# Help with syncing Lightroom Classic CC with Lightroom CC



## Karen G. (Dec 3, 2018)

Hi everyone. I am a newbie to Lightroom. I just signed up for the Photography Plan. I need help understanding the syncing part of Lightroom Classic CC with Lightroom CC. What I would like to do is when I am out shooting with my iPhone or DSLR is  to upload my full resolution photos  to Lightroom CC and then download them to Lightroom Classic CC on my Mac.  How do I do this? I am going to be using Lightroom Classic CC to do most of my edits, plus I want to keep my photos stored locally. 

Is it safe to have both Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC on my Mac? Like I said my primary editor will be Lightroom Classic CC. 

Another question I have is- what if I want to upload a photo to Lightroom CC from Lightroom Classic on my Mac to do some further editing on my iPad. Will uploading from Lightroom Classic upload the full resolution photo or just "smart previews"?  If it just does "smart previews", any way of getting the full resolution in CC?

And lastly, what iOS apps do I need. I know Lightroom CC, but what about the Creative Cloud app?

Thanks everyone for your help!


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## Zenon (Dec 3, 2018)

Get the downloader app. 

Download synced Lightroom photos and videos from the cloud to a computer

It is not unsafe to run both LR CC and Classic on the same device but not recommended. As you said further on  Classic does only syncs Smart Previews, not the actual files. Some have figured out a workaround that I've not looked into yet.


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## Jim Wilde (Dec 3, 2018)

Zenon said:


> Get the downloader app.
> 
> Download synced Lightroom photos and videos from the cloud to a computer
> 
> It is not unsafe to run both LR CC and Classic on the same device but not recommended. As you said further on  Classic does only syncs Smart Previews, not the actual files. Some have figured out a workaround that I've not looked into yet.


No. The downloader app is intended for when one decides to terminate their subscription plan (or abandon the LRCC syncing element of their plan)
and needs to download all their assets from the cloud. It has no place in an ongoing syncing workflow.

Also there is nothing wrong with using LRCC and Classic on the same computer, though arguably in a fully synced setup it may not actually be necessary.


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## Jim Wilde (Dec 3, 2018)

Karen G. said:


> Hi everyone. I am a newbie to Lightroom. I just signed up for the Photography Plan. I need help understanding the syncing part of Lightroom Classic CC with Lightroom CC. What I would like to do is when I am out shooting with my iPhone or DSLR is  to upload my full resolution photos  to Lightroom CC and then download them to Lightroom Classic CC on my Mac.  How do I do this? I am going to be using Lightroom Classic CC to do most of my edits, plus I want to keep my photos stored locally.



It's really quite simple.....if you enable syncing in your Classic catalog, all images that are added to the LRCC cloud "ecosystem" will automatically download as a copy of the full original. You can control (via the LR Classic Preferences>Lightroom Sync tab) where Classic will store them once downloaded, and you can even have them stored into a capture date-based folder system.....I use such a folder system for all my Classic images, so any new images arriving from the cloud will be stored in the same folder system. 



> Is it safe to have both Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC on my Mac? Like I said my primary editor will be Lightroom Classic CC.



Yes indeed. Note that there is an option in the LRCC desktop app to "Store a local copy of the originals", these would be separate from the copy of the originals that are downloaded into Classic so you might want to think about whether it's worth turning that option on. I don't use it, as all the cloud images are also in my Classic catalog, and my backup system looks after the Classic catalog and the images, so I see no need to have yet another local copy via the LRCC option.



> Another question I have is- what if I want to upload a photo to Lightroom CC from Lightroom Classic on my Mac to do some further editing on my iPad. Will uploading from Lightroom Classic upload the full resolution photo or just "smart previews"?  If it just does "smart previews", any way of getting the full resolution in CC?



If you think you need the originals in the cloud rather than Smart Previews, which is what Classic uploads if you initiate syncing from within Classic, there are ways of doing that. The simplest way is to first sync the Classic images as smart previews, when that is done you can then import the same images into the LRCC desktop app....that will recognise the files already exist, and it will go ahead and replace the Smart Previews in the cloud with the originals. So no duplicates are created, but obviously care needs to be taken to ensure that you only add originals of the already synced Smart Previews....if you add originals to LRCC which are already in the Classic catalog, but haven't been synced from there, you would end up creating Virtual Copies in Classic of the images that you added to LRCC.



> And lastly, what iOS apps do I need. I know Lightroom CC, but what about the Creative Cloud app?



You don't NEED the Creative Cloud app on iOS if all you are planning on doing is using the sync ecosystem, though it does no harm. However, if you plan on additionally sharing files via the Creative Cloud file sharing system, then yes you probably would need that app.


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## Zenon (Dec 3, 2018)

Jim Wilde said:


> No. The downloader app is intended for when one decides to terminate their subscription plan (or abandon the LRCC syncing element of their plan)
> and needs to download all their assets from the cloud. It has no place in an ongoing syncing workflow.
> 
> Also there is nothing wrong with using LRCC and Classic on the same computer, though arguably in a fully synced setup it may not actually be necessary.



Thanks for the info. I thought the downloader could be used for both purposes. I don't have the expertise you have. This is what is says here. Since I never really tried this I just based mu reply on it. 

*Using Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic together*

Lots of people are trying to use Lightroom CC desktop and Lightroom Classic together on the same computer, and since they weren’t really designed to work that way, they’re running into a few problems.

Most notably, even though keywords can be viewed/edited in Lightroom CC, they don’t sync to or from Lightroom Classic. There aren’t any good long term workarounds for this issue and it’s not considered a bug, so if it’s important to you, you’ll want to vote on this request.

What a Week in the Lightroom World! | The Lightroom Queen


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## Karen G. (Dec 4, 2018)

Thanks @Jim Wilde and @Zenon  for your answers.  You've been very helpful.


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## Kagio (Mar 4, 2020)

Jim Wilde said:


> It's really quite simple.....if you enable syncing in your Classic catalog, all images that are added to the LRCC cloud "ecosystem" will automatically download as a copy of the full original. You can control (via the LR Classic Preferences>Lightroom Sync tab) where Classic will store them once downloaded, and you can even have them stored into a capture date-based folder system.....I use such a folder system for all my Classic images, so any new images arriving from the cloud will be stored in the same folder system.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Jesus Christ! Jim I just had to register in this website to talk to you.

Simply said: Thank you.

Man, I've been reading for weeks about Lightroom. I'm a tech advisor here in Monterrey, México, and one of my clients wants to dominate the whole file/local/cloud management interaction between apps/devices.  This has been nuts, what a complicated world this is, most of it Adobe's fault. They have  tons of work to do on clarity between concepts, guide thoroughness, internal infrastructure, and even marketing ..

What's amazing to me is, well many things with you, but in summary: your experience and dedication level to this forum. You are easily  the wisest man on earth regarding this ecosystem, I'm serious, I swear to you I've been everywhere for weeks, many many hours (some people just don't ask the right question!) And well you are my type, you probably don't get a penny from this and you still type away to share your knowledge wherever and to anybody you can. You even update some posts. Again, thank you.

Another thing that amazes me is how I still have some questions. Man is there a way we could chat directly? HAHA that would be the best. Maybe share your email address with me somehow? I don't know, in case we can't have a more direct communication:

1. Is there a way to get Lightroom Classic + 1 Tb for $9.99!? Its either Lightroom Classic + Photoshop with 20Gb, or Lightroom with 1Tb, am I right? They're kinda forcing you into Lightroom when you're going to be based mostly on the cloud.

2. Is this the right read? --> Lightroom Classic ONLY works with local-full res images, and can sync to mobile app the smart previews if desired. on the other hand, Lightroom can only work with Cloud-based smart previews even though the original photo is at the cloud (given "Only download smart previews" option is on in the mobile (say iPhone) app) <- btw this option is not available on Lightroom Desktop, right?

3. If "auto-add" is ON for iPhone, and "Optimize Storage" is ON for iCloud Photos, and "Only download Smart Previews" is ON for LR iPhone's app; you can take a new photo either on the iPhone's or LR's camera, and for a moment, the photo will be in its original quality locally, then said original photo goes to both iCloud and Adobe Cloud, and then its optimized/smartpreviewized as in you no longer have the original file anywhere in your iPhone. Then Lightroom Desktop will grab/work/edit over --what? <- the original file on the cloud, or the smart preview?

I'm sure I have more.. I know most is confirmation, but whoa .. 

Best!


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 5, 2020)

Kagio said:


> 1. Is there a way to get Lightroom Classic + 1 Tb for $9.99!? Its either Lightroom Classic + Photoshop with 20Gb, or Lightroom with 1Tb, am I right? They're kinda forcing you into Lightroom when you're going to be based mostly on the cloud.
> 
> 2. Is this the right read? --> Lightroom Classic ONLY works with local-full res images, and can sync to mobile app the smart previews if desired. on the other hand, Lightroom can only work with Cloud-based smart previews even though the original photo is at the cloud (given "Only download smart previews" option is on in the mobile (say iPhone) app) <- btw this option is not available on Lightroom Desktop, right?
> 
> ...



Hi Kagio, welcome to the forum....and thank you for your kind words (though there are many users here who know as much as I do about the cloud ecosystem).

Answering your questions:

1. Not at this time, though you may occasionally see special offers which might bring the Classic with 1TB plan down from $19.99.

2. It's probably a little more complicated than that. Yes, Classic only deals with locally held full-res files, though it can generate and use smart previews of those files, but of course the full-res file has to be initially available in order to generate those smart previews. But that's unrelated to cloud syncing, from a syncing perspective there is no option to only download a smart preview of a full-res original from the cloud, it will always receive a copy of the original. Lightroom Desktop and Lightroom mobile can be setup to work in different ways.....on mobile you can use the option to "Only Download Smart Previews" and the app will then happily edit using only the smart preview, but it will still download the full-res original (assuming it exists in the cloud) if you try to export with a requested file size larger than the size of the smart preview. The SP is always 2560px on the long edge, so if you specify any value greater than 2560 then the app will automatically download the full-res original.
Lightroom Desktop has similar download options for smart previews, and will happily use those smart previews for editing when the desktop device is offline, but when it's online the original will be automatically downloaded when you attempt to zoom to 1:1, OR you start to edit the image.

3. I'm not 100% certain about this, as I specifically disable iCloud syncing for Photos on all my iDevices, because it can lead to duplicate images appearing the Adobe Cloud if "Auto-add" is enabled on those iDevices....i.e. take a picture on my iPhone, it's auto-added to Lr Mobile but with iCloud enabled that image would also upload to the iCloud and from there down to my iPads....and it typically has the file-name mangled by iCloud so gets treated as a new file on the iPads and so gets auto-added back into Lr Mobile and thus synced back up to the Adobe Cloud as a duplicate. I don't know how "Optimize Storage" plays into this scenario, but assuming that the original is added into Lr Mobile before it's replaced by iCloud, and thus synced to the Adobe Cloud, then that original will still remain inside the Lr Mobile app space until it is automatically removed and replaced by a smart preview....that removal will happen in accordance with various criteria (amount of available space on the device, frequency of updates, etc.) but you can manually force their removal (after ensuring that they have synced to the Adobe Cloud) by using the Clear Cache option, either on a per album basis or a complete app-wide basis.

Hope that helps....ask away if you have more question.


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## Kagio (Mar 5, 2020)

Jim Wilde said:


> Hi Kagio, welcome to the forum....and thank you for your kind words (though there are many users here who know as much as I do about the cloud ecosystem).
> 
> Answering your questions:
> 
> ...



Hey Jim! thank you very much, your responses are even quick; another plus. Really awesome guy you are, congratulations again I cant stress that enough (no matter if there's more like you , I "somehow" stumbled upon exactly you, always, so, that's gotta mean something).

About 3, yeah, saw that in another post of yours; I set the iCloud Photo Library every of my client's iDevices normally, but ONLY ONE of the iDevices will have the "auto-add" LR app setting ON (the iPhone); I expect this to cover up for possible duplicates. She doesn't mind this approach given the workflow she has (she'll consider a full migration i.e kill iCloud Subscription later in the game).

Now thanks, we are clear con #1, I actually got her the Photography Plan (Lightroom + Classic + Photoshop [she dont needs] + *1Tb*) *for 14.99usd*; which was offered automatically when we clicked "upgrade" from inside the Lightroom Desktop next to a message about our 20Gb being almost full.

Now, regarding #2, on our session yesterday we couldn't figure out the following:

When we're on LR mobile (being this the iPhone app), we can of course see a combination of original files and/or smart previews depending on LR internal algorithm decision  (Only Download Smart Previews is ON) <- but it's actually this setting that gave us doubts on the following scenarious, let me explain:

When my client finishes editing in LR mobile, she then likes having that final photo back on her iPhone Camera Roll again (iCloud Photo Library) with the highest possible quality. Or she simply wants to share the photo to an external place with the best possible quality; in both cases, she feels unsure about the exported quality (don't worry explaining how most third party apps will have their own unavoidable compressions, I'll see that part) but you see, there are *2 ways* of getting the image back to (for example) the iPhone's Camera Roll:

*1.* Click Box-Arrow icon (share) at the top > Click Export to Camera Roll (formerly "save" to camera roll as I still see on some official Adobe guides) > and that's it!, it automatically says "exported to camera roll" with no other quality picking prompts, the image is already in the camera roll <- it has the edits, but *what's the image quality for that one?

Or

2.* Click Box-Arrow icon (share) at the top > Click Export "As" > now we DO get a prompt for quality picking here <- but when we chose the file type "original" it removed any other options, and* exported the file with NO edits* to the camera roll. So I'm guessing "Original" is not only referencing the "quality" part haha. Remaining options are *JPG *(which let's us pick dimensions and image quality) *TIF* (with dimensions, bit depth, transparency and compression options), and *DNG *(Adobe's RAW format, with no additional options). *Which (including specific settings) is the best way to export the absolute top image quality to the Camera Roll then?

TLDR my questions are:
1. What's the image quality when we simply click those 1# export steps?
2. How to we export to camera roll in the best quality (including edits)

And since you said "ask-away" (and adobe really has to work on official-updated manuals) :

3. Is there a way to see the file size for any image in LR mobile? *(only "trick" I noticed is when you tap "Share  > Open In" it shows the size (though what if that's the smart preview size? depending on personal settings)

*4. Does turning off "only download smart previews" on LR mobile mean everything in the Adobe Cloud will be locally downloaded in full quality to the iPhone?

5. Is there a way to UNDO every edit to a photo on LR mobile, sort of a reset (?) *(though if you actually loss the original picture, you can always "export as original" and import back to LR mobile I guess?


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 6, 2020)

1 & 2......look at this screenshot of the "Share" screen on my iPhone, and note the icons that I've highlighted. These are "settings" icons, which provide access to all the same options as the "Export as" option at the bottom. So for exporting to the Camera Roll, click on the icon and set (among other things) the export quality you want. Note that these "settings" are "sticky" per export type, in other words you can set different options for each of the sharing options and they'll be remembered until individually changed again.



Exporting as "original" simply copies the original file, which is always unedited. It would be nice if the option to export as "original + settings" was available in Lr Mobile (as it is in Lr Desktop and Lr Classic).

3. Yep, that's about the only way to see the file-size, but if you tap on the cloud icon with just one image selected you'll find the information about the *type* of file (original or smart preview) that is held locally and in the cloud.

4. Yes, for all the albums that you have currently set to "Store Locally".

5. Yes, in edit mode look at the far right-hand end of the editing tools strip at the bottom of the screen.


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## Kagio (Mar 6, 2020)

Jim Wilde said:


> 1 & 2......look at this screenshot of the "Share" screen on my iPhone, and note the icons that I've highlighted. These are "settings" icons, which provide access to all the same options as the "Export as" option at the bottom. So for exporting to the Camera Roll, click on the icon and set (among other things) the export quality you want. Note that these "settings" are "sticky" per export type, in other words you can set different options for each of the sharing options and they'll be remembered until individually changed again.
> View attachment 14090
> 
> Exporting as "original" simply copies the original file, which is always unedited. It would be nice if the option to export as "original + settings" was available in Lr Mobile (as it is in Lr Desktop and Lr Classic).
> ...



Oh man, wow hahah.. 

I thought those "settings" little icons were simply decorative and not actually clickable! amazing, Ok .. the rest of the answers are perfectly clear now, that reset button its a save too. Great Jim.

Maybe it's a stretch, don't worry if you have no time for this, but, with export way #2, I also meant if you could explain which specific format to pick when one wants the *top possible quality *(which will always include edits since the Original type is out of the question now) .. is it JPEG at 100% dimensions and quality?, is it TIF with 16bit? .. DNG? what would you suggest or what are the pro/cons of each?

I'll keep repeating thank you, If you care to share me your bank info, I'll gladly pay for all this info. It's very valuable.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 6, 2020)

Kagio said:


> Maybe it's a stretch, don't worry if you have no time for this, but, with export way #2, I also meant if you could explain which specific format to pick when one wants the *top possible quality *(which will always include edits since the Original type is out of the question now) .. is it JPEG at 100% dimensions and quality?, is it TIF with 16bit? .. DNG? what would you suggest or what are the pro/cons of each?


It really depends on what you are exporting the file for. If for web or email or uploading to a photo-sharing site, generally Jpeg would be the usual choice (with sRGB as the colour space). In terms of the quality, provided you keep the quality above 70/80 you'd be fine, and in terms of the dimensions again it depends on the use case.....sometimes you'll want to reduce the dimensions (e.g. make the filesize smaller for web), but sometimes you won't want to do that.


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## Kagio (Mar 6, 2020)

Jim Wilde said:


> It really depends on what you are exporting the file for. If for web or email or uploading to a photo-sharing site, generally Jpeg would be the usual choice (with sRGB as the colour space). In terms of the quality, provided you keep the quality above 70/80 you'd be fine, and in terms of the dimensions again it depends on the use case.....sometimes you'll want to reduce the dimensions (e.g. make the filesize smaller for web), but sometimes you won't want to do that.



Makes sense Jim, thank you so much for all help, I admire you. 

Best!


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