access an image there has to be an information and data exchange between Adobe and Google in order to get the data to your app. And who would be responsible for ensuring that your data in the Google cloud is backed up, with full restiore functionality in place. Then who builds the smart previews that you might want to store locally? Better still, how on earth would a Sensei search work if the data is not held in the Adobe cloud? Who builds and maintains the previews that users access when looking at an album that has been shared with them from your acount.

It's too easy to think that you're just paying for cloud storage...you're actually paying for much more than that.