Upgrading from Lightroom 5.7

[Blowers]

Hello all. I  am retired and a user of Lightroom 5.7 desktop. I take photos in fits and starts sometimes a few months apart but when I do I take a lot of travel and family photos. So I also use Lightroom in fits and starts and am nowhere near exploring its full potential  I am thinking of getting an I pad pro for art and it made me think I should commit to a photo plan. I also have a laptop and I have had some issues in remembering  how to synch catalogues! I have about 30 k photos on my PC many of them jpg of my late wife and these are backed up to an external drive. I am trying to work out the optimum upgrade path with minimum disruption.

- if I subscribe to the £9.99 monthly plan would I simply download an app to all three devices then start working on any new photos in the cloud.? Would I be able to download photos  from the cloud onto my desktop and back them up locally into my existing folder structure? Can I merge my existing folder structure into the desktop app or would I use the app in conjunction with Lightroom 5.7

I am slightly reluctant to commit to a £20 monthly plan knowing it may not get regular use

Sorry as you can see I am a little confused!

any advice appreciated

many thanks

geoff

[Bernd Alheit · Accepted solution]

Try the forum for Lightroom.

[try67 · Accepted solution]

(Question moved to the Lightroom forum)

[JP Hess]

The plan you are referring to gives you access to three different programs, Lightroom Classic, Lightroom and Photoshop.

Lightroom Classic functions much like Lightroom 5.7. It utilizes a catalog on your computer, stores images in folders on your computer, and enables you to share collections of smart previews with Lightroom (for the cloud) which can be opened and edited on other devices. The changes made on other devices will affect the master images in Lightroom Classic and vice versa.

Lightroom is the version for the cloud. Images that are imported direcctly to Lightroom will have the Masters stored in the cloud, and will impact the 20 GB limit. The smart previews used by Lightroom Classic do NOT impact that limitation. The files imported directly to Lightroom will also be imported into Lightroom Classic. Editing done in either program will affect the images on all devices. That's the same whether the images are imported into Lightroom Classic or Lightroom.

You will find that Lightroom Classic functions much more like the Lightroom 5.7 you are accustomed to. However, many users seem to prefer the new Lightroom for the cloud. Personally, I prefer Lightroom Classic. Lightroom does not have all the features that Lightroom Classic has. Both programs are still being developed and improved. I cannot recommend one over the other because I don't fully understand your situation or your preference. They both have their advantages and disadvantages. Careful consideration on your part would be a good idea.

[Blowers]

Jim
Many thanks indeed for this explanation it has helped considerably. I could not seem to get any explanation via Adobe chat other than "this is the plan to buy".

I would be so grateful for your advice on any of the following.
For info My entire collection (324gig 130k files) is based on folders such as :
Holidays /Family etc
Typical subset would be something like Holidays /overseas/cruises/ 2019-10 Caribbean/ 2019-10-21 St Lucia
I take Nikon Nef ( and have to use Adobe converter to DNG) Also Sony ARW and a couple of Panasonic jpg only cameras
I use the basic sliders in 5.7 Dev module but have not delved into more detail yet.
I do need to rank photos and delete a lot as to date I have just deleted obvious poor photos on the fly.

From what you say I could use Lightroom classic in conjunction with Lightroom. I could create collections from my folder structure and upload the collections  and work on a mobile device.

To be honest I have a bit of a circulation prob so putting my feet up whilst editing with my laptop or new I pad Pro should be preferable. I do editing whilst on holiday but don't upload due to connectivity issues.
I get that if I upload from CC it takes the whole image ( and if I pull into cc fromLightroom it does the same?) but if I upload from Lightroom
Only smart previews will move across.

My thought process is 1) use free trial of Lightroom CC for familiarisation2) purchase the £9.99 photo 20 gb plan and in due course move to the £19.99 1 terabyte plan in if needed. Would you have any rough idea what 324 gig would convert to in smart preview size if I was to create a separate collection for each of my folder groups? If this was say 15 gb then I would still have enough space to upload new photos into CC then delete after.

I can't see how I could manage my existing entire collection if I went fully Lightroom CC as it does not handle folders in the cloud if I am correct?

When pictures merge from Lightroom cc into Lightroom would I have to manually move them into my existing folder structure within Lightroom?

When I upgrade to the new photo package does "Lightroom" overwrite my 5.7 or do I have to do any manual interventions to move from 5.7 to Lightroom? Are they separate software ?Would there be any point at all in having Lightroom cc on my desktop as well?

So 'catalogues ' become redundant this way?

I assume I should still " export" my photos in their final edited state. ( to be honest I often don't do that as I haven't worked out whether to keep both edited raw file and .jpg file and where best to store!)

Again many thanks for your assistance- you can see as an amateur a lot of this is still confusing to me but hopefully I am getting there!

Best regards
Geoff

[JP Hess]

First of all, there are currently two operating versions of Lightroom, Lightroom Classic and Lightroom. There isn't any version of Lightroom CC. Lightroom Classic is the upgrade to Lightroom 5.7, it is the Lightroom that still stores images on your computer, in folders, uses a local catalog. Lightroom is the name for the version that stores master images directly to the cloud. Both versions are available to you in the $9.99 plan along with Photoshop. With that plan you are provided with 20 GB of cloud storage.

The prudent way to utilize that cloud storage is to import most of your images directly to Lightroom Classic and create collections of images that you want in the cloud. The collections can then be shared. The sharing process will create smart previews that can be uploaded to Lightroom, and they will not impact the 20 GB limit. That implies that you have an unlimited amount of space for sharing these collections of smart previews.

If you take Images with your smart phone And add them to Lightroom mobile, or import images from your camera directly into Lightroom, those images Will impact your 20 GB allotment. 20 GB can be used up in practically no time. Even 1 TB can go in a hurry. You will want to learn to manage your cloud allotment very carefully regardless of which plan you choose. I wonder if you would ever want to create collections and share all 324 GB of images to the web. That seems like an extremely large library to try to manage on an iPad or iPhone. But if (and I'm only speaking theoretically) all 324 GB of your original library were shared as smart previews, and they were shared with Lightroom, that total 324 GB would have absolutely NO impact even on the 20 GB limit. 

I only share a very small number of images with Lightroom. I don't use Lightroom all that much. The sync process seems to be somewhat unreliable for some users. I don't want to rely on synchronization. I prefer the feature set in Lightroom Classic, and am much more comfortable working with it. But that is a personal preference. If you want to rely on Lightroom, Internet performance is critical. That's just a personal observation. The main thing I use Lightroom for is to take images using the Lightroom camera in Lightroom mobile and having the images automatically imported to Lightroom Classic so that I can work with them in Classic automatically at a later time.