# Deleting photos on mobile device without removing elsewhere



## Susan Mayne

Trying in vain to figure out how to manage Lightroom Mobile photos on my mobile devices.  I’m using the LR camera to take RAW photos and sync to iPad and iMac.  My iPad is old so I’d like to free up space and delete LR mobile photos on it.  Is it possible to do that and not affect the photos synced on iPhone and iMac?

In LR desktop preferences under LR Mobile - What does Delete all Data do?  Such a scary button!

Any help appreciated.  Have posted on Adobe forum and googled a lot and haven’t figured it out.

Thanks,
Susan


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## Jim Wilde

If you want to still be able to view the synced photos of your iPad, then they have to stay synced, which means to all devices logged in using the same credentials. So if you're concerned about space, you need to learn how to manage the space on that iPad.

For a start, on the iPad, open the LRmobile preferences and ensure that "Load Full Resolution" is turned OFF, that will ensure that when you select a synced image to view it, LRmobile will not load the full original file down to the iPad (it will load a much smaller Smart Preview instead). After you've made that change, you could delete all the locally cached images from the iPad, whilst still remaining the sync status. You do this by going to the main Lightroom Photos collection on the opening collections panel, tap on the settings icon (the 3 horizontal dots at the far right of the Lightroom Photos collection). That reveals the options menu, one of which is "Clear Cache". Tap that and it should remove all the cached smart previews and originals from the iPad.

That'll free up the space, but it does mean that you'll now only initially have thumbnails of the synced images on the iPad. However, as soon as you select an image to view full-screen, the corresponding synced Smart Preview will download (if you have the Info Panel showing, you'll see a message to that effect), but obviously this is going to slow down your viewing experience. To get around this, you could proactively choose to download all the Smart Previews for a particular collection (use the 3 dots to the right of the collection and select "Enable Offline Editing"), that will download all the synced Smart Previews so that they're available for instant viewing. Then, when you've finished viewing that collection, to preserve your space you can use the "Clear Cache" command, but this time on a per collection basis rather than use the global command (you'll see the option in the collections settings options when you tap on the 3 dots).

That's a quick overview of how you could manage the space while keeping everything synced. Come back if you've got more questions.

"Delete All Data" actually means "Delete All Synced Data" from the central servers, which would un-sync all your synced collections on the iMac, which in turn would remove all synced collections from your connected iDevices. It's really only intended as a means for someone to stop syncing, or as a problem resolution when/if syncing runs into a problem which can't be fixed....in that circumstance it's a "wipe the slate clean and start again" button. Your data is still safe on the iMac, but to start again you'd have to sync the collections and go through the upload process all over again....so don't use it unless you're advised to.


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## Susan Mayne

Jim,
Thanks for the help.  I followed your advice and now Lightroom Mobile is taking up 3.4 GB instead of 4.4 GB.  My original hope was that I could take photos off of the iPad only but my understanding is if I am synching both the iPhone and the iPad they will have the same images.
If I am willing to take all the images in LR Mobile off of both of my mobile devices do I have to move the All Synched Photos in the Catalog on my LR desktop into Folders to be able to keep them on my LR desktop.  Do you have any recommendations on the best way to do that?
The reason I would like to do this is because I will be traveling in a month and would like to not only have lots of room for iPhone 7plus LR camera RAW images but I would also like to take my SD cards and upload photos from my Sony A7II to my iPad.
Thoughts?
Susan


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## Jim Wilde

How many images do you currently have synched? And what size storage is your iPad? 

I would have thought that LRm would be using less than 3.4gb after you've cleared the cache....for example, I've got just over 8000 images synced, and on my iPad LRm it's taking up 967mb. You could delete the LRm app on the iPad, that'll free up all its allocated space, then reinstall it and sign in, which will give you the minimum footprint. As you open a collection the thumbnails will download, and provided you definitely have that "Load Full Resolution" setting turned OFF, if you open individual images you'll only get the Smart Preview downloaded. So the footprint will gradually increase over time, but if you keep an eye on it you can manage it.

All Synched Photos is simply a collection, and like all collections the images in it are already located in folders on your iMac. To remove images from the iDevices you have to stop syncing them from the iMac.....you can remove images from All Synched Photos and you'll see a warning that the images will be removed from any synced collections that they are in, but the images themselves will not be deleted. Or you can uncheck the sync icon by a synced collection on the iMac, which will give you the option to remove them from All Synced Photos. Understand that you could stop syncing ALL collections, but if you don't also remove the synced images from All Synced Photos then they'll remain synced to your iDevices.....there'll be no collections on the iDevice apart from the Lightroom Photos collection, which is the equivalent to All Synced Photos. Still with me?

Getting back to your upcoming trip, at the risk of repeating myself you can happily shoot away with the iPhone 7 Plus, using Raw capture, and provided that "Load Full Resolution" is OFF on the iPad then there'll be minimal impact on the iPad storage. However, if you plan to import photos to the iPad from your A7II, then you're going to have to be super careful if you have some storage constraints there. For a start, you have to import to the iPad's Camera Roll, and from there you can import into LRm....at that point you have TWO copies of those original files on the iPad (importing into LRm is a COPY operation). If you have the WiFi bandwidth on your travels, you could wait until the original files upload from LRm to the Adobe servers (you'll know that because you'll see them appear on the iPhone, and syncing will stop on the iPad), then you could delete the originals from the Camera Roll (note they don't get removed for 30 days after deletion unless you go into the Items for Deletion collection in the Photos app and delete them again), then you could, after checking again that Load Full Resolution is OFF, use the Clear Cache option on the collection that you imported them into, which should delete them from LRm......but please be very careful doing this, you have to make sure that they've been uploaded to the Adobe servers before you delete from the iPad. Wouldn't it be easier to import to the iPhone, rather than the iPad, if you are storage issues on the iPad?


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## Susan Mayne

Jim,
I will have to read this a couple of times to thoroughly understand but in the meantime, where can I find this type of info?  
I will probably delete app and reinstall on iPad.  Full Rez is Off. iPad is 32 Gb. I have 1500 LR photos. Waiting for new iPad Pro to come out. Will see what happens. 
More ?? to come.


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## Susan Mayne

LR on iPad
started with 4.4 GB
deleted cache 3.4 GB
restarted iPad 2.9 GB
deleted LR app & reinstalled with load full resolution off 110 MB (I assume this is just the app)
haven't opened any photos or collections, just looked at LR Photos. 1507 there
Meanwhile on my iPhone it is just showing
LR app 202.4 MB
The huge number of GB used for LR seemed to have disappeared. Could what I have done on the iPad affected the iPhone?
I still have the Load Full Reaolution  turned on but I assume that is for future photos.


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## Jim Wilde

Susan Mayne said:


> The huge number of GB used for LR seemed to have disappeared. Could what I have done on the iPad affected the iPhone?
> I still have the Load Full Reaolution  turned on but I assume that is for future photos.



No, what you did on the iPad shouldn't have affected the iPhone in any way.

The Load Full Resolution setting, when it is ON, basically instructs the Adobe Server to give you the original file - if it exists on the server - when you open the image into full screen mode (e.g. for edit) on the iDevice. If there isn't an original, the iDevice will be given the Smart Preview instead. And obviously, if the setting is OFF then that basically instructs the Adobe Server to ONLY give the iDevice a Smart Preview, even if an original file is already loaded to the Server.

Remember that when you sync new images from Lightroom (Desktop/laptop version), it only uploads Smart Previews....original files are never uploaded from Lightroom Desktop. So at the moment, original files can only be uploaded to the Adobe Server either from original captures on iDevice, or imports to iDevice via Camera Roll, or by adding to LR Web via your browser.


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## Susan Mayne

do you have a resource that you would suggest for understanding LR mobile?


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## Jim Wilde

Susan Mayne said:


> do you have a resource that you would suggest for understanding LR mobile?



At the moment I'd say this forum! The pace of change in the mobile area is quite high, meaning that whatever books have been published are probably out of date, but there are a few people here who try to keep up with the latest developments. So if you have more questions, fire away....


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## Selondon

Hi,

First real post....

This is the only thing I have found previously, it's so well hid that it took me 10 mins to find again!

Get started with Lightroom for mobile app on iOS

Btw Jim, I thought Enable Offline Editing downloads the Full Res (if it exists in the Cloud) to your device, but again, can't find my source!

Reed


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## Jim Wilde

Selondon said:


> Btw Jim, I thought Enable Offline Editing downloads the Full Res (if it exists in the Cloud) to your device, but again, can't find my source!



It depends on how the "Load Full Resolution" option has been set. If it's OFF then no, Enable Offline Editing will only download Smart Previews. It it's ON, then yes it will download Full Res (if a Full Res file exists in the sync eco-system, otherwise it'll still be Smart Preview).


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## Selondon

Yes, makes sense Jim.

Surely Adobe should recommend regularly clearing the cache, especially after the importing and successful upload the cloud of RAW files. I guess it knows that a file is uploaded and that it can get rid?
I assumed it would do this (self) optimisation automatically and thought the clear cache command was for minor data and not that it was the primary method of optimisation, so thanks for that info!

Reed


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## Derek Budd

I had been successfully using CC for a couple of years, after being forced to move from Aperture. As soon as I realised the full potential of the iPhone 7, I used that on a recent trip, backing/syncing to my Laptop MacBook Pro by USB cable. I was in a remote area with little opportunity for Wifi. As a result I noticed I could not always sort images in Capture Time on both the iPhone or Laptop. For some strange reason also, the exposures had changed to underexposed in some cases. Then as I was using the phone camera as well as shooting RAW/DNG via Lightroom Control, my photos were really getting out of sequence. I have now ended up with duplicates, many of which can't be sorted in Capture Time.
Now back home, I have been attempting to refile into my Desktop iMac, again synced via USB cable. I really don't want to use Cloud servers or wifi as the means to sync. Now my iPhone is preventing me viewing full scale, saying that Activity is only supported for Shared collections. I need to delete most of the images on the Laptop, (maybe re-importing a few as a small portfolio), similarly with the iPhone. I will then maintain my Library on my Desktop. Naturally very nervous about deleting anything at this stage, due to all the warnings, suggesting all files will be deleted! At this stage everything is backed up, also to External Drives, Time Capsule etc. What a mess.


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## MarkNicholas

I have had the LR CC version for a while but have only just started using (playing rather) with LRm. There is a dearth of clear instruction on the web and this thread has been an interesting read. One of the things that I found confusing (and still do to a certain extent) is that the syncing can work both ways. i.e. you can take a photo on your Iphone and sync it to your other mobile devices and also your desktop / laptop and you can also sync (existing) photos from your desktop / laptop to your mobile devices. However, to do the latter, as I understand it, the photos need to be in a standard collection (not a smart collection or elsewhere).

I can see confusion down the line in not knowing from which device the photo originated. Is there simple way to determine this ?

Also, how much storage do we get on the LR server ?


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## Jim Wilde

MarkNicholas said:


> However, to do the latter, as I understand it, the photos need to be in a standard collection (not a smart collection or elsewhere).



Not quite. Yes, if you want to sync an entire collection from the desktop, it has to be a standard, not smart, collection. But if you want to sync images that aren't in a standard collection you could simply add them the the All Synced Photographs special collection (in the Catalog Panel). After syncing they would appear in the "Lightroom Photos" special collection in LRmobile....these two special collections contain all synced images, no matter if they are also in a standard collection or not.



> I can see confusion down the line in not knowing from which device the photo originated. Is there simple way to determine this ?



Not sure why this matters? The file's exif tells you which camera was used to take the picture, but I can't see why it matters if the image was initially imported into LR, LRm or LRWeb. Once imported it then syncs to the other two parts of the system, so what's the importance of knowing which of the three elements it was initially synced from? It's never been something that I've worried about, so am I missing something?



> Also, how much storage do we get on the LR server ?



No official limit has yet been announced. In the early days 30k (then 60k) images was mentioned, but not heard anything lately. I've currently got around 200gb of images on their servers....


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## prbimages

Hi. First post here, yay!

Like Mark, I am just getting up to speed on the Lightroom mobile stuff. And, like Mark, I am finding it confusing. For example:



Jim Wilde said:


> ... the All Synced Photographs special collection (in the Catalog Panel). After syncing they would appear in the "Lightroom Photos" special collection in LRmobile....these two special collections contain all synced images, no matter if they are also in a standard collection or not.



What does it mean when, on my phone, the "Lightroom Photos" special collection says that I have 359 photos, but on my desktop, "All Synced Photographs" says I have 357 photos? Why would such a discrepancy exist? (Note: my Dashboard on the web also says I have 359 photos.)



Jim Wilde said:


> I've currently got around 200gb of images on their servers....



Second question - how does one know the total size of images on the Adobe servers?


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## Jim Wilde

prbimages said:


> Hi. First post here, yay!
> 
> What does it mean when, on my phone, the "Lightroom Photos" special collection says that I have 359 photos, but on my desktop, "All Synced Photographs" says I have 357 photos? Why would such a discrepancy exist? (Note: my Dashboard on the web also says I have 359 photos.)



Hi, welcome to the forum.

It possibly/probably means that 2 images haven't synced down to your desktop, possibly they're stuck. Have a look at the Lightroom mobile tab of the LR Preferences and see if there's any outstanding sync activity still pending.



> Second question - how does one know the total size of images on the Adobe servers?



There's no information displayed anywhere that I can see, I only know because I uploaded the entire contents of a catalog and I can see how much space those images take on my hard drive..


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## prbimages

Jim Wilde said:


> It possibly/probably means that 2 images haven't synced down to your desktop, possibly they're stuck. Have a look at the Lightroom mobile tab of the LR Preferences and see if there's any outstanding sync activity still pending.



Thanks Jim. I checked, but there was no outstanding sync activity pending. So ...

I went through all my synced images one at a time, on LRmobile and on my desktop, looking for differences. I found that I had two images online which were not on my desktop - they both appeared to be _previous edits of other correctly synced images_. Maybe, at some point, LR had gotten confused between virtual copies, or something like that? I don't know.

I was reluctant to simply delete the "extra" images from LRmobile, in case LR was still confused and instead deleted the "final" images from my desktop. Just to be safe I followed this procedure:

On my desktop, I removed the "final" image from its synced collection.
On LRmobile, I confirmed that the "final" image had been removed from both its synced collection and the "Lightroom Photos" special collection.
On LRmobile, I then removed the "extra" image from the "Lightroom Photos" special collection.
On my desktop, I then added the "final" image back to its synced collection.
On LRmobile, I confirmed that the "final" image was correctly placed in both its synced collection and the "Lightroom Photos" special collection. Further, I confirmed that the "extra" image was still nowhere to be found.
I repeated this procedure for the second problem photo, and now my numbers match and all appears to be well.

Except that I don't know how this happened in the first place 

I have a couple of other questions about how LRmobile works, but I should probably start a new thread for that.

Thanks!


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## MarkNicholas

Jim Wilde said:


> No official limit has yet been announced. In the early days 30k (then 60k) images was mentioned, but not heard anything lately. I've currently got around 200gb of images on their servers....



Thanks for the response Jim.

So we know who to blame when Adobe introduce strict limits


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## Jim Wilde

MarkNicholas said:


> Thanks for the response Jim.
> 
> So we know who to blame when Adobe introduce strict limits


Nah....I'm not the worst offender, I believe there's a certain member of Lightroom royalty with a lot more images on the LR servers than me! So I'd blame her if it happens....


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## MarkNicholas

Jim Wilde said:


> Nah....I'm not the worst offender, I believe there's a certain member of Lightroom royalty with a lot more images on the LR servers than me! So I'd blame her if it happens....



So now we know. 20 measly GBs


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## Photocatseyes

"All Synched Photos is simply a collection, and like all collections the images in it are already located in folders on your iMac. To remove images from the iDevices you have to stop syncing them from the iMac.....you can remove images from All Synched Photos and you'll see a warning that the images will be removed from any synced collections that they are in, but the images themselves will not be deleted. Or you can uncheck the sync icon by a synced collection on the iMac, which will give you the option to remove them from All Synced Photos. Understand that you could stop syncing ALL collections, but if you don't also remove the synced images from All Synced Photos then they'll remain synced to your iDevices.....there'll be no collections on the iDevice apart from the Lightroom Photos collection, which is the equivalent to All Synced Photos. Still with me?

Getting back to your upcoming trip, at the risk of repeating myself you can happily shoot away with the iPhone 7 Plus, using Raw capture, and provided that "Load Full Resolution" is OFF on the iPad then there'll be minimal impact on the iPad storage. However, if you plan to import photos to the iPad from your A7II, then you're going to have to be super careful if you have some storage constraints there. For a start, you have to import to the iPad's Camera Roll, and from there you can import into LRm....at that point you have TWO copies of those original files on the iPad (importing into LRm is a COPY operation). If you have the WiFi bandwidth on your travels, you could wait until the original files upload from LRm to the Adobe servers (you'll know that because you'll see them appear on the iPhone, and syncing will stop on the iPad), then you could delete the originals from the Camera Roll (note they don't get removed for 30 days after deletion unless you go into the Items for Deletion collection in the Photos app and delete them again), then you could, after checking again that Load Full Resolution is OFF, use the Clear Cache option on the collection that you imported them into, which should delete them from LRm......but please be very careful doing this, you have to make sure that they've been uploaded to the Adobe servers before you delete from the iPad. Wouldn't it be easier to import to the iPhone, rather than the iPad, if you are storage issues on the iPad?"

Sorry for the long quote but this is really what I struggle with... Logic reasoning is very hard for me, and with every update it seems that I lag behind further. I started with LR with the beta version, what, ten years ago or longer, and aways liked it and never looked back. I do work with desktop, ipod and ipad. All the talk about preview and smart preview is only partially making sense. I have watched zillions of tutorials, from Ben Wilmore to Julianne Kost (the latter being totally drama because she is useless for beginners, sorry), but don't really grasp the totality of the syncing. I do travel a lot, being a Belgian married to an American and living in the States). Both iphone and ipad are 256gig versions. I often take pics from my NikonD800 onto iphone/ipad with the dedicated sd card reader, loving that one btw... 

If that "Load full resolution" is off, where exactly do my raw files go depending on having WIFI/NOWIFI... I take it that my raw files stay in my camera roll on phone/pad. If I am fortunate enough to have fast wifi, do my raws upload to my 1 TB I seem to have now? Does LRmobile know automatically to upload raws to server but put previews on mobile devices? Do I then manually take them off server once home to put on the drobo? 

The next confusion point is "All photographs-All synced photographs"... At this point I have 427.313 photo's in my main catalogue. Pics are on a Drobo, which I have two off, so every 3 months I swap drobo's and sync the whole lot up. I think I have backup down. All synced photographs tells me 17.259, this is desktop. Phone says 17.316 pics. I have a couple of synced collections that I manually synced from LR desktop to mobile. I also have an iphone folder that is auto imported from camera roll. 

Sorry again for the lengthy questions, know that I will hold you in my thoughts for helping me... 

If I delete from this phone 17.316 folder, do I delete originals? Is it of use to have the auto importer on phone or am I only creating doubles of doubles? Once a month, I manually drag everything from phone onto drobo, to clean the phone... 

What a lot of people lack is a "lightroom sub-basics for dummies supreme". Guess I better get of my keyboard before someone faints. I will reread this thread probably a hundred times in the days to come. Thank everyone for all the bits and pieces that are of so much help.


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## Photocatseyes

"the iPad's Camera Roll, and from there you can import into LRm....at that point you have TWO copies of those original files on the iPad (importing into LRm is a COPY operation).  

then you could delete the originals from the Camera Roll (note they don't get removed for 30 days after deletion unless you go into the Items for Deletion collection in the Photos app and delete them again), then you could, after checking again that Load Full Resolution is OFF, use the Clear Cache option on the collection that you imported them into, which should delete them from LRm......but please be very careful doing this, you have to make sure that they've been uploaded to the Adobe servers before you delete from the iPad"
-----------------------------------------------

This might be very obvious to you all, but how does the server know how to keep the originals but delete the ones on the phone? Which would be awesome when traveling... When having fast internet you could put all on server, delete from phone, come home, download to computer... Or am I way off with this reasoning?


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## Selondon

Photocatseyes said:


> "the iPad's Camera Roll, and from there you can import into LRm....at that point you have TWO copies of those original files on the iPad (importing into LRm is a COPY operation).
> 
> then you could delete the originals from the Camera Roll (note they don't get removed for 30 days after deletion unless you go into the Items for Deletion collection in the Photos app and delete them again), then you could, after checking again that Load Full Resolution is OFF, use the Clear Cache option on the collection that you imported them into, which should delete them from LRm......but please be very careful doing this, you have to make sure that they've been uploaded to the Adobe servers before you delete from the iPad"
> -----------------------------------------------
> 
> This might be very obvious to you all, but how does the server know how to keep the originals but delete the ones on the phone? Which would be awesome when traveling... When having fast internet you could put all on server, delete from phone, come home, download to computer... Or am I way off with this reasoning?



I would guess because you are only clearing the cache data in the LrM App on the Phone, not on the server? As long it upload is completed, the workflow seems correct.. additionally keeping them on SD is another back up.


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## Jim Wilde

Photocatseyes said:


> Sorry for the long quote but this is really what I struggle with... Logic reasoning is very hard for me, and with every update it seems that I lag behind further. I started with LR with the beta version, what, ten years ago or longer, and aways liked it and never looked back. I do work with desktop, ipod and ipad. All the talk about preview and smart preview is only partially making sense. I have watched zillions of tutorials, from Ben Wilmore to Julianne Kost (the latter being totally drama because she is useless for beginners, sorry), but don't really grasp the totality of the syncing. I do travel a lot, being a Belgian married to an American and living in the States). Both iphone and ipad are 256gig versions. I often take pics from my NikonD800 onto iphone/ipad with the dedicated sd card reader, loving that one btw...
> 
> If that "Load full resolution" is off, where exactly do my raw files go depending on having WIFI/NOWIFI... I take it that my raw files stay in my camera roll on phone/pad. If I am fortunate enough to have fast wifi, do my raws upload to my 1 TB I seem to have now? Does LRmobile know automatically to upload raws to server but put previews on mobile devices? Do I then manually take them off server once home to put on the drobo?
> 
> The next confusion point is "All photographs-All synced photographs"... At this point I have 427.313 photo's in my main catalogue. Pics are on a Drobo, which I have two off, so every 3 months I swap drobo's and sync the whole lot up. I think I have backup down. All synced photographs tells me 17.259, this is desktop. Phone says 17.316 pics. I have a couple of synced collections that I manually synced from LR desktop to mobile. I also have an iphone folder that is auto imported from camera roll.
> 
> Sorry again for the lengthy questions, know that I will hold you in my thoughts for helping me...
> 
> If I delete from this phone 17.316 folder, do I delete originals? Is it of use to have the auto importer on phone or am I only creating doubles of doubles? Once a month, I manually drag everything from phone onto drobo, to clean the phone...
> 
> What a lot of people lack is a "lightroom sub-basics for dummies supreme". Guess I better get of my keyboard before someone faints. I will reread this thread probably a hundred times in the days to come. Thank everyone for all the bits and pieces that are of so much help.



One of the problems is that the various LR mobile apps have moved on, and in some cases the settings have changed. Probably best if I try to explain how it works today, concentrating mainly on the iPhone (but the iPad would be only different if it's not a cellular-capable model). Hopefully if I give you that perspective it may answer your questions along the way, OK?


1. Any image you add to the LR mobile app will (eventually) sync up into the cloud ecosystem, from where it will subsequently appear in all your "connected" devices. "Connected" means the device is running the appropriate LRCC app and has been signed in using the same Adobe credentials as the app on your iPhone.

2. If the images are captured using the LRmobile camera app, these are not automatically added to the iPhone's camera roll, but are of course uploaded to the Adobe cloud.

3. Images captured using the phone's camera app (or another 3rd party camera app) will NOT be added to the LRmobile app unless/until the user makes that happen. This "making it happen" can be a simple manual "add photos from the Camera Roll" method, or in a more automated way by first enabling "Auto Add Photos (and/or Videos)" in the LRmobile preferences, and then selecting one of your existing synced albums (formerly collections) and enable that album's preferences (tap on the "three dots" icon on the main collection list screen, and tap on "Enable Auto Add").

4. Same with new imports from, say, an SD to Lightning connector. You can use that to capture new images, Raw included, using the iPhone Photos app, and once added to the Camera Roll they will again automatically be added to the album in LRmobile if that auto add has been enabled (you don't have to enable auto add on a specific album, you can import/add directly from the Camera Roll to the All Photos special album).

5. At the time of such a capture and import into the LRmobile app, you will then have two copies on your iPhone....the original copy in the Camera Roll and the copy that LRmobile has made in it's own internal cache, pending upload to the cloud. There is no mechanism from within the LRmobile app, I believe, that allows you to remove the original copy from the Camera Roll, the user has to do that manually.

6. When the images are added to LRmobile, they will appear in two places (but only the one copy): in the "auto add" album, and in the "All Photos" special album. This last one is the representation of all your synced assets in the cloud ecosystem, and it should be the same number as when viewed in the other synced apps (e.g. iPad, the new LRCC, LRWeb, and the All Synced Photographs collection in LR Classic). The fact that you have a small mis-match between Classic and LRmobile would suggest that you have a few files "stuck", which you should be able to see by looking at the "Lightroom CC" tab in your LR Classic Preferences. *The imperative thing to note is that if you remove ANY image from All Photos/All Synced Photographs, two things will happen: the first is that the image will be removed completely from the cloud ecosystem, i.e. gone, deleted, removed, gone, and there's no "cloud trash can" to recover it from. The second thing to be aware of is that in LR Classic, all that happens is that the image is removed from the All Synced Photographs collection, but remains in the catalog and on the hard drive.* Understand, therefore, that if you "delete" the All Photos album (you actually can't, but you can delete all the images in it) then they will *all be removed totally from the cloud*.

7. In terms of managing the space on your iDevice, you should now understand that at some point you might want to clean-up the Camera Roll, but that's something you have to do yourself. Once in LRmobile, however, there are a few things to help. Firstly, you now have some better information available in the LRmobile preferences, thinking specifically about the "Local Storage" tab and the "Cloud Storage & Sync" tab. "Local Storage" gives you the overview of how much space is being used on the device by LRmobile, and I do believe that some "intelligent management" of its space usage is in place. My understanding is that the originals that you might have added into LRmobile, once uploaded, may subsequently be silently removed and replaced with a much smaller preview. So you shouldn't find LRmobile using all your available space, especially on a 256gb model. Even then, there are controls in the "Cloud Storage & Sync" tab to help further, most notably the "Only Download Smart Previews" option. This has replaced the former "Load Full Resolution" option and simply means that if you've going out of WiFi/Cellular range and want some images available on the phone before you go, you could enable that option (I keep it permanently enabled), then use the "Store Locally" option on a per album basis to get smart previews only downloaded. Though note that if the "Only Download Smart Previews" option is NOT enabled, using the "Store Locally" option will download full originals (if they exist in the system). Every once in a while, I'll look at clearing the cache on either a specific album or globally via the All Photos album (or the "Local Storage" tab.

8. One other thing to note is what happens when you open an image into any of the "full-screen" modes such as Edit, Info, Review. If an original file exists in the ecosystem, and you haven't got the "Use Cellular Data" option enabled (Cloud Storage & Sync tab), i.e. you have full cloud access, LRmobile will initially download the smart preview while downloading and rendering the full original. These originals will be cached, and subject to the same "intelligent space management", but it's useful to know they might be there, even if you thought you were getting smart previews only.

I hope the above gives you a better understanding. I'm sure I've missed things out, so don't hesitate if you want to come back with more questions.


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## Susan Mayne

Trying in vain to figure out how to manage Lightroom Mobile photos on my mobile devices.  I’m using the LR camera to take RAW photos and sync to iPad and iMac.  My iPad is old so I’d like to free up space and delete LR mobile photos on it.  Is it possible to do that and not affect the photos synced on iPhone and iMac?

In LR desktop preferences under LR Mobile - What does Delete all Data do?  Such a scary button!

Any help appreciated.  Have posted on Adobe forum and googled a lot and haven’t figured it out.

Thanks,
Susan


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## prbimages

prbimages said:


> Thanks Jim. I checked, but there was no outstanding sync activity pending. So ...
> 
> I went through all my synced images one at a time, on LRmobile and on my desktop, looking for differences. I found that I had two images online which were not on my desktop - they both appeared to be _previous edits of other correctly synced images_. Maybe, at some point, LR had gotten confused between virtual copies, or something like that? I don't know.
> 
> ...
> 
> Except that I don't know how this happened in the first place


Well, I don't know how I did it, but I find myself in the same situation as earlier, namely, I have two more photos indicated online than is shown in my desktop "All Synced Photographs" collection. There is no outstanding sync activity pending. Last time this happened, I managed to find the extra online images by going slowly through the images on each platform one by one, looking for differences. Before I resort to the same laborious procedure again, does anyone have any ideas for some way to speed up this comparison process? (I don't have any good ideas, but maybe someone else will ... )

My gut feeling tells me that this problem is somehow caused by syncing virtual copies, but I can't be sure.


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## Photocatseyes

Jim Wilde said:


> One of the problems is that the various LR mobile apps have moved on, and in some cases the settings have changed. Probably best if I try to explain how it works today, concentrating mainly on the iPhone (but the iPad would be only different if it's not a cellular-capable model). Hopefully if I give you that perspective it may answer your questions along the way, OK?
> 8. One other thing to note is what happens when you open an image into any of the "full-screen" modes such as Edit, Info, Review. If an original file exists in the ecosystem, and you haven't got the "Use Cellular Data" option enabled (Cloud Storage & Sync tab), i.e. you have full cloud access, LRmobile will initially download the smart preview while downloading and rendering the full original. These originals will be cached, and subject to the same "intelligent space management", but it's useful to know they might be there, even if you thought you were getting smart previews only.
> I hope the above gives you a better understanding. I'm sure I've missed things out, so don't hesitate if you want to come back with more questions.



Dear Jim, I think you are the guy to write a lightroom for dummies. Thank you so much for your very expanded and easy to follow explanation. I will print your reply out so I can keep it as a reference. I have a better view in my head now and can work from your explanation. Thank you very very much because I know how much time this must have taken you to write your way through my epistel. What you say makes perfect sense and it is very valuable background knowledge that so far I never found before... Between you and the Lightroom queen I am set up for success now. Thank you again and now off to print! Thanks from the bottom of my heart!


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## Jim Wilde

You're more than welcome. However, I've just noticed an error in my point 8....the original file if it exists will *always* download if an internet connection exists, be that on Wifi or Cellular. The "Use Cellular Data" option is only there for you to enable or disable internet access when Wifi is not available and a cellular connection is available. The setting is there to prevent you inadvertently using up your cellular data allowance. Sorry about the confusion.


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## Photocatseyes

Hi Jim, Thank you so much for your explanation. I only found it by accident and am not sure that I replied to it. If I didn't,  sincerely apologize. I have worked out the working order by now, and it is indeed much like your explanation. I will print out your reply to my question to reread on certain times when I need it. The workflow you mentioned works a charm when you have fast wifi. I was in Europe for the whole month of May and did just that: go from phone to adobe servers and once uploaded, cleared iphone. It worked a charm for 5000 pics. For the last fourteen days I have been traveling the American Heart Land with lower wifi speeds, and made a mess. I could not get my Nikon RAW files on adobe server quick enough, so filled up phone (256gig) and part of ipad(256gig). I think it is needed to make clear that this good working flow only works with fast internet. To add to the confusion, I had to wipe some of my sd cards, I have four of 64 gig, but did ran out of space in the second week. I am just hoping that I did not toss too much and no pics I really needed. Eventually I found a best buy where I could buy another 64 gig sd card... lol. From your explanation I now pick up that I can still clear the cache, which would have given me more free space on the phone while traveling. Made a mental note of that one. Thank you so much for your lenghty and very valuable sharing of a possible workflow, and again apologies if I did not thank you before. Not a habit of mine. I know how timeconsuming those write ups can be, so I am eternally grateful to you. Thanks again!         Oops, I had replied already but did not see it because of the expand window. Djeesh! Anyway, thank you again. lol.


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