# Single Master Catalogue vs Separate Catalogues for Classic & Cloud?



## simonworledge (Oct 24, 2020)

Hello All,

I’m relatively new to this, so would welcome your collective thoughts:

Is it better to have a single master catalogue that I then sync between Classic and Cloud, or should I have separate catalogues in each and just sync edits between the two?

Or just pick one version of LR and stick exclusively to that?

Thanks


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 24, 2020)

Lightroom cloud does not have a local catalog, so you don't have this choice. It uses the cloud as its catalog and as the place to store the images. What it stores locally is just a cache to speed up your work and to allow you be offline temporarily. When you sync the Lightroom Classic catalog, it syncs to that same cloud.


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## clee01l (Oct 24, 2020)

*"One catalog to rule them all*, *one catalog* to find *them*, *One catalog *to bring *them all*, and in the darkness bind *them*; In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie."

If you sync a local Lightroom Classic Catalog to the cloud, you only get one catalog to sync. If you decide to switch to another LrC catalog , Lightroom in the cloud will remove all of the images currently sync'd catalog to the cloud and. then attempt ro sync the images from the new catalog.

There is no reason to ever have more than one LrC catalog is you are not doing commercial work where business rules might require segregation of client data.


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## mikebore (Oct 25, 2020)

simonworledge said:


> Hello All,
> 
> I’m relatively new to this, so would welcome your collective thoughts:
> 
> ...



I would do the last option. Syncing beteeen LrC and Lr is not recommended by Adobe, and is for experts IMHO.


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 25, 2020)

mikebore said:


> I would do the last option. Syncing beteeen LrC and Lr is not recommended by Adobe, and is for experts IMHO.


Adobe are OK with syncing LrC with the cloud, i.e. smart previews from Classic. After all, that was a fully supported workflow well before the Lightroom desktop app was introduced in 2017. The complications that Adobe are wary about is when one tries to get originals into the cloud instead of just Smart Previews. So provided the OP keeps it simple one LrC catalog syncing with the cloud, thus having all images available on web and mobile, should be perfectly fine.


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 25, 2020)

clee01l said:


> If you sync a local Lightroom Classic Catalog to the cloud, you only get one catalog to sync. If you decide to switch to another LrC catalog , Lightroom in the cloud will remove all of the images currently sync'd catalog to the cloud and. then attempt ro sync the images from the new catalog.


I'm not quite sure what you're saying here, Cletus. The way it works, if you decide to switch syncing from the current LrC catalog to a different catalog, is that all the existing contents of the cloud are retained and thus will be downloaded into the new catalog. This functionality was added by the "catalog recovery" routine which was introduced in LR6.8 (IIRC), and remains current today. Last year I completely reconstituted my LrC master catalog by creating a new empty catalog and enabling it to sync, so all the my images in the cloud (all originals) were downloaded into that new catalog.


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## clee01l (Oct 25, 2020)

Jim Wilde said:


> 'm not quite sure what you're saying here, Cletus. The way it works, if you decide to switch syncing from the current LrC catalog to a different catalog, is that all the existing contents of the cloud are retained and thus will be downloaded into the new catalog. This functionality was added by the "catalog recovery" routine which was introduced in LR6.8 (IIRC),


My experience then is out of date then.   Initially, I sync'd a large number of images to the cloud  (well over 1000)   I made a copy of my master catalog and gave it another name.   When I went to sync that copied, renamed catalog with the cloud I got a warning message that I was syncing a different catalog and the images in the cloud would be removed.  When I chose to proceed,  it removed those ~1000 images from the cloud that were sync'd from the original catalog and proceeded the to sync the "new" catalog with the same ~1000 images.  From that I concluded that Adobe will only sync one LrC catalog at a time and never tried to do that again.


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 25, 2020)

You're correct that only one LrC catalog can be the active synced catalog, but it is possible to switch syncing from the currently synced catalog to a different one. This is the message you'll receive when you try to do that:


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## clee01l (Oct 25, 2020)

Jim Wilde said:


> You're correct that only one LrC catalog can be the active synced catalog, but it is possible to switch syncing from the currently synced catalog to a different one. This is the message you'll receive when you try to do that:
> 
> View attachment 15389


Yes, That is a different message than the one I receive long ago.   Initially I think Adobe chose only to remove the existing images  instead of adding them to the new catalog.   I wonder why would happen if the images in the cloud already exist on the new  to be sync'd catalog?


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 25, 2020)

clee01l said:


> I wonder why would happen if the images in the cloud already exist on the new  to be sync'd catalog?


If they're not images that were already synced from the other catalog, then I'd expect Classic's duplicates detection would kick in and you'd end up with the new synced images showing up as Virtual Copies.


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