# How do I disable sync in LrC and remove cloud photos?



## switters (Oct 31, 2021)

I thought I wanted to use Lr and LrC together. Yesterday I turned sync on in LrC and started downloading all of my photos from the cloud. I've now decided that I want to just stick with Lr as my primary DAM and editor, and not try to use both together. 

I want to reverse the sync that I did. Is this how to do it?

Pause syncing in LrC
Right-click on the folder/volume where I told LrC to store synced images, and choose "Remove..."
Delete the downloaded images from the folder/volume 
Will this do it, or am I missing something?


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 31, 2021)

Unless you are still planning on using LrC in some way in the future, I'd skip 1 and 2 and simply delete the LrC catalog, then do 3.

Out of curiosity, what problems did you run into that made you change your mind?


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## switters (Oct 31, 2021)

I am still using LrC because it's the only place that contains a lot of my older photos. I never brought those into the cloud with Lightroom. So I don't want to delete the LrC catalog.

It's not so much that I had sync issues or conflicts. It's more of a workflow thing.

For example, with a photo I was working on, I used the Topaz Sharpener AI plugin from LrC to sharpen it, then the Gigapixel AI plugin to enlarge it. That creates a new image file that is stacked with the original in LrC. But then I realized that this new file would not be uploaded to the cloud in full resolution; I would only have access to it as a "smart preview" in Lr.

On the other hand, if I had been using Lr as my "home base", I could just "Edit in Photoshop", run the Topaz plugins from Photoshop, then save the file back into Lr. It would be stacked with the original in Lr, but in this case, it would be the full resolution file, not a smart preview. (Another advantage to running Topaz and other plugins from Photoshop is that they can be done as layers, which gives me more flexibility in the editing process.)

Since I am using the Topaz plugins on almost every file that I want to process for print or web output, this is a pretty important aspect of my workflow.

My original reasons for wanting to move back to LrC were the print module and the ability to use plugins. But, because of what I just described, I think I might be better off using Lr as my primary, opening files in Photoshop to use the plugins, and then either printing from Photoshop or exporting to my desktop and importing to LrC to print.

Please let me know if I'm missing something and/or if there's a better way to achieve what I'm trying to achieve!

P.S. I also found the file handling to be confusing. For example, I just chose a photo from my "From Lightroom" collection in LrC to edit. It is numbered "941" in the collection. I opened in Topaz Denoise AI, applied the filter, and closed Topaz. This new version doesn't show up in the "From Lightroom" collection (because, of course, it's not from Lightroom!). Then I have to click on the folder/volume where my Lightroom photos are stored in the left side bar, and find the new version stacked with the original photo... which of course has a totally different number (6112). This is manageable but confusing. If I had simply opened this photo from Lr into Photoshop and ran the plugin, the new version would then be stacked with the old version. Seems easier.


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## clee01l (Oct 31, 2021)

switters said:


> Please let me know if I'm missing something and/or if there's a better way to achieve what I'm trying to achieve!


There are several ways to achieve what you want. 
First, let's  address the issue that you want to use LR and LrC together.   There is no reason to not permit LrC to soon a Proxy image to the Cloud.  The size of the Proxy image  is large enough to be suitable for use by Lightroom.  I think you have mentioned before that you need LrC to properly print as Lr is not suitable for the task.   So, what reasons would it be critical to have a full size derivative image file in the Adobe cloud?   While it might be difficult, you can always replicate the plugin efforts from the original in LrC using the Plugin tools  you mentioned. 
The Adobe Cloud is not a backup solution.  With Lightroom you have 60 days to recover deleted image files.  After that, they are unrecoverable from the Adobe cloud. 

Second. you decide to store full size image files from LrC in the Adobe Cloud.  You can begin by using the Migration option in Lightroom to Migrate your master LrC catalog to the Lr Cloud.   Future new images can be imported first into Lr and the Adobe cloud  there by creating a master copy in the cloud that is sync to the LrC Master catalog.  Now you have master full size image copies in both the cloud and references by the Master LrC catalog. 

Now the next part is a little kludgy,  But it is only a solution because you want derivative files in the Adobe Cloud.  If you are willing to give up on that idea, then you can skip this part.   Through 3rd party editors (Topaz), you create derivatives.  these are automatically imported back into your master catalog but you also want them in the Adobe Cloud.   Identify them in such a way that you can use Lightroom (for the Computer) and import these or identical copies of these into the Adobe Cloud.   The Adobe cloud will detect the duplication (they are identically named) and replace the proxy derivative with the full size derivative.


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## switters (Oct 31, 2021)

Thanks so much for helping me to figure this out.

Playing Devil's Advocate, I guess my question would be this: is the only compelling reason (given what I've shared) for me to use LrC as my primary DAM and editor that the Adobe Cloud is not a backup solution? If so, is there a way to easily back up photos stored in the Lr cloud to a local device? (Or is the easiest way to turn on sync in LrC?)

I'm trying to avoid confusion and "kludginess" (to use your term!) in my workflow, and keep it as simple as possible. It seems like Lr as the primary, then editing in Photoshop and using the Topaz plugins, and/or either printing in Photoshop or LrC, is the way to do that. The only downsides are 1) I don't have all of my photos in one place. I will have to open LrC to access my legacy photos. 2) As you pointed out, the Lr cloud is not a backup solution.

It sounds like I can solve for #1 by migrating my LrC catalog to the cloud. That would just leave me needing a solution for #2.


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## clee01l (Oct 31, 2021)

switters said:


> Thanks so much for helping me to figure this out.
> 
> Playing Devil's Advocate, I guess my question would be this: is the only compelling reason (given what I've shared) for me to use LrC as my primary DAM and editor that the Adobe Cloud is not a backup solution? If so, is there a way to easily back up photos stored in the Lr cloud to a local device? (Or is the easiest way to turn on sync in LrC?)
> 
> ...



I can’t accept Lr as a Primary DAM tool because of the features present in LrC and not Present in Lr. Printing is one, Publish Services is another. The lack of 3rd party plugin support another. Neither Lr or LrC are a backup solution For that you nee a system backup (Like Time Machine) that will give you the versioning of file so that you can recover the state of the file at any point in the past including deleting the file 6 months ago. You can’t achieve that if your master image files are stored in the cloud. Sure, you can make a copy locally of everything you import usingLightroom but that becomes an unmanaged copy. By keeping a catalog local, you can track and recover changes with frequent backups of the master catalog With LrC you can use a system backup tool to recover deep Lightroom user mistakes and accidental deletions. 

You should have started using Lr with the Migration of LrC catalog to the Cloud. That way all of the master images and Lightroom adjustment would be in the cloud. However, you want to retain the LrC catalog as the master repository of ALL of your images and Lightroom adjustments. That is achieved by turning on Sync in LrC to sync back to LrC everything that you do in the cloud. If your import workflow starts with Lightroom, then syncing will bring everything new back into a master LrC catalog with files stored locally. And a System Backup app running in there background to protect the LrC images and data.

I don’t create derivatives of my work locally, Third party apps that do are created only for the benefit they provide and a proxy image sent too the Adobe Cloud is suitable for viewing using Lightroom for the web.


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## switters (Oct 31, 2021)

clee01l said:


> I can’t accept Lr as a Primary DAM tool because of the features present in LrC and not Present in Lr. Printing is one, Publish Services is another. The lack of 3rd party plugin support another. Neither Lr or LrC are a backup solution For that you nee a system backup (Like Time Machine) that will give you the versioning of file so that you can recover the state of the file at any point in the past including deleting the file 6 months ago. You can’t achieve that if your master image files are stored in the cloud. Sure, you can make a copy locally of everything you import usingLightroom but that becomes an unmanaged copy. By keeping a catalog local, you can track and recover changes with frequent backups of the master catalog With LrC you can use a system backup tool to recover deep Lightroom user mistakes and accidental deletions.
> 
> You should have started using Lr with the Migration of LrC catalog to the Cloud. That way all of the master images and Lightroom adjustment would be in the cloud. However, you want to retain the LrC catalog as the master repository of ALL of your images and Lightroom adjustments. That is achieved by turning on Sync in LrC to sync back to LrC everything that you do in the cloud. If your import workflow starts with Lightroom, then syncing will bring everything new back into a master LrC catalog with files stored locally. And a System Backup app running in there background to protect the LrC images and data.
> 
> ...


Ok, this makes sense. There are a lot of variables, and I think my initial experience with sync turned me off to this hybrid solution. But after reading what you wrote, and thinking about it further, it does seem like it may be the best solution for me.

I wish I would have migrated my LrC catalog to Lr when I started using it. But I didn't.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, when I turned on sync in LrC something seemed to go wrong with how the files got organized on my storage volume (which is a 2 TB SSD connected via Thunderbolt).

So, maybe it makes sense to start fresh with this? What is the best order of things? There are a few goals:

*Start over with LrC sync so file/folder structure is cleaned up*

Pause sync in LrC
Right-click on the folder/volume where my Lr cloud photos were downloaded, and remove that
Right-click on the "From Lightroom" collection, and remove that
Restart sync
*Migrate LrC catalog to Lr *
Following the procedure outlined here.

Is that it? If so, which should I do first?

P.S. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to do regular backups. I might switch to Time Machine and get an NAS to make the backups even more regular/automated.


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## switters (Oct 31, 2021)

Re: migrating the LrC catalog to Lr. I assume that I would ignore the part of the instructions in the linked Adobe document that suggests turning on "Local Storage > Originals Are Currently Stored In A Custom Location". I already have the originals from LrC stored on my local drive, and I already have Lr configured to sync/download any files uploaded to Lr to LrC/my local drive. Right?


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## clee01l (Oct 31, 2021)

switters said:


> Re: migrating the LrC catalog to Lr. I assume that I would ignore the part of the instructions in the linked Adobe document that suggests turning on "Local Storage > Originals Are Currently Stored In A Custom Location". I already have the originals from LrC stored on my local drive, and I already have Lr configured to sync/download any files uploaded to Lr to LrC/my local drive. Right?



Yes there is no need to duplicate local copies of original image files in both LrC and Lr.

If I remember correctly, you already have images in the Adobe cloud that have not sync’d to LrC. I’d first begin by turning off the sync in LrC. 
Then Migrate the LrC Catalog into the Adobe Cloud via Lightroom. Once you have everything full size in the cloud, you can then Turin on sync in LrC. This will synchronize all of the images in the cloud to the LrC catalog. From that point on you only need to initiate import through the Lightroom app either on the computer or one of the mobile platforms.


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## switters (Oct 31, 2021)

clee01l said:


> Yes there is no need to duplicate copies of original image file in both LrC and Lr.
> 
> If I remember correctly, you already have images in the Adobe cloud that have not sync’d to LrC. I’d frost begin by turning off the sync in LrC.
> Then Migrate the LrC Catalog into the Adobe Cloud via Lightroom. Once you have everything full size in the cloud, you can then Turin on sync in LrC. This will synchronize all of the images in the cloud to the LrC catalog. From that point on you only need to initiate import through the Lightroom app either on the computer or one of the mobile platforms.
> ...


Great! I think I've got it now.

Only one question. I did, in fact, set up Sync yesterday and synced my Lr photos to LrC.  I went into the Sync preferences and chose to sync Lightroom's images to the external hard drive where all of my images are stored. I also selected the "Use subfolders formatted by capture date" option. 

Unfortunately, I forgot to create a new folder on the hard drive for the Lightroom images.  

Also, for some reason, Lr couldn't recognize capture dates for several hundred images. This led to all of those getting dumped right into the root directory of the external drive, rather than into a subfolder with capture date. And, because I didn't create a new folder on the drive, all of the subfolders for capture date got created on in the root directory of the drive

This has turned my external drive into a mess. I would like to start fresh and re-do the sync so that the images are stored in a folder on the external drive, rather than right on the root directory of the drive.

What's the best way to resolve this and start over so I can set up the proper folder structure?


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## clee01l (Oct 31, 2021)

switters said:


> …
> What's the best way to resolve this and start over so I can set up the proper folder structure?


If you use the date named folder scheme for all of your folders, then all images sort into the same folders. For images that have not defined capture date (probably scanned images or images that were sources for elsewhere and had metadata stripped) I would suggest creating a holding folder in Lightroom Classic folder panel. the filter on all of the images with an improper capture date and currently located in the Root folder. Select all of those images and in LrC drag them to the holding folder that’s you created in the folder panel. If a capture date can be determined, you can correct the metadata and drag them one by one or in a common group to the proper date named folder later. 


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 31, 2021)

clee01l said:


> Once you have everything full size in the cloud, you can then Turin on sync in LrC. This will synchronize all of the images in the cloud to the LrC catalog.


I would avoid doing that, as that's a recipe for disaster. Are you forgetting the problems you ran into Cletus the first time you tried to do that?

I'll admit I'm getting confused here....I thought the new intention was to migrate everything to the cloud and forget about LrClassic. In which case, shut down LrC, then migrate the catalog to Lightroom. Then don't start LrC again. 

I apologise if I've got that wrong, as parts of this conversation are also taking place on the Adobe Community Forum.


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## clee01l (Oct 31, 2021)

Jim Wilde said:


> I would avoid doing that, as that's a recipe for disaster. Are you forgetting the problems you ran into Cletus the first time you tried to do that?
> 
> I'll admit I'm getting confused here....I thought the new intention was to migrate everything to the cloud and forget about LrClassic. In which case, shut down LrC, then migrate the catalog to Lightroom. Then don't start LrC again.
> 
> I apologise if I've got that wrong, as parts of this conversation are also taking place on the Adobe Community Forum.



I am just responding to post related to my comments on their threadMy understanding is that the OP wasn’t all of their full size LrC master images in the cloud. AND maintain a Master catalog where control over a master image copy is maintained locally. The only way to get a full size image into the Adobe cloud is using Lightroom (cloudy) to import them or to migrate a LrC catalog of images using Lightroom (cloudy) Once the user has all of the images in the Adobe cloud Importing to the Cloud using Lightroom is the only way to maintain full size images in the cloud. If the user wants a copy of those same image locally with a Lightroom Classic Catalog of associated adjustments and other metadata then Syncing from the cloud is the only option that I know to do that. 

It is my understanding that the OP started with LrC and then stopped using LRC and started using Lr. Now the user want to use LrC but wants full sized images in the cloud. While I don’t think full sized images in the cloud are necessary. I’m trying to help the OP achieve that aim. 

And, No I don’t recall fully what I experienced early on but I recall it had something to do with not understanding the Lightroom Classic sync up to the cloud resulted in Proxy files. Not full sized images . 

The OP has 1TB of cloud storage in their Photography Plan. 


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## switters (Oct 31, 2021)

Ok... speaking of disaster, it just occurred. I just posted about it here. 

I've gone around in circles on this, so I understand how you could be getting confused. 

After a lot of back and forth, I had decided to stick with the original proposed solution of using LrC as my primary DAM/editor, and then using Lr as the "front end" where I upload new images to it and allow those to download to LrC using sync.

I will post more detail there about what I think happened. Hoping someone can help!


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 31, 2021)

OK, well that explains some of my confusion, so it would probably be a good idea to stop posting in both places, and that has led to some of it. Let us know where you would like to continue the discussion.

There are various ways to proceed, but that would be dependant on the current position, and more specifically what issues you were having which caused you to pause syncing in your LrC catalog.

Whilst it is possible to continue using the current LrC catalog (working around the current issues), the cleanest way forward, given that you are in this "half and half" situation, would be to migrate the current LrC catalog to the cloud, *then create a new LrC Catalog and enable that to sync.* That would then download the entire contents of the cloud into the new catalog, which would all be synced. From there, you can work as you wanted, i.e. import into Lightroom, edit in LrC. There are, however, several issues to consider:

1. You would lose whatever folder structure you have in the current LrC catalog (though you can convert it to collections before migration, which would then be matched by albums in the cloud).
2. In the new LrC catalog, you could only have a folder structure based on image capture-dates (which in fact is how a lot of users setup their LrC folder structure).
3. Whilst images and edits will sync back and forth between LrC and the cloud, some things do not sync (such as Keywords, Location Data, Presets). So you would have to develop a way of working that gets the data that you want into the place that you want it


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## switters (Oct 31, 2021)

Hi Jim,

Sorry for the multiple posts. I was attempting to keep things more clear that way but it's obvious that has caused confusion. We can continue the discussion here if that works for you.

Regarding the three issues you mentioned:

I don't think I'm using folders at all in LrC. Where would those be? I just have about 15 collections. In the folders panel, I see my external hard drive and the folder my images are stored in, but that's it.
I'm fine with having a folder structure based on image capture dates. That's how I was doing it anyhow. 
As for #3, I want to be sure I'm understanding correctly. Are you saying that if I apply keywords and a preset in an image I'm working on in LrC, I won't see those edits/additions to the image in Lr?

Or, are you saying that keywords I create in LrC and presets that I create or import into LrC won't sync to Lr, and vice versa? I think (and hope) this is what you mean. If so, I can live with that. For presets, most of the ones I use give me the option of installing in both LrC and Lr. And I really don't use keywords much at all.

One more question. If I do upload the LrC catalog into the cloud, and then create a new LrC catalog and sync that... wouldn't I also need to restore the deleted photos in Lr before I synced the new LrC catalog? About 1,750 of my 6,500 images in Lr got moved to the deleted folder before I paused syncing in both LrC and Lr.


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## switters (Oct 31, 2021)

Also... as for the issues I was having when I originally tried to sync my LrC catalog: it was just user error. I failed to assign the correct location for storing the downloaded Lr images. Instead of creating a dedicated folder for this on my external drive, I just chose the drive itself, which led to hundreds of images being stored on the root directory of the drive. 

Although I did select "store in subfolders based on capture date" in the preferences, some of my images in Lightroom were edited with third-party apps in iOS that apparently remove metadata, so Lr was unable to recognize a capture date and therefore didn't put those photos in a subfolder). I wanted to start over and organize the images downloaded from Lr into a single folder on my external drive. And that's where the problems that I described above began.


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 31, 2021)

I can do a detailed reply tomorrow morning (I'm a bit tied up for this evening), but for now you need to clear up the issue with the deleted files in Lightroom. Why did those 1750 images get moved to "Deleted"? What were you doing to cause that? Were these images that were originally imported into Lightroom, then started to download into LrC when you enabled sync, and then did you delete them from LrC when you realised what was happening? If so, yes you most definitely do need to restore them, but that is easy enough to do....open the "Deleted" album in Lightroom, select the images and then click on the "Restore" button (be careful you don't click on the "Permanently Delete" trash-can icon by mistake!).


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## switters (Oct 31, 2021)

Jim Wilde said:


> I can do a detailed reply tomorrow morning (I'm a bit tied up for this evening), but for now you need to clear up the issue with the deleted files in Lightroom. Why did those 1750 images get moved to "Deleted"? What were you doing to cause that? Were these images that were originally imported into Lightroom, then started to download into LrC when you enabled sync, and then did you delete them from LrC when you realised what was happening? If so, yes you most definitely do need to restore them, but that is easy enough to do....open the "Deleted" album in Lightroom, select the images and then click on the "Restore" button (be careful you don't click on the "Permanently Delete" trash-can icon by mistake!).


I am not sure why those were deleted, but I gave my best guess in the other thread. I'll include it here for reference.



> I attempted to "start fresh" by doing the following:
> 
> I paused Sync in LrC
> In the "media" section of the left sidebar of LrC, I right-clicked on the area where my photos were and removed that
> ...



In any event, I turned sync back on in Lr and allowed all of the files to continue moving to the trash. When that was finished, I chose all of the files in the Deleted folder and restored them. Now Lr is back to normal and all of my images are showing up there as expected. Phew.

I will wait for your reply tomorrow morning before moving on to the next step. But I like your suggestion of migrating my current LrC catalog to the cloud, and then syncing that with a fresh LrC catalog—provided my understanding of your #3 point in your previous post is correct, i.e. that edits to photos based on presets applied in LrC will sync to Lr, and vice versa. I'm fine if the presets themselves don't sync between Lr and LrC, and I don't use keywords much, so I'm not too worried about those either.


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 1, 2021)

switters said:


> Regarding the three issues you mentioned:
> 
> I don't think I'm using folders at all in LrC. Where would those be? I just have about 15 collections. In the folders panel, I see my external hard drive and the folder my images are stored in, but that's it.
> I'm fine with having a folder structure based on image capture dates. That's how I was doing it anyhow.
> ...


#1....If you were only using the one folder (seen in the Folders Panel) then this item isn't an issue. 

#3....Regarding Presets not syncing between Classic and the cloud, what I mean is that if you create a preset (or import one from a third-party) in Classic, that preset is not synced to the cloud (and it's the same if you add a preset to a cloud app, that won't sync to Classic but will sync to all the other cloud apps). However, when you *apply* a preset that hasn't synced, the *effect* of that preset *does* sync (with one possible exception), because the preset is mainly about moving sliders which are standard edits....and all edits DO sync. The exception could be camera profiles, i.e. if you use a preset to apply a camera profile in Classic, then that profile must also exist in the cloud apps in order for that change to properly sync. If the camera profile is a standard Adobe-created profile, that's not an issue as they should all exist in both Classic and the cloud, but if the profile is user-created or imported from a third-party they will not have synced to the cloud and so will produce a "Missing Profile" message when viewing the image in any cloud app. You circumvent that problem by importing the profile into both LrC and Lightroom. You could also import your user-created or third-party presets into both apps to keep everything consistent between LrC and the cloud.
Keywords and Location data also do not sync between Classic and the cloud (though GPS coordinates DO sync), so if you do use them you need to bear that in mind and decide which app you want to use. If you intend to use the album-sharing features of the cloud ecosystem, it might make more sense to apply any keywords/location data in a cloud app rather than in LrC.


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 1, 2021)

switters said:


> I will wait for your reply tomorrow morning before moving on to the next step. But I like your suggestion of migrating my current LrC catalog to the cloud, and then syncing that with a fresh LrC catalog—provided my understanding of your #3 point in your previous post is correct, i.e. that edits to photos based on presets applied in LrC will sync to Lr, and vice versa. I'm fine if the presets themselves don't sync between Lr and LrC, and I don't use keywords much, so I'm not too worried about those either.


If you proceed with a new LrC catalog after migrating your existing catalog, do make sure you set the Preferences>Lightroom Sync tab appropriately BEFORE you turn on sync in the new catalog, i.e. create a new empty "parent folder" on a drive with enough free space to handle the amount of data that will be downloaded from the cloud, then set that "parent folder" as the target folder in the preferences, all the dated sub-folders will be created under that single parent folder. Then choose the specific date format that you want LrC to use for the downloaded images.

And if you run into any issues when doing the catalog migration, let us know.

Once you have got it all setup and working, do remember the syncing "rules":

1. *Everything* you add to the cloud, a full copy will automatically sync down into the LrC catalog.

2. *Nothing* that you add to LrC will automatically sync to the cloud unless it is added either to an existing synced collection or to the All Synced Photographs special collection in LrC's Catalog panel. And if you do that, only smart previews are uploaded. However, I think going forward your intention is to import only into Lr, not LrC, yes? 
A problem you will need to decide how to deal with will be derivative files created via plug-in or Photomerge operation in LrC. 
IIRC, if these are created within a *synced* collection then the derivative file will also be set to sync, in which case you'll only have a smart preview of that derivative in the cloud. You can deal with that by importing the same derivative file into Lr (after the smart preview is fully synced), that will replace the smart preview in the cloud with the full copy of the original that you import. 
If they are created from within a standard folder, not a synced collection, then I think they are NOT automatically synced to the cloud. So you would need to initially sync the derivative as a smart preview (by adding it to a synced collection or the All Synced Photographs collection), then import it directly to Lr as above.

3. If an image file is removed from the LrC catalog, or simply "unsynced" by removing it from that All Synced Photographs collection, it will be DELETED from the cloud. Conversely, if you delete an image in any of the cloud apps, it is deleted from the cloud but is only unsynced in LrC (i.e. you cannot delete an image from LrC via any of the cloud apps). So, if you want to retain images in LrC but not keep them in the cloud, that's easy to do, just by unsyncing those images in LrC. But if you want to retain images in the cloud but have them removed from LrC....you can't. See rule 1 above.

All of this information, and more, is contained in the Sync chapter of your Classic Missing FAQ book. Please read through that before you commit yourself to this workflow.


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## switters (Nov 1, 2021)

Jim Wilde said:


> If you proceed with a new LrC catalog after migrating your existing catalog, do make sure you set the Preferences>Lightroom Sync tab appropriately BEFORE you turn on sync in the new catalog, i.e. create a new empty "parent folder" on a drive with enough free space to handle the amount of data that will be downloaded from the cloud, then set that "parent folder" as the target folder in the preferences, all the dated sub-folders will be created under that single parent folder. Then choose the specific date format that you want LrC to use for the downloaded images.
> 
> And if you run into any issues when doing the catalog migration, let us know.
> 
> ...



Jim, thank you SO MUCH for your help. All of this is so confusing, but you've made it very clear and I now understand what the trade-offs are and how to manage them. I'm going to print this out and put it near my computer so I never forget those cardinal rules. I'm also going to write out my workflow until I get it down pat. Especially #2 & #3 above, as those will take some getting used to. 

Quick question before I proceed. My LrC catalog has about 35k images and takes up 850 GB on my external drive. I've read various reports about how Lightroom (cloud) handles lots of images / larger catalogs, with most of the recent articles suggesting that Lightroom should have no trouble with a library of images of this size—especially on modern computers (I just upgraded to a 14" Macbook Pro with the 10-core M1 Pro chip). Is that your understanding? 

Thing is, a lot of those 35k images are not ones that I really care about. For most of that time, my workflow was to simply import images from the card, choose selects, and leave it at that. I didn't do much, if any, culling/rejecting and deleting. This means that, of those 35k images, probably 2-4k are images that I actually care to keep. 

I don't have the time (or interest) to sift through 35k images to find the keepers right now, so I will likely just end up migrating that entire catalog to the cloud. But, for the sake of exploration, let's say I only wanted to migrate my collections (which tend to be my selects) rather than the entire catalog. How would I do that?


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## switters (Nov 1, 2021)

Also... it just occurred to me that after I do this, I will have two local copies of the images in my LrC catalogs: one from the original LrC catalog, and one from the new LrC catalog that is being synced with Lightroom. 

I suppose that, after I am 100% certain that the migration is complete and the images from Lightroom have downloaded to my local drive, and after I have backed that volume up (2 or 3 times, I'm paranoid!) to my backup volume, I can delete it on my main photo drive? If I ever open the old LrC catalog, it would show all of those files as missing. But I'm not sure that matters since I wouldn't be using that catalog anymore, and if I ever needed to, I could just redirect it to the original files?


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 1, 2021)

switters said:


> I don't have the time (or interest) to sift through 35k images to find the keepers right now, so I will likely just end up migrating that entire catalog to the cloud. But, for the sake of exploration, let's say I only wanted to migrate my collections (which tend to be my selects) rather than the entire catalog. How would I do that?



You could export only the collections to a new catalog, then migrate only that new catalog to Lightroom (i.e. don't migrate the full catalog, just migrate the much smaller new catalog). Just be careful to ensure that you have sync turned off when you open the old current catalog in order to do the catalog export.

Later, when you have time, you could reopen the old catalog and review it to see if there are any other images that you might wish to also add to the cloud, then do the same procedure, i.e. export them to a new catalog, then migrate that catalog.


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 1, 2021)

switters said:


> Also... it just occurred to me that after I do this, I will have two local copies of the images in my LrC catalogs: one from the original LrC catalog, and one from the new LrC catalog that is being synced with Lightroom.
> 
> I suppose that, after I am 100% certain that the migration is complete and the images from Lightroom have downloaded to my local drive, and after I have backed that volume up (2 or 3 times, I'm paranoid!) to my backup volume, I can delete it on my main photo drive? If I ever open the old LrC catalog, it would show all of those files as missing. But I'm not sure that matters since I wouldn't be using that catalog anymore, and if I ever needed to, I could just redirect it to the original files?


It depends on whether you migrate the complete catalog, or a much smaller subset as per my previous post. If you migrate it completely, then there's not much point in keeping the old catalog and the related images, they can be deleted once you are happy that you have everything you need in the cloud and downloaded into the new catalog (and backed up).


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## switters (Oct 31, 2021)

I thought I wanted to use Lr and LrC together. Yesterday I turned sync on in LrC and started downloading all of my photos from the cloud. I've now decided that I want to just stick with Lr as my primary DAM and editor, and not try to use both together. 

I want to reverse the sync that I did. Is this how to do it?

Pause syncing in LrC
Right-click on the folder/volume where I told LrC to store synced images, and choose "Remove..."
Delete the downloaded images from the folder/volume 
Will this do it, or am I missing something?


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## switters (Nov 1, 2021)

Ok, thanks! I'm now 100% clear on what I have to do. 

Now, I just need to decide which option is best. 

Clearly, I've learned that rushing into this isn't a good idea. I'm going to take a couple of days to think all of this through and decide where to go from here. I'm in a good place to pause, as my Lr photos have been restored and I've disabled sync in LrC. 

Really appreciate your help, Jim! And Cletus too!


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