# Lightroom Classic showing different images from Lightroom web



## lowes.susan (Aug 13, 2021)

I have a large set of albums in Lightroom Classic (version 10.3) that I am trying to sync with Lightroom (version 4.3). Both versions report the same number of items as fully synced but Lightroom does not have the images in the same order. It seems likely that corrections were made in Lightroom Classic but they did not record on Lightroom. I have Lightroom set to Custom Order. I am including two images, the first from Classic and the second from Lightroom. 

We need to be able to see the same images in the same order so people logged in from different countries can cross check the work.

We are going slowly crazy so I hope you can help us sort this out.




ame archival volume but in a diffe

rent order.


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 13, 2021)

You haven't shown us what sort order you have set in Lightroom Classic, so can you tell us what it is?

When sharing albums online, they are only ever seen by the end-user in whatever Custom Order has been set in the syncing ecosystem, and that Custom Order can be set in any of the various connected apps (e.g. Classic, Lightroom Desktop, Lightroom Mobile, Lightroom Web). Only one Custom Order can exist at a time in the system, changes to the Custom Order will sync to all the apps and will then be seen when choosing to display the albums using the Custom Order sort order. The implication from your screenshots is that only one (or none) of Classic and Lightroom Desktop are set to use the Custom Order sort order......if they were both set to Custom Order they should appear in the same order.

So check the sort order in both apps, make sure they are set to Custom Order, and the images should appear in the same order, which is also the order that the end-users will see when viewing the albums in the browsers.


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## lowes.susan (Aug 13, 2021)

I thought it might have to do with Custom Order but where in Lightroom Classic do you set that? I couldn't find it and I couldn't find an instruction as to where it is. All I could find is something that said that custom order is automatic when you change the order of pages in Classic. But we tried that and it made no difference.


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## Hal P Anderson (Aug 13, 2021)

There's a dropdown on the tool bar that lets you set the sort field. Custom order is one choice.


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 13, 2021)

As I said earlier, there can only be one current Custom Order for a specific collection/album and that can be set in any of the apps. So using the Sort Order selector on the toolbar in Classic as per Hal's picture above, you can change the sort order to Custom Order which will LIST the images in that collection in the *currently set* Custom Order*. *You can CREATE or CHANGE the Custom Order by dragging and dropping the thumbnails in the grid view (drag from the image, not the cell border), and that will sync the new Custom Order across the ecosystem and which will then be what the end-users will see when they view the shared album in their browser (after refreshing the page if needed).

You don't need to be showing the collection in Custom Order in order to change it.....whatever sort order you are using will automatically change to Custom Order as soon as you start to rearrange the thumbnails into your chosen order.

So basically it's a matter of deciding which app you're going to use to SET the Custom Order for a specific collection/album, then deciding and creating that order so that it can subsequently be seen as desired  when shared.


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## lowes.susan (Aug 13, 2021)

Aha, View/Sort/Custom Order. We will try, thanks!!


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## lowes.susan (Aug 16, 2021)

It does not seem to be syncing from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom. Lightroom Classic is set to Custom Order and the pages are in order.

But nothing changes in Lightroom. Is there a way to get it to resync?


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 17, 2021)

Can you show me a screenshot of a collection in Lightroom Classic that is in Custom Order (include the sort order setting in the screenshot), then a screenshot of the same collection (album) in Lightroom Web with the Display Tab selected (on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen, see my screenshot). The Display Tab shows how the album would be seen by your viewers, so it should be the same as the Custom Order that you would be seeing in Classic.


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## lowes.susan (Aug 17, 2021)

No screenshot attached. Assume the display tab is the one that has Capture Date/Import Date/Modified Date/ etc. down to Custom Order?


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 17, 2021)

Sorry:





Clicking on that icon will display the grid in the order that the viewers will see the album (i.e. the currently set Custom Order). On that grid display is also the Display settings panel, where you can select various options, and where there's also the ability to reset the current Custom Order back to one of the standard sorting orders. All we're trying to do first is establish whether your Custom Order that you have set in Classic has correctly synced to the cloud.


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## lowes.susan (Aug 17, 2021)

This is really odd. Our screens do not show this icon. I am attaching 3  screenshots. 
screenshot01_Desktop shows the volume in Lightroom Classic
screenshot02_Desktop shows the Sort window for the same volume in Lightroom Classic
screenshot02_Lightroom shows the same file in Lightroom. 

The Desktop version is correct. They resorted, cleaned out incorrect images, etc.
The Lightroom version has all the incorrect stuff and is not in the right order.

The Lightroom Classic version is 10.3
The Lightroom version is 4.3

Thanks for taking the time for this. We are frustrated with our inability to resolve this.

Susan


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 17, 2021)

Yes, I know that it can be frustrating. But the important thing is to be looking at the Custom Order the same way on the various apps, but I can't tell that from your screenshots.

For one thing, and the reason that you don't see that icon, is that you are looking in the Lightroom Desktop app, whereas I was asking for the screenshot from the Lightroom Web app, i.e. the app that runs in a browser after you login to your Adobe account at lightroom.adobe.com. The Web app is a direct look into the cloud account, so it's important to see what the cloud thinks is the Custom Order. So can you try that?

For another thing, and somewhat illogically, Classic has the option to list the images in Custom Order in two ways, A to Z, or Z to A, i.e. reversed direction....but I can't see from the Classic screenshot which way that is set. Please show the Toolbar (press T) which will show both the sort order selected and the direction (make sure the direction is set A to Z, which should match Lr Web and Lr Desktop as both of those do not allow reversing the direction of the order).

You could also redo the Lightroom Desktop screenshot but with Grid View selected so that we can get a better comparison between that and Classic. 

But the Lightroom Web screenshot should be the most informative one.


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## lowes.susan (Aug 18, 2021)

Okay, I didn't understand the difference between Lightroom Web and Lightroom Desktop (which is different from Lightroom Classic Desktop). 

Lightroom Web does not give me the choice of Custom Order (see attached) but it has Modified Order so I chose that--and what do you know, it seems to have worked! 

Then I went back to Lightroom Desktop (not Classic) and the order had changed as well.

I need to check this carefully because I am not sure the Modified Order does the right think in Classic, which is where the images originate.

So what is the relationship between Web and Desktop (not including Classic, which is a desktop app!)?


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## lowes.susan (Aug 18, 2021)

Okay, I didn't understand the difference between Lightroom Web and Lightroom Desktop (which is different from Lightroom Classic Desktop).

Lightroom Web does not give me the choice of Custom Order (see attached) but it has Modified Order so I chose that. It changed some of the order of the images but not all.

Then I went back to Lightroom Desktop (not Classic) and the order for the early images had changed as well, but not all.

Is there something else I can try?


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 18, 2021)

I wish you hadn't done that, as I think you've now complicated things even more. All I wanted to see was the grid in LrWeb with the Display tab selected (which would be the current Custom Order), so that we could compare that to the grid in Lightroom Classic with Custom sort order selected, and with the Toolbar showing (so that we could see which direction Classic was showing that Custom order). That would have greatly helped us figure out what the issue was. 

But what you've done is use the Custom Order reset function that only Lr Web has, so you've now changed the Custom Order across the system to a different order based on the Modified Date of the images in that collection/album. Which is probably NOT what you wanted.

It's important to understand how custom ordering is meant to work in a cloud syncing setup. Obviously, if you only use Classic and do not sync to the cloud, there's no issue.....you can then only set or change a Custom Order in Classic. However, if you sync a collection to the cloud it's important to know that any of your cloud-connected devices or applications can also set or change the Custom Order. Those changes are supposed to sync to all the other apps/devices, but there is only one system-wide Custom Order (e.g. you can't have a different Custom Order in Classic and in Lightroom desktop). If you share the collection/album for other users to view online, they will see the images only in whatever is the set Custom Order. If, after sharing, you change the Custom Order in any of the connected apps, e.g. Classic, the other users would see the album in the new order when they refresh or reload their browser.

The "cloud" is a central Adobe server which manages all the assets that the user uploads to the cloud, and manages the flow of images and changes to all devices/apps that the user can use, such as Classic and Lightroom on desktop computers, Lr Mobile on smartphones or tablets, there's even a Mobile app for Apple TV. All of these apps maintain a local catalog, derived from and subservient to the cloud server catalog, and it's entirely possible that a syncing delay or problem could result in one of the local apps not being updated to reflect the latest cloud position. LrWeb, being browser based, does not have a local catalog, so is instead a direct connection to the catalog on the cloud server and is thus the most reliable place to investigate potential syncing problems....which is why I was keen to get a view of the Display tab using LrWeb, as that would show exactly what the master catalog thinks is the current Custom Order.

One of the other tools that LrWeb has is the ability to reset/change the current Custom Order to one of the pre-defined sort orders (because it's changing the current Custom Order there's no point in having Custom Order as an option in that list!). 

Where to go from here? You need to look at the "new" Custom Order and decide if you need to change it. If you do want to change it, I'd suggest you do that using that Display tab in Lr Web (where drag and drop is possible). When you finish that work, you can then check in Classic to ensure that the new order has synced back....but do ensure that when you select Custom Order in Classic, you must also ensure that the sort direction is AtoZ.


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## lowes.susan (Aug 23, 2021)

Okay, back to Square 1. Attached are three screenshots, all taken at the same time:

Lightroom Classic, Custom Order. This is the correct order.
Lightroom Web, Custom Order. This is incorrect, has all kinds of pages mixed in. 
Lightroom Desktop, Custom Order. This replicates Lightroom Web and is therefore incorrect.

So it seems that Classic is not syncing to the other versions.  

Advice?


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## lowes.susan (Aug 29, 2021)

Have you given up on us? If so, let me know so I can seek help elsewhere!


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 29, 2021)

Did you ever try what I suggested in the last paragraph of my last post?


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## lowes.susan (Aug 29, 2021)

Yes we think so but nothing changed. The order in Classic is the order we must have--the order in Lightroom and Lightroom Web are incorrect. I don't want them to sync back to Classic and mess that up.


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 29, 2021)

You don't seem to understand what I've been trying to tell you. The order that your clients/users will see is the order that you currently see in the Display tab of the Lightroom Web app. Now, I don't know why the custom order that you are setting in Classic isn't syncing to the cloud, but the pragmatic solution for now is to set the correct custom order in the Lightroom web app. That then ensures the clients/users see the correct order, and if it does sync back to Classic then there's no problem as the order will still be what you want.

Obviously, when you set the custom order using LrWeb, your clients/users will need to refresh their browser tab to pick up the new order.

Regarding the syncing issue, have you verified that syncing between Classic and the cloud (both directions) is working as expected? What's the sync status in Classic when you click on the cloud icon? Is anything still pending or active? If you look at the Classic Preferences>Lightroom Sync tab, are there any ongoing sync activities in the bottom panel (wait a few seconds to give it chance to populate with any activity).


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## lowes.susan (Aug 29, 2021)

I agree that your solution might be the best way to go but it took the group working with Classic hours and hours to get everything in the correct order for each Album. (These are large volumes and they thought a shortcut would be to photograph right, right, right, left, left, left, and then reorder the Album in Classic.) We simply cannot spend that many hours to redo every single volume--there are almost two dozen volumes and 12,000 images.

When we look at the sync icon in Classic, there is nothing being synced. Obviously it synced once upon a time because we have the images in Web. We just cannot make it resync the reorganized images in Classic.


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## John Little (Aug 29, 2021)

I don't use the Cloudy version so I can't offer any help with using it. But I can suggest that you make a small catalog in Classic, and try syncing it to the Cloudy version, and perhaps syncing it in the other direction. More generally, doing experiments on an unimportant test catalog should help you figure out the source of the problem(s).


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 29, 2021)

John Little said:


> I don't use the Cloudy version so I can't offer any help with using it. But I can suggest that you make a small catalog in Classic, and try syncing it to the Cloudy version, and perhaps syncing it in the other direction. More generally, doing experiments on an unimportant test catalog should help you figure out the source of the problem(s).


I don't think that's a good idea. Syncing a new small catalog to the cloud would cause every single image that's already in the cloud to be downloaded into that new catalog.


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## lowes.susan (Aug 29, 2021)

Yes, excellent idea. And many thanks for the time you have put into this.


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## lowes.susan (Aug 29, 2021)

Can't we just create a new album in the same catalogue and try syncing that?


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## lowes.susan (Aug 13, 2021)

I have a large set of albums in Lightroom Classic (version 10.3) that I am trying to sync with Lightroom (version 4.3). Both versions report the same number of items as fully synced but Lightroom does not have the images in the same order. It seems likely that corrections were made in Lightroom Classic but they did not record on Lightroom. I have Lightroom set to Custom Order. I am including two images, the first from Classic and the second from Lightroom. 

We need to be able to see the same images in the same order so people logged in from different countries can cross check the work.

We are going slowly crazy so I hope you can help us sort this out.




ame archival volume but in a diffe

rent order.


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 29, 2021)

lowes.susan said:


> Can't we just create a new album in the same catalogue and try syncing that?


Of course you can. In fact that's probably a good thing to do in order to help establish if there's a general syncing problem between Classic and the cloud, or a more specific syncing issue relating to Custom Order.

The problem with using Custom Order as extensively as you appear to be doing, is that there are no management tools available to help protect the work that you've put in to create the custom order. There's no way to "save" a specific order for later recall, and it's far too easy to accidentally reset the custom order with no recourse other than to a previous catalog backup. Adding syncing to the mix only increases the potential for something going drastically wrong through inadvertent changes.

Personally, if I had a very large album and had created a custom order that was of critical importance, I'd seriously consider trying to "lock" that custom order in a more permanent way. Renaming the images to add a sequence number at the front of the existing filenames, while the images are displayed in the set custom order, should work, i.e. that effectively makes filename order to be the same as the custom order. Mess up the custom order by accident, and it can be easily restored using the reset option in LrWeb (assuming the renames do sync to the cloud as they are supposed to, and as they do when I test it). Should you consider an approach such as that, do make sure you test it on a very small collection first! If you need more specific instructions, let me know.


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## lowes.susan (Aug 29, 2021)

Aha, that could work since we have to repaginate anyway once a volume is cleaned up. 

So when we repaginate, it seems safest if we create a duplicate album, name it _repaged, and then add the page numbers. Does that makes sense?

Then we will see if that new album syncs. (Note that we only have Albums and they are not in a Collection.)

S


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 30, 2021)

lowes.susan said:


> Aha, that could work since we have to repaginate anyway once a volume is cleaned up.
> 
> So when we repaginate, it seems safest if we create a duplicate album, name it _repaged, and then add the page numbers. *Does that makes sense?*
> 
> ...


Does that make sense? Not really, as I don't understand your reference to "repaginate" and "add the page numbers". Can you clarify?

Albums and Collections are the same thing.....the Cloud ecosystem calls them Albums, Classic calls them Collections.


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## lowes.susan (Aug 30, 2021)

Albums vs. Collections--If you look at the screenshots, you will see that in our Classic, we have Albums.

Since we have taken out images, inserted images, etc., in cleaning up the albums, we need to paginate the files. Looking at the instructions we received from the British Library, I think it may be that we do this when we export as .tiff, .jpg, etc. 

So in order to get the images synchronized with Lightroom Web, what do you think about the idea of numbering the .nef files in Classic using the Rename function?


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 30, 2021)

No, check again. Lightroom Classic has a *Collections* panel, Lightroom Desktop and Web has an *Albums* panel. So, Collections in Classic sync to Albums in Lightroom, and vice versa.

However, while looking at your screenshots again, I noticed that in most of the screenshots from Classic you have a *Folder* selected as the source (it seems you have Collections created from Folders with the same or similar name). But both Folders and Collections will have their own Custom Order, so it's imperative when setting a Custom Order in Classic, which you want to seen across the cloud ecosystem, to ensure that you set the order in the *Collection*, not in the *Folder*. And the same when subsequently comparing the custom order, you must compare the Collection in Classic with the corresponding album in Lightroom.

Before you get to a complete rename of the filenames, I suggest you set up a small test collection in Classic which you sync to the cloud. Assuming that it does sync OK, i.e. the corresponding album appears in Lightroom, then make some custom order changes in Classic to see if the changes appear when you subsequently view the synced album in Lightroom when sorting using the custom order.


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## lowes.susan (Sep 3, 2021)

Okay, your comment on the folders made me go into the archives to look at the images they are taking. This is what I found:

The images in Lightroom Classic have had the order changed, poorly shot images removed, etc. They are now correct. See Classic Screen 1 and Classic Screen 2.

The images in the folder on the computer's hard drive  remain in the original (incorrect) order. See Folder on Hard Drive.

The changes made in Classic did not affect what is in the folder. 

The synchronization to Lightroom and Lightroom web was the images as they are in the folder, not as they have been changed in Classic.

So what exactly is Classic referencing and how do we get Classic's order to synchronize?


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## Jim Wilde (Sep 3, 2021)

The screenshot of the folder in Windows File Explorer isn't really relevant to this issue. The contents of a folder are typically spread around the disk, but they can be LISTED in many different ways. The same holds true for the folders in Lightroom's Folders Panel, the contents of those can also be listed in different ways (by using the Sort Order option). 

The ONLY thing pertinent to this issue at hand are the *synced collections *in the *Collections panel.* The contents of those collections (which are a virtual listing of images that can be, and often are, spread around multiple folders) can each also be shown (i.e. listed) in a variety of different ways. The relevance to this issue is that it is the collections which sync to the cloud where they appear as albums, and these albums can also be displayed/listed in different orders, and it's the albums which you are sharing to your end-users. So forget about folders in the context of this issue....in Lightroom Classic it's only the collections in the collections panel which matter.

Each collection and each album can be shown in different orders on the various devices, so for example you can list a collection in LrC in capture date order, and you can at the same time list the corresponding album in LrMobile in file-name order.....but if you list the collection and the album using the same sort order, you would expect them to look the same. Unlike all the other designated sort orders, which are triggered on various metadata fields, Custom Order is set manually by the user.....and as I explained earlier, the user can set that Custom Order in any of the client apps (Mobile, Desktop, Web and Classic), and it's a case of "last change wins", i.e. setting/changing a custom order in any client app will change the custom order that may have previously been set in one of the other client apps. So in a situation when multiple people have access to the various client apps, it's imperative that some rules are established if custom order is important to the business, especially as it's the current custom order that will be seen by the end-users when viewing the shared albums.

All of that really means that the ONLY thing you should be concentrating on in Classic is the Collections in the Collections Panel. Anything in the Folders Panel is totally irrelevant to this problem. So show us a screenshot of one of the collections, using the Grid view and with the toolbar showing so that we can see that custom order is indeed set. I don't want to see a screenshot of the menu tree that shows that custom order is selected, that obscures too much of the grid behind it. Then show us a screenshot of the corresponding album in LrWeb, this time with the Display tab selected (the one that looks like an artists palette), NOT either of the two grid displays. Those two screenshots will allow us to see exactly if there are differences in the custom order.


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## lowes.susan (Sep 8, 2021)

Jim Wilde said:


> The screenshot of the folder in Windows File Explorer isn't really relevant to this issue. The contents of a folder are typically spread around the disk, but they can be LISTED in many different ways. The same holds true for the folders in Lightroom's Folders Panel, the contents of those can also be listed in different ways (by using the Sort Order option).
> 
> The ONLY thing pertinent to this issue at hand are the *synced collections *in the *Collections panel.* The contents of those collections (which are a virtual listing of images that can be, and often are, spread around multiple folders) can each also be shown (i.e. listed) in a variety of different ways. The relevance to this issue is that it is the collections which sync to the cloud where they appear as albums, and these albums can also be displayed/listed in different orders, and it's the albums which you are sharing to your end-users. So forget about folders in the context of this issue....in Lightroom Classic it's only the collections in the collections panel which matter.
> 
> ...


Okay, here are two screenshots, one from Classic and one from LrWeb. As the image shows, LrWeb does not allow me to select Custom.  LrWeb is the original with mistakes. Classic is reordered as it should be.


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## Jim Wilde (Sep 8, 2021)

lowes.susan said:


> Okay, here are two screenshots, one from Classic and one from LrWeb. As the image shows, *LrWeb does not allow me to select Custom*.  LrWeb is the original with mistakes. Classic is reordered as it should be.


As I've already explained earlier in this thread, when using the Display tab to view the album in LrWeb, that *is* displaying in the current custom order. What you are looking at with the settings panel expanded is the option to *revert* the *existing* custom order to one of the standard metadata-based sort orders, thus there is no need for a Custom Order option in that panel. As such, you don't need to be expanding that panel until/unless you want to reset the custom order (you can manipulate the current custom order using standard drag and drop within the grid of the Display tab view).

Yes, I can see that the two apps are showing a different custom order, however it also seems from the LrClassic screenshot that cloud syncing is currently not active (difficult to tell from the small screenshot, but it certainly doesn't look like the expected icon showing that syncing is up-to-date). So I suggest you look at re-enabling syncing, then waiting for it to reach the fully synced state, then check the custom order of that collection in Classic again. If syncing works as expected then the custom order of one of the two apps should change, which is likely to depend on which app was last used to manipulate the custom order. So make sure you refresh the LrWeb browser window after syncing has completed before comparing the two apps again.


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## John Little (Sep 8, 2021)

Jim has suggested several times that you try experimenting with a small collection, so that you can learn what works and what doesn't. This is excellent advice, and is an efficient way to attack difficult problems. He also suggested, I think, that one source of complications is allowing several different people to access the data. If they don't all follow the same procedures, the result is likely to be chaos, or at least a mess that will take a lot of work to untangle.


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## John Little (Sep 16, 2021)

Jim Wilde said:


> The problem with using Custom Order is that...there are no management tools available to help protect the work that you've put in to create the custom order. There's no way to "save" a specific order ...


Hello Jim,
This ought to be really easy to implement; the tools to preserve custom order are in place, e.g., as used for albums. May I suggest that you submit a request to Adobe to implement it? You could surely phrase the issue and the solution in their language more clearly than I can! I'll add my "like" or whatever if it would help.


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