# Various Questions About Cloudy



## charleskinghorn (Jul 12, 2020)

This is a potpourri of questions arising out of my moving from full-time Classic to "half-and-half" to Cloudy. (See my earlier thread *Splitting my catalog between LR Classic and Lightroom on the Cloud)*.

1. I made the move to Cloudy in two migrations. I now have two high-level albums and catalogs: _Migrated Cloud Catalog _(the first migration, name makes sense) and _Migrated Master LR Catalog-2-2_ (the second and final migration, name a reminder of Classic). Question 1: can I rename the second to something that makes more sense? I have a rename option, but I'm being careful here. Question 2: can I combine the two albums? I suspect not.

2. With Classic all my photographs and catalog were on drive D on my desktop with a mirrored copy on an external drive and another mirror as off-site backup. If drive D failed, I could replace it and copy back from the mirror or assign the drive D designation to the mirror and use it. From a couple of threads here I get the impression that that would not be possible with Cloudy, that Adobe has tied Cloudy to the physical drive and would reconstruct from the Cloud to a new drive. If so, my backup procedure with mirrors is not that useful.

3.  Smart previews on drive C. Both my desktop and my Microsoft Surface have small SSDs. It is not possible to store my 80,000 photos from the Cloud as smart previews on either; so that option is turned off on both computers. Correct me if I am wrong; but to me this means that I must always be online to do any work on my Cloud photographs on either computer. Given the number of people putting their systems on SSDs (some small like mine) these days, it is surprising that Adobe has not make another drive an option here.


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## Jim Wilde (Jul 12, 2020)

1. Yes you can rename them. You can also merge the contents, but just to be clear the "high-level albums" that you refer to are actually folders (equivalent to collection sets in Classic), and not albums. Below each top level folder will be a structure of folders and albums which would equate to all the collection sets and collections that existed in the migrated Classic catalog. Any photos in the migrated catalog which weren't in any collection would appear in an album below the top level folder and would have the same name apart from the leading "Migrated" would not be included. So "merging" them really means moving or adding photos from one or more individual albums into whatever album you want. I would have thought you'd want to create a new folder/album structure into which you would put the photos from the two migrated catalogs.

2. You can backup the stored local copy of the originals to as many drives as you wish, and in a drive failure scenario you could simply replace the failed drive with one of the mirrored copies....if it's a true mirror, i.e. the drive letter/name and the file/folder structure is identical, then that could save you the re-download time by introducing the mirror drive in place of the original. 

3. Many have asked, but so far Adobe have resisted that change. If you have stored a local copy of the originals on an external drive, and that drive is availabe, then it shouldn't matter if you are online or offline. But with no local copy of the originals, and if you have the photo cache size set to 0% in the Preferences>Local Storage tab, then yes that would mean that you'd need to be online most of the time. Setting the cache to a higher amount should mean that smart previews of recently accessed images would likely still be available even when offline.


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## charleskinghorn (Jul 12, 2020)

Thanks, Jim, for your detailed response. As usual, you have been very helpful.

Item 1: yes, I confused folders with albums and I really meant folders, in this case, my highest-level folders. I was very happy with my post-migration organization (except that leftover Classic catalog name). Before I migrated I created collection sets for all my high-level photo designations (folder/directories), for example, _City Streets_ and _Country Scenes_. Within each of these I created collections for my next designation level, for example, each city within City Streets (Cobourg, _Denver_, _Guelph_, _Kingston_, etc.). This mimicked my folder organization on my hard drive. What I lost in the migration was the next lowest and final folder level which was by date and description. My keywording isn't too bad, so I expect keywords to cover that issue.

" I would have thought you'd want to create a new folder/album structure into which you would put the photos from the two migrated catalogs. "

Your last statement in your response to my item 1 made me think a bit further. I created a high-level folder called _Master Repository _with the idea that this would hold everything and that working folders and albums could be created outside of it. As a first step I moved a small folder, named _Architecture_, containing two albums, into it. Easy. Now I can easily replicate my original hard drive organization, which represents my organizational thinking about my photography, over to this repository folder by moving all the folders contained those highest-level folders named "migrated". My test move, along with renaming the one folder showed up on my phone within a few minutes. Very good. But What happens to the _Cloud Catalog _album within the _Migrated Cloud Catalog_ folder? It appears to contain all the migrated photos in that migration. And what purpose does it serve?

Item 2: so my backup procedure still holds. If my desktop hard drive D fails, I can simply use the Disk Management application in Windows to reassign my mirror drive (now drive G) to drive D and continue on. Until, of course, I do a better fix like replacing drive D. Good.

But then what were *Is there any point in backing up the Lightroom (cloudy) Library?* and *Thoughts on backing up Lightroom cloud? *all about? Did I misunderstand their content? Is this a Windows/Apple thingie?

Item 3: So no problem with my desktop; only my Surface has the requirement to be online and then only in respect to how many different photos I intend to process at one time when offline. I can live with that. My Surface with its 120 GB SSD was a hand-me-down gift, not the one I would have bought for myself if I had the free cash; but it opens doors for me in respect to what I can do away from home and my desktop.

My apologies for being so wordy. I just finished this response offline in a text editor and realized how long it is. Now I cut and paste it into the Forum. I must add that this is a great forum with great support. I will renew my memberships just to continue access and support.


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## johnbeardy (Jul 12, 2020)

charleskinghorn said:


> But then what were *Is there any point in backing up the Lightroom (cloudy) Library?* and *Thoughts on backing up Lightroom cloud? *all about? Did I misunderstand their content? Is this a Windows/Apple thingie?


Windows/Apple is not relevant. The key thing to understand is that Adobe have not facilitated any kind of user-controlled backup with Cloudy. While Cloudy does create a local catalogue, this is merely a local cache and is not worth backing up - you can't restore it.  With images, you can make use of Cloudy's local storage option to make it keep local copies of your originals, and then you can use your Mac/Windows backup tool to back up those local copies.


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## charleskinghorn (Jul 14, 2020)

Thanks, John, for you response. In an odd way the Windows/Apple thingie was relevant for me. I went searching for _Lightroom Library.lrlibrary_ on my Windows system and couldn't find it. As well I tried googling the phrase with no luck. The evening before last I searched for the phrase in _Edit Like a Pro_ and discovered that it is an Apple name and the Windows file structure (I assume not the data) is different. Although I had had a good sense of what these other threads were about, the realization of that Windows/Apple difference clinched it.


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## clee01l (Jul 14, 2020)

charleskinghorn said:


> Thanks, John, for you response. In an odd way the Windows/Apple thingie was relevant for me. I went searching for _Lightroom Library.lrlibrary_ on my Windows system and couldn't find it. As well I tried googling the phrase with no luck. The evening before last I searched for the phrase in _Edit Like a Pro_ and discovered that it is an Apple name and the Windows file structure (I assume not the data) is different. Although I had had a good sense of what these other threads were about, the realization of that Windows/Apple difference clinched it.


Folders can have a suffix too.  And  ".lrlibrary" is such a suffix.   Apple uses these to distinguish packages of specific folders and files.     Adobe chose to use this for a package of specific folders and files universally for both Windows and Mac since Windows does not entertain such a concept.  It does not break any Windows naming convention rules and does honor a MacOS naming convention. 
Microsoft decided that their user were not computer literate enough to understand the concept of a file name suffix.  So Microsoft by default hides all the suffixes.    This causes lots of confusion for Windows users when instructed to (for instance) find all of the files with the ".lrcat" extension and no extensions are visible in the Windows Explorer app.


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## charleskinghorn (Jul 14, 2020)

clee01l said:


> Microsoft decided that their user were not computer literate enough to understand the concept of a file name suffix.



 A slur on Microsoft but probably true. 

Windows, to my knowledge, does not use folder suffixes. File suffixes, yes, they are normally hidden unless you unhide them which I always do; I find it unhelpful if I don't see them. I also always make system files visible (such as the AppData Local, LocalLow, and Roaming folders or directories). I could not find the suffix ".lrlibrary" at all; it is specific to Apple. Hence my fruitless attempt to find it on my system.   I'm older and a bit wiser now.


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## clee01l (Jul 14, 2020)

charleskinghorn said:


> A slur on Microsoft but probably true.
> 
> Windows, to my knowledge, does not use folder suffixes. File suffixes, yes, they are normally hidden unless you unhide them which I always do; I find it unhelpful if I don't see them. I also always make system files visible (such as the AppData Local, LocalLow, and Roaming folders or directories). I could not find the suffix ".lrlibrary" at all; it is specific to Apple. Hence my fruitless attempt to find it on my system.   I'm older and a bit wiser now.


 ".lrlibrary"is a specific to Adobe Lightroom Libraries . 
Apple uses "Photo Library". for their package name,  Previews have always been in a package name with and extension ".lrdata". in the name. 
Window folder and file names can include any number of periods with the last being interpreted as the filetype extension

Phishing attempts and malware is often distributed as a file with a name like "SexyImage.jpg ( and several hundred spaces) .exe". you click on the "SexyImage file with the very long name and the executable filetype runs and you have been had.

My export files have names that read like  "Z7_1234._CopyName._ExtEdt.jpg"  Note that there are 3 periods in that filename.


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## charleskinghorn (Jul 15, 2020)

clee01l said:


> Previews have always been in a package name with and extension ".lrdata". in the name.



I stand corrected. I was preparing another response when I decided to have another look at _.lrdata_  entries in Windows Explorer.





This is embarrassing. How many times have I looked at the equivalent entries when I was using Classic and never noted the period in each of the folder names. I saw it obviously, but never said to myself, "Oh, there is a period in the folder name." It was just always just there, part of the name. Nevertheless, not a common practice in Windows.

Once more, I am a little bit older and a bit wiser as well.


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