Do you think this is a good workflow? It feels like a lot of work to do it this way, and I wonder if it would be easier to keep ALL my photos in Lightroom?
Yes, it feels like a lot of work to me too, so I don't do that. Like @dj_paige I don't differentiate betwen different "types" or "sources" for my photos. They all go into Lightroom and are managed from there....the keepers are tagged and organised, the others are deleted (when appropriate in the case of those iPhone snaps taken in store). I never routinely export as Jpeg "just in case", I rely on catalog and image backups to protect me from catalog corruption, and I'll only export a jpeg when there's a reason to do that.
I'm also wondering if I should keep using Lightroom Classic or switch to cloud-based Lightroom? Sometimes I want to use Lightroom on my MacBook and sometimes I want to use it on my main desktop Windows PC. So sometimes I have to import photos from one catalogue into another catalogue. Would it be better to work in the cloud?
By @robertford8002
There are various ways to use LrC on multiple computers, such as putting catalog and images on an external drive which is moved between computers as needed, or using file-sharing sites such as Dropbox (needs a LOT of care), or exporting parts of the main catlog to use on a second computer then re-importing the changes back to the main computer.
But as you mentioned the Adobe cloud, you could simply sync some (or all) of your images from LrC to the cloud. That would upload Smart Previews of those images (2560px on the long edge "proxies"), but they do not count against the 20GB cloud storage allocation (so you can sync your entire LrC library to the cloud at no cost). Using the Lightroom Desktop app on the second computer, you would have access to all those uploaded smart previews, and you can edit them using almost all the existing edit tools available to you in LrC. Any edits would sync back from the cloud to your LrC catalog. There's probably no need to "switch to" cloud-based Lightroom, you would remain LrC-centred, but would incorporate Lightroom for use on the second computer.
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