# Importing/storage workflow



## gwyn.williams (Feb 18, 2020)

Could someone walk me through a reliable workflow to use going forward for collecting all my photos and storing them?  I feel comfortable working with my pictures in Lightroom, but I feel less comfortable being sure that all my photos are getting there the most efficient way and being stored correctly.  I've now managed to compile all the digital photos that I have in Lightroom (a herculean effort!), and want to just have some standard steps to follow in the future, so that I don't keep having to figure it out all over again every time I turn my (admittedly sporadic) attention to my photos.
On vacations and for holidays, I am usually taking pictures on my DSLR, and then importing those pictures -- eventually -- from the memory card onto my desktop computer, running Windows 10.  I also take pictures on my iPhone, iPad, or end up saving photos that my kids/husband text me from their phones. I've been importing photos every now and again from my phone onto my desktop, and then into Lightroom, but I think I also have Lightroom set to sync with my iPhone camera roll.  I assume this is how I'm ending up with two versions of all my recent photos in Lightroom, one as a JPG and one in HEIC (and which should I keep?).
I have my LR preference set so that a copy of all originals is stored on an external hard drive.  I think this means that my original photos are stored both in the Adobe cloud and also on the external hard drive, and therefore I would not also need to keep them my desktop (but it makes me super nervous to delete them from my desktop!).
Can someone please give me a simple list of steps to follow for import and then storage? I would be eternally grateful!


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Feb 18, 2020)

Hi Gwyn, welcome to the forum!

I would turn off iCloud sync for photos so they don't end up on both devices, and enable LR's Auto Import on both your iPhone and iPad. That'll deal with photos coming from those devices.

And then just import your DSLR photos via the desktop, directly into Lightroom (e.g. not going via Photos app)



gwyn.williams said:


> I have my LR preference set so that a copy of all originals is stored on an external hard drive.  I think this means that my original photos are stored both in the Adobe cloud and also on the external hard drive, and therefore I would not also need to keep them my desktop (but it makes me super nervous to delete them from my desktop!).


Yep, that's good.


----------



## gwyn.williams (Feb 18, 2020)

Thanks so much, Victoria.  Sorry to ask dumb questions, but I just want to clarify exactly what you mean by "turn off iCloud sync for photos."   I think you mean, in Settings on my iPhone, go to iCloud, and then where it says Apps using iCloud, I would set Photos to Off (and the same on my iPad).  That would then mean that when I take a photo on my iPhone, it would not upload into the iCloud, and if I then opened the Photos app on my iPad, I would not see that picture there.  But I would see it on either my iPad or iPhone if I opened the LR app.  
Related probably stupid question:  once my iPhone has exported all the photos to LR, I could then delete that photo from the iPhone, right?  
And finally, for the photos that already ended up with duplicates in LR, is there any preference to keeping the HEIC version or the PDF version?


----------



## clee01l (Feb 19, 2020)

All of the photos that you capture with your iPhone or your iPad are to be  now added to the Lightroom mobile app and sync'd with the Adobe Creative cloud not the Apple iCloud.  The Lightroom mobile app will show you everything that is in the Adobe Cloud on any machine that is running Lightroom (cloudy) app.


----------



## Paul McFarlane (Feb 19, 2020)

gwyn.williams said:


> Thanks so much, Victoria.  Sorry to ask dumb questions, but I just want to clarify exactly what you mean by "turn off iCloud sync for photos."   I think you mean, in Settings on my iPhone, go to iCloud, and then where it says Apps using iCloud, I would set Photos to Off (and the same on my iPad).  That would then mean that when I take a photo on my iPhone, it would not upload into the iCloud, and if I then opened the Photos app on my iPad, I would not see that picture there.  But I would see it on either my iPad or iPhone if I opened the LR app.



Correct. Currently you're holding them in the cloud twice, in iCloud and in the Adobe cloud.



gwyn.williams said:


> Related probably stupid question:  once my iPhone has exported all the photos to LR, I could then delete that photo from the iPhone, right?



For ones outside of Lr (so if they are on the camera roll, also the iCloud ones) then yes.



gwyn.williams said:


> And finally, for the photos that already ended up with duplicates in LR, is there any preference to keeping the HEIC version or the PDF version?



I assume you mean JPG not PDF. The HEIC one(s) will always have additional data, the JPG are processed ones (outside of Lr) so I'd always recommend the HEIC ones.


----------

