Is Photoshop cloud on or not?

[CharlesBelov]

I'm using Photoshop 2021 on macOS Catalina.

I'm having difficulty telling whether Photoshop is using Photoshop cloud for me or not. If I launch Photoshop, I get the home page. If I click the Cloud documents tab on the left nav, I see the message "You have no cloud documents...Learn more." But if I hover over the Cloud icon in the upper right of the home page, it reads "Cloud Storage. 1.2 MB of 1 TB used. [green check icon] Synced and backed up."

What is that 1.2 MB that I didn't ask for? How can I find out without it doing unwanted cloud synching? Are my files (and which files?) being synched or not? And where do I control this?

[Michael Bullo]

Are you using Libraries?

[CharlesBelov]

Ah, I do in fact have some libraries, but it says they are not being synced to the cloud.

[JJMack]

You can have cloud storage and it can be empty have you put anything into to your Adobe cloud storage?  I have some tutorial documents in my Adobe cloud storage for I tried iPad Photoshop and it only uses cloud storage for files.  I have a Creative Cloud subscription since 2013.  Until 2020 when I tried iPad Photoshop my Adobe cloud storage was empty. I do not use Adobe libraries and Adobe cloud storage

[CharlesBelov]

I have not knowingly put anything on my cloud storage. I have no idea how to even access it. So I currently have no way to determine what is in that 1.2MB.

[rob day]

The current versions of Photoshop’s Save and Open dialog have the option to toggle between saving directly to your cloud server, or your local network. Files saved directly to the cloud server have a .psdc extension.

You might want to use the save to cloud option if you are working on both a mobile device and a desktop. Otherwise you can save a regular .PSD file (or other file format) to your local drive’s Creative Cloud Files folder, which by default is installed in your computer’s User folder. Any files (not just Photoshop image files) saved into the CCF folder automatically sync to your cloud server, effectively giving you a remote backup of your work anytime it is modified.

Files in your CCF folder can also be shared with other CC users, when you do that files sync to both user’s local CCF folders.

You don’t have to save .psdc files, or save into CCF sync folder—files saved locally outside of the CCF folder behave as they always have and it would be up to you to handle a backup.

[CharlesBelov]

Um, thank you. I'm actually seeking an answer to the question, if I intentionally have never saved to the cloud (and in fact, if I click that button that reads Save to Cloud Document it tells me that I don't have any files saved to the cloud) then why does Photoshop say (on both my Mac and my PC) that the Cloud has 1.2 MB and that it is synced and backed up?

[CharlesBelov]

[rob day]

Have you checked the contents of your Adobe Cloud server, which you can get to via your desktop Cloud app—click the cloud icon and then Creative Cloud Web. I think there are some files and folders that get installed by default there:

[D Fosse]

Actually there isn't. I have never used any Adobe cloud services, ever, in any form - and it says zero bytes as it should.

[rob day]

I was just suggesting the OP take a look at the web view of the sync’d CCF folder (Synced files), which is not used when you save a PSDC file. The sync_plugin_data, Adobe, Market Dowloads in my capture are not folders I directly created.

[davescm]

There are a few things that can use your Cloud storage.

1. Cloud documents (psdc) these are stored directly to your cloud storage.

2. Ordinary documents such as TIFF, jpeg, psb ,psd (not psdc) that you have put in your Create Cloud folder on your local drive. This also syncs with the cloud.

3. Library files

So although you may not have saved as PSDC (Cloud document) you may have used the other two options.

Dave

[rob day]

Right, the Cloud Documents folder can be empty, and the Photoshop Open dialog would display No cloud documents, but Synced files, Libraries, Mobile creations, and Deleted all could have files. I don’t use Cloud documents but I do use the others, which accounts for my 40GB of space usage: