# Incredible confusion with Lightroom's new names and web services



## jjlad (Aug 28, 2019)

I wanted to get sync'd with the "Lightroom" app on my phone and found a YouTube video showing how to do it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRdI600JZS0
Great video but Adobe's new release of Lightroom Classic really made things confusing. You'd need to watch that video to see how confusing Adobe could make things in the space of a few short months! This is the text of a message I left with that video:


My Creative Cloud only showed "Lightroom - The cloud based photo service" , "Lightroom Classic" which I believe was formerly called "Lightroom Classic CC" (this is the one I have and it is Version 8.4), and "Lightroom Web". There is no "Lightroom CC" listing at all now.
On my Android phone I have "Lightroom".

At the top of my Lightroom Classic where you turned on "Sync with Lightroom CC", mine has "Sync with Lightroom".
Your screen shows the linked photos under Album but mine doesn't.
In Lightroom Classic Under "Catalog" I see "All Photographs", "All Synced Photographs", "Quick Collection", "Previous Import" and "Added by Previous Import".

I created a Collection Set called "AA Web Linked" and in that set a Collection called "4+ for FB".  I selected "Sync with Lightroom" and made it the Target Collection. I added some images into that and they synced up fine, so I made another Collection in that Set called "4+ for Website" and made that the target collection and then went into the "4+ for FB" collection and selected one pic to add to target collection, and sure enough that pic now shows up in both collections, and all the photos in both of those collections now show up in that Catalog folder called "All Synced Photographs" and the count shows the correct total number. All the synced photos also almost instantly turned up in Lightroom on my phone. 

You showed that on the bottom of the Metadata panel there was a "Sync Status" that revealed it was really a Smart Preview. Nowhere on my Lightroom Classic does that show up, but the syncing takes place so fast it must be via Smart Previews.

I just wanted to all add this here because Adobe seems to like changing the names of the applications and showing then removing things like the "Sync Status". I was confused and wanted to make sure it worked given all the names were different and you hadn't mentioned that top "Catalog" structure that includes "All Synced Photographs". I can see why people get frustrated with Adobe. Staying on top of things is like herding cats!

Anyway, hope this is helpful to those who are as confused as me.
Overall, it works very well, but folder structures don't sync and it would sure be nice if the synced collections could be Smart ones so one could just populate them automatically.
I'm just rebuilding a website and social media presence so haven't tried using this with those yet but expect to before long. That should be interesting.

For sure Adobe changes things so fast there is no possibility anyone could publish a printed book about anything Adobe, since it would be outdated and incorrect in no time. I guess that's the price of progress.


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## Paul McFarlane (Aug 28, 2019)

Adobe simply removed the 'CC' from the end of all of their apps back in May:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/whats-new-in-lightroom-classic-8-3/
That does lead to one being simply Lightroom but the folder-based one has been Lightroom Classic (albeit previously with 'CC' after) since October 2017 so most are used to that now.

You mention "For sure Adobe changes things so fast there is no possibility anyone could publish a printed book about anything Adobe, since it would be outdated and incorrect in no time. I guess that's the price of progress." - that's the advantage ot the Lightroom Queen's eBooks which are updated each time Adobe release an update to the Lightroom software.


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 28, 2019)

jjlad said:


> You showed that on the bottom of the Metadata panel there was a "Sync Status" that revealed it was really a Smart Preview. Nowhere on my Lightroom Classic does that show up, but the syncing takes place so fast it must be via Smart Previews.



That's because you're looking in the wrong place. In the video the "Sync Status" is shown  in the Lightroom CC (now just Lightroom) desktop app, it's not (and never has been) in the metadata panel in Lightroom Classic.



> I just wanted to all add this here because Adobe seems to like changing the names of the applications and showing then removing things like the "Sync Status". I was confused and wanted to make sure it worked given all the names were different and you hadn't mentioned that top "Catalog" structure that includes "All Synced Photographs". I can see why people get frustrated with Adobe. Staying on top of things is like herding cats!


There were quite a few things the guy didn't mention (Lightroom Web being one of the more significant), so not the greatest video I've every seen.


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## jjlad (Aug 28, 2019)

Paul McFarlane said:


> Adobe simply removed the 'CC' from the end of all of their apps back in May:
> 
> https://www.lightroomqueen.com/whats-new-in-lightroom-classic-8-3/
> That does lead to one being simply Lightroom but the folder-based one has been Lightroom Classic (albeit previously with 'CC' after) since October 2017 so most are used to that now.
> ...


Yes ...ebooks are the best. I've gotten so used to web browsing for everything from home projects to learning new skills. I've never looked into Lightroom Queen's books. Looks like I should.


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## jjlad (Aug 28, 2019)

Jim Wilde said:


> That's because you're looking in the wrong place. In the video the "Sync Status" is shown  in the Lightroom CC (now just Lightroom) desktop app, it's not (and never has been) in the metadata panel in Lightroom Classic.
> 
> 
> There were quite a few things the guy didn't mention (Lightroom Web being one of the more significant), so not the greatest video I've every seen.


Thanks Jim,
Ahh ..caught by the names again. I thought he was using Lightroom Classic because at the beginning he was. He also mentioned getting Lightroom CC from the App Store or Play Store. On Play Store all I could find was "Lightroom" so that got me even more confused, but I did get it and as mentioned above things seem to be working ...at least in terms of the photos showing up ...albeit with no visible structure other than the dates they were taken. 

There were lots of videos about choosing which on was right for the user so I thought I had to pick and that the other one would then be an addon with a price. Sheesh ...does  this mean I need all four...Lightroom, Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Web. plus the Lightroom app on my phone? (And have to learn them all)

Is there at table somewhere showing their current names, what each does, how they all interrelate and how to use them in combination?  I couldn't even find one on the Adobe site. Because the web keeps things for so long it is even more confusing trying to find info ...with highest results leading to old posts about current programs with old names.  

I guess that's why for 'Lightroom' my CC app has an "Install" button instead of a "Try" button? Hard to believe one needs 3 (or more?) programs on the computer and a fourth on the phone ...all to manage the same photo! Mind bending. I'm 73 and admittedly not as mentally resilient as some of you younger folks,  so I see some sparks when I close my eyes thinking about all this.


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## Hal P Anderson (Aug 28, 2019)

jjlad said:


> younger folks


Not so much.


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## clee01l (Aug 28, 2019)

jjlad said:


> I'm 73 and admittedly not as mentally resilient as some of you younger folks


I'd resent that remark if I were old enough.    It would be interesting to see what the age mean is on this forum.   I'd guess some where over 50.   It is definitely skewed toward the older end of the curve. 
I'll see 73 in 3 months.


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 28, 2019)

The guy was using both apps (Classic and Lightroom) on the same system, and was regularly switching between them.....

One of the problems I had with the video was that he didn't make it clear at all that for the use case he was proposing (syncing smart previews from Classic so that he had the images with him wherever he was, on phone or tablet) that installing the Lightroom desktop app on the same system as the Classic catalog is largely a waste of time. There is very little benefit, if any, from having both installed and in use on the same system.

Ditto with Lightroom Web (although that doesn't need to be installed as it's available through any browser), not needed if all you want is your photos on a phone or tablet. However, if you want to start sharing albums with family and friends (or clients), the LrWeb inteface is probably the best tool to use for that.

So, if that's your use-case you don't need to install anything on your desktop, or use LrWeb in a browser.....just install Lightroom on phone and/or tablet and start syncing from Classic as per that video.

If you want to start getting a bit more complicated in your use of the cloud, it's probably time to invest in Victoria's e-books (though why not start with the 2 free Quick Start books?).


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## jjlad (Aug 29, 2019)

Thanks Jim, 
Just reading your reply reminds me that to even know what that guy was and wasn't missing ...takes nearly Guru status. 
I just looked at the books available and saw this combination:





Again ...the names are out of date so the confusion continues. I'm starting to filter my YouTube videos by length of time posted and I'm starting with the 'This Month' selection.
Since FB disabled posting from desktop applications I was looking at workarounds and some I found mentioned you could still do it from Lightroom but the photos had to be in the cloud. I guess they meant you'd need "Lightroom - The cloud based photo service". Just all very complicated. I use Zenfolio and for me it is quite complex too, so going to try making a Wordpress site so trying to learn about that too. Spin Spin Spin


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## jjlad (Aug 29, 2019)

clee01l said:


> I'd resent that remark if I were old enough.    It would be interesting to see what the age mean is on this forum.   I'd guess some where over 50.   It is definitely skewed toward the older end of the curve.
> I'll see 73 in 3 months.


I think as we get older ...family grown etc., we have a little more time. You obviously dove into LR et al years ago and kept building your knowledge. I found myself learning LR (well at least getting acquainted with it and PS) out of necessity. I do like what it can do and want to use it as much as possible. These days I sometimes shake my head though, when I see all the beautiful images people are posting on the different platforms, taken on their cell phones. They use web editors to do all kinds of things to them and they do social media like gurus. I guess many of them grew up with all that so it just comes natural. 
I don't mind being my age, since health is good, and it is fun to learn.  I do get frustrated more easily now though, as compared to even 2 years ago when I was still working and always kept my cool no matter how crazy things got.


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 29, 2019)

jjlad said:


> I just looked at the books available and saw this combination:
> View attachment 12974
> 
> Again ...the names are out of date so the confusion continues.


Just mentally remove the "CC" fom the end of each name and you've got the current names. "CC" was removed a few months ago for nearly all Adobe creative cloud applications, not just Lightroom.


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## clee01l (Aug 29, 2019)

jjlad said:


> I don't mind being my age, since health is good, and it is fun to learn


I don't mind being my age either as the alternative is not something that I want to contemplate.


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## jjlad (Aug 30, 2019)

clee01l said:


> I don't mind being my age either as the alternative is not something that I want to contemplate.


Hell ya. I asked a friend I hadn't seen for awhile how he was and his reply was "Great Jay ...every day above ground is a great day for me!"


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## Victoria Bampton (Sep 12, 2019)

jjlad said:


> I just looked at the books available and saw this combination:
> Again ...the names are out of date so the confusion continues.


We just can't update the official names to remove the CC's from the covers until we go back to press next, but the eBooks are all updated with the latest info.


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## mcasan (Sep 13, 2019)

Classy vs Cloudy.


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## jjlad (Jul 3, 2020)

Of course they've done it again with the latest release. Now the icon reads LrC which one might assume was Lightroom Classic ...but no, when you hover the cursor on it the label reads Lr Catalog 4.2 ... Astounding propensity to confuse subscribers!


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## Woodbutcher (Jul 3, 2020)

jjlad said:


> Of course they've done it again with the latest release. Now the icon reads LrC which one might assume was Lightroom Classic ...but no, when you hover the cursor on it the label reads Lr Catalog 4.2 ... Astounding propensity to confuse subscribers!



On my Mac, when I hover, LrC icon says Adobe Lightroom Classic.  The Lr icon shows Adobe Lightroom.  Are you on Windows?


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## clee01l (Jul 3, 2020)

jjlad said:


> Of course they've done it again with the latest release. Now the icon reads LrC which one might assume was Lightroom Classic ...but no, when you hover the cursor on it the label reads Lr Catalog 4.2 ... Astounding propensity to confuse subscribers!


Actually they have finally made it clear.   LrC does indeed stand for the product *L*ight*r*oom *C*lassic.   And the cloudy version is called simply Lightroom with an Lr icon.    The Mouse over tool tip label is coming from your Windows or Mac control  and in your case probably means the name of your catalog file


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## jjlad (Jul 3, 2020)

Woodbutcher said:


> On my Mac, when I hover, LrC icon says Adobe Lightroom Classic.  The Lr icon shows Adobe Lightroom.  Are you on Windows?


Yes ...Windows 10.


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## jjlad (Jul 3, 2020)

clee01l said:


> Actually they have finally made it clear.   LrC does indeed stand for the product *L*ight*r*oom *C*lassic.   And the cloudy version is called simply Lightroom with an Lr icon.    The Mouse over tool tip label is coming from your Windows or Mac control  and in your case probably means the name of your catalog file


Thanks Cletus. I only have one Catalog and in Lightroom it doesn't appear to even have a name. In Windows Explorer it does show up as Lightroom Catalog-4-2 though. Even if I click Open Catalog ...that just takes me to My Pictures and to the most recent folder created therein.


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## johnbeardy (Jul 3, 2020)

Screenshots please. But "Lightroom Catalog-4-2" would normally be a filename which indicates that you had a catalogue called "Lightroom Catalog-4.lrcat" which was upgraded once - LR adds a -2 each time it upgrades a catalogue.

Are you able to open Classic Lightroom? Is it opening with all the pictures you expect to see?


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## Hal P Anderson (Jul 3, 2020)

jjlad,
Windows shows the same icon for the LrC app as it does for the catalogue file. If you are placing your cursor on the icon for the file, you'll see what you're seeing. If you find the icon for the _*app *_and hover the cursor over that, you'll see this (or something like it):


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## clee01l (Jul 3, 2020)

Hal P Anderson said:


> jjlad,
> Windows shows the same icon for the LrC app as it does for the catalogue file. If you are placing your cursor on the icon for the file, you'll see what you're seeing. If you find the icon for the _*app *_and hover the cursor over that, you'll see this (or something like it):
> View attachment 14916



In the programming API, this is called the ToolTip label and appears when using the mouseOver function. The program developers are able to assign any variable or text to the label 
There is no relationship to the image on the icon (which in Adobe’s case is a picture of the characters “LrC” or “Lr”

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## jjlad (Jul 4, 2020)

johnbeardy said:


> Screenshots please. But "Lightroom Catalog-4-2" would normally be a filename which indicates that you had a catalogue called "Lightroom Catalog-4.lrcat" which was upgraded once - LR adds a -2 each time it upgrades a catalogue.
> 
> Are you able to open Classic Lightroom? Is it opening with all the pictures you expect to see?


Yikes ...and what is Classic Lightroom? My Lightroom Classic works and all photos across 5 drives are instantly accessible.


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## Paul McFarlane (Jul 4, 2020)

jjlad said:


> Yikes ...and what is Classic Lightroom?


John meant Lightroom Classic.


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## jjlad (Aug 28, 2019)

I wanted to get sync'd with the "Lightroom" app on my phone and found a YouTube video showing how to do it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRdI600JZS0
Great video but Adobe's new release of Lightroom Classic really made things confusing. You'd need to watch that video to see how confusing Adobe could make things in the space of a few short months! This is the text of a message I left with that video:


My Creative Cloud only showed "Lightroom - The cloud based photo service" , "Lightroom Classic" which I believe was formerly called "Lightroom Classic CC" (this is the one I have and it is Version 8.4), and "Lightroom Web". There is no "Lightroom CC" listing at all now.
On my Android phone I have "Lightroom".

At the top of my Lightroom Classic where you turned on "Sync with Lightroom CC", mine has "Sync with Lightroom".
Your screen shows the linked photos under Album but mine doesn't.
In Lightroom Classic Under "Catalog" I see "All Photographs", "All Synced Photographs", "Quick Collection", "Previous Import" and "Added by Previous Import".

I created a Collection Set called "AA Web Linked" and in that set a Collection called "4+ for FB".  I selected "Sync with Lightroom" and made it the Target Collection. I added some images into that and they synced up fine, so I made another Collection in that Set called "4+ for Website" and made that the target collection and then went into the "4+ for FB" collection and selected one pic to add to target collection, and sure enough that pic now shows up in both collections, and all the photos in both of those collections now show up in that Catalog folder called "All Synced Photographs" and the count shows the correct total number. All the synced photos also almost instantly turned up in Lightroom on my phone. 

You showed that on the bottom of the Metadata panel there was a "Sync Status" that revealed it was really a Smart Preview. Nowhere on my Lightroom Classic does that show up, but the syncing takes place so fast it must be via Smart Previews.

I just wanted to all add this here because Adobe seems to like changing the names of the applications and showing then removing things like the "Sync Status". I was confused and wanted to make sure it worked given all the names were different and you hadn't mentioned that top "Catalog" structure that includes "All Synced Photographs". I can see why people get frustrated with Adobe. Staying on top of things is like herding cats!

Anyway, hope this is helpful to those who are as confused as me.
Overall, it works very well, but folder structures don't sync and it would sure be nice if the synced collections could be Smart ones so one could just populate them automatically.
I'm just rebuilding a website and social media presence so haven't tried using this with those yet but expect to before long. That should be interesting.

For sure Adobe changes things so fast there is no possibility anyone could publish a printed book about anything Adobe, since it would be outdated and incorrect in no time. I guess that's the price of progress.


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## jjlad (Jul 4, 2020)

LOL ...I know. I was just being  facetious since this thread was all about confusion.


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