saving LR mobile to Mac

[lincolns65043649]

I have been having a struggle figuring out how to permanently save my photos to my desktop. I have 3200 pics on my phone and I need to delete most to make space. I am concerned they will be deleted from my desktopo. They automatically show up on my computer through the cloud, but when I delete one on my phone it is deleted on the Mac.

I tried a few tests. I made a LR back up folder and copied them over. That worked but I'm concerned they will be deleted when I delete from my phone.

I created a Smart Collection and moved all the photos that had been brought via the cloud. Only 42 pics were moved. After 20 minutes they all disappeared. Zero in the collection. I have not deleted them from my phone.

What am I missing here? Something simple I imagine, but it's a constant source of anxiety.

thank you for your suggestions and illumination.

[Jim Wilde]

Your post is a little confusing, as it's not clear which app you are running on your Mac. You mention Smart Collections, which is a feature only available in Lightroom Classic, but you also mention that deleting photos from the phone also deletes then from your desktop, and that would only happen if you are running the Lightroom app on your Mac, not Classic. So which is it that you are using?

For information, there's probably no need to delete your photos from the phone as you can simply manage the space a lot better. If the photos were taken using the phone's native camera, then there'll be duplication when you import them into LrMobile, so once they have been synced from LrMobile to the cloud you can delete them from the camera roll (I assume you're using an iPhone?), but do not delete them from the LrMobile app. You can also use the "clear cache" option in the LrMobile app to remove the stored originals, which will be replaced by much smaller preview files (the originals remain in the cloud and would be automatically downloaded when doing things that need them, such as editing and exporting).

Many Classic users will manage their phone space (and their cloud space) by removing the images from the cloud AFTER they have been downloaded into Classic, as the downloaded files are stored on their local hard drive where they can be backed up by their standard backup routine. Once removed from the cloud they can be resynced from Classic back to the cloud (to make them available again on your mobile devices), but Classic only uploads much smaller Smart Previews which take up far less space, and significantly whatever space they do take up in the cloud does not count against their cloud storage allowance.

So, just clarify what software you are using on your Mac and we can help you work out the best way to manage your phone photos.

[lincolns65043649]

Thank you for your reply. I am running LR Classic but photos deleted from my phone are deleted from my computer. I have done multiple tests. I have not found Adobe instructional videos about cache and iCloud or the way it's all integrated. I will look and if you have any suggestions they will be most appreciated.

That still does not clear up the mystery of why of 2800 photos were to be moved to a Smart Collection and only 40 made it there, then disappeared shortly thereafter and the rest of the 2800 in the folder were gone too. Zero left in the folder. Luckily, I created a back up folder in LRC, moved them over to it, and they are there. But why, what, how?

Yes, I'd like to manage my iPhone photos. I'd like to be sure they're not disappearing. My phone should not be the place all my photos are stored. If I lose my phone, it's damaged... that would hurt. I have three back up drives, but I'm still confused.

Also, I just bought a new phone. Now LRM is on both. When I delete all the photos from the old phone how do I know the photos on the new phone won't disappear.

Yes, I'm confused and I really appreciate your help. 

Again, many thanks.

[Jim Wilde]

I think we need to start at the beginning, as much of what you say doesn't square with what I assume you are doing, so let's take my assumptions out of the frame. Start with explaining exactly how you are getting your photos from the phone to your Mac, then we can take it from there

[lincolns65043649]

thank you. what a great group.

My photos are syncing through the cloud. they show up in a LRClassic folder I created. The photos are also found in the same named folder on my external hard drive.

[Jim Wilde]

Which cloud? Adobe's or Apple's (you mentioned iCloud in an earlier post, so I'm still not 100% sure what you're using). However, assuming you mean Adobe's cloud then it shouldn't be possible for synced images to be automatically removed from Classic if they are deleted from any of the cloud apps, in fact the system is specifically designed to not allow that. But that is also dependant upon the images having been successfully downloaded into Classic before they are deleted from your phone. So, in order to ensure that images aren't accidentally deleted from the cloud before they've synced down into Classic, we always recommend that the deletion is handled from within Classic by the simple task of removing the image from the All Synced Photographs special collection in Classic's Catalog panel, i.e. select the image from within that special collection, right-click on it and select "Remove from All Synced Photographs". That action unsyncs the image, thereby causing it to be deleted from the cloud, but does not delete it from Classic. 

Try it that way on a test image and verify that the image remains in Classic after it has been deleted from the cloud. 

Regarding your Smart Collection issue, I really don't understand what you were trying to do. You cannot move images into a Smart Collection, as these are dynamic collections for which images are added and removed automatically when they meet, or no longer meet, the criteria that the user sets for that Smart Collection. So did you really mean a Static Collection, which requires a user to manually add or remove images?