# How do I go from Lightroom 6 to the world of 2019?



## Auz (Oct 12, 2019)

Hi, I'm new to the forum.  I have used Lightroom since Version 1, and I stuck with version 6 for the last four years.  Using Lightroom  became more awkward as many of my photographs are now from my phone.  I have to export those from Apple Photos and then import them into Lightroom.  I like having photos on the phone, so I end up with many duplicate shots--one in Lightroom and one in Photos. 

I have just subscribed to the Photography Plan and trying to figure out how to improve my photographic life with the new software.  Reading the forums, I seem to be facing a common dilemma.  I've read lots of tips and how-tos, but I'm still wondering what's right for me. 

There seem to be three paths, perhaps with variations.  I've shown a few of my pluses and minuses for each, but I'd like to hear what path you've followed and what your pluses and minuses are.

1.  Migrate my Classic catalog(s) to Lightroom and abandon Classic.
+ Saves ten bucks a month (provided all my photos fit in a terabyte and I don't use Photoshop)​+ Provides all the often-discussed benefits of having and editing photos everywhere​+ Simple system to live with​- No way to preserve some photos outside the cloud, but move them in easily as needed.​- I feel like I'm throwing away my past cataloguing efforts.​- Completely lose features of Classic that have not made it to Cloudy​
2.  Stick with Classic and just sync chosen collections to the cloud.
+ Offers most of the cloud advantages from (1), but keeps the Classic features I know and love​+ A lot like what I'm doing now, but adding sync and cloud access​- Still awkward importing phone photos​- Requires a computer to ingest new photos or to change sync options​
3.  Some hybrid of the first two approaches. 
+ In theory, provide ability to move photos back and forth between the two worlds​- In practice, sounds complex to figure out if practical at all​


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 12, 2019)

Auz said:


> 1. Migrate my Classic catalog(s) to Lightroom and abandon Classic.
> + Saves ten bucks a month (provided all my photos fit in a terabyte and I don't use Photoshop)


No, it does not. The Photography plan and the Lightroom plan start at the same price.


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## clee01l (Oct 12, 2019)

Auz said:


> 2. Stick with Classic and just sync chosen collections to the cloud.
> + Offers most of the cloud advantages from (1), but keeps the Classic features I know and love​+ A lot like what I'm doing now, but adding sync and cloud access​- Still awkward importing phone photos​- Requires a computer to ingest new photos or to change sync options​
> ]



I use a variant of #2. 
I have 8000 of 20,000 photos in Classic that is sync’d to the cloud. I do not use the Apple Photos app or iCloud to store any photos. Turn that off in the mobile device and on the Mac if you use a Mac. That way all phone photos (including any imported from a camera show up in the Lightroom Mobile app. These photos and any Lightroom Mobile edits sync to the cloud and back to Classic. 
I still hav e to periodically go back and delete images in the iDevice Photos storage that are duplicated in the Lightroom Mobile storage. Also I needed to turn off iCloud syncing for the Lightroom app as well as the photos app since all of my photos are managed by Lightroom/Lightroom Classic and can be accessed in the Adobe Lightroom Cloud. 


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## Auz (Oct 12, 2019)

Johan Elzenga said:


> No, it does not. The Photography plan and the Lightroom plan start at the same price.


Yes, true, but the Lightroom plan includes a terabyte of storage for the $10.  I'll need that storage to make any real use of the cloud, so the Photography Plan would be $20 for me.   That's where my arithmetic came from.  The price is the same if you are all-local or all-cloud, but mixing costs more.


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## clee01l (Oct 12, 2019)

Auz said:


> Yes, true, but the Lightroom plan includes a terabyte of storage for the $10. I'll need that storage to make any real use of the cloud, so the Photography Plan would be $20 for me. That's where my arithmetic came from. The price is the same if you are all-local or all-cloud, but mixing costs more.



That all depends on where you source your cloud images. If sourced from your existing local catalog file managed by Classic, only Smart DNGs are sent to the Cloud and these do not count against the 20GB of Cloud Storage. Images originating in Lightroom mobile (cloudy) will impact the 20GB but careful management can keep you under the 20GB limit. However one camera card of high MP raw images imported via Lightroom mobile will fill up that 20GB and then some. 
The 1TB plan that includes Classic and Photoshop is easy to justify though. 


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## Auz (Oct 12, 2019)

clee01l said:


> I use a variant of #2.
> I have 8000 of 20,000 photos in Classic that is sync’d to the cloud. I do not use the Apple Photos app or iCloud to store any photos. Turn that off in the mobile device and on the Mac if you use a Mac. That way all phone photos (including any imported from a camera show up in the Lightroom Mobile app. These photos and any Lightroom Mobile edits sync to the cloud and back to Classic.
> I still hav e to periodically go back and delete images in the iDevice Photos storage that are duplicated in the Lightroom Mobile storage. Also I needed to turn off iCloud syncing for the Lightroom app as well as the photos app since all of my photos are managed by Lightroom/Lightroom Classic and can be accessed in the Adobe Lightroom Cloud.
> 
> ...


Thanks.  Your plan sounds pretty good to me, although it shows me that my understanding of syncing is still weak.  I understand syncing collections up to the cloud and having smart previews used in the cloudy apps.  In my experiments, it seems to work well.  I am much less clear on how cloud-originated photos get back to classic.  I think you get the full original file in classic by giving a directory where you want your files stored.  I'm not sure what sort of control you have over those files.  There must be some limitations.  Can I rename them for example?  They probably have to stay right where LR puts them.  I can put them into collections, I guess, and do editing, but not keywords.  Sounds a little messy.

Concerning your other comments, I'm not sure what iDevice Photos storage is and what sort of cleanup you doing on it.


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## Auz (Oct 12, 2019)

clee01l said:


> That all depends on where you source your cloud images. If sourced from your existing local catalog file managed by Classic, only Smart DNGs are sent to the Cloud and these do not count against the 20GB of Cloud Storage.


Thanks, I did not know they did't count!


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## Conrad Chavez (Oct 12, 2019)

Auz said:


> I am much less clear on how cloud-originated photos get back to classic.  I think you get the full original file in classic by giving a directory where you want your files stored.  I'm not sure what sort of control you have over those files.  There must be some limitations.  Can I rename them for example?  They probably have to stay right where LR puts them.  I can put them into collections, I guess, and do editing, but not keywords.


I still prefer Lightroom Classic, so I also use a variant of #2. The way I do it isn't too hard once you set it up and practice maintaining it.

I use Lightroom Classic as the master photo organizer on my primary computer, and Lightroom on my phone. When I take phone pictures, I prefer to use the camera built into the Lightroom app because it can record raw data as a DNG file. The Lightroom app uploads photos from its local storage to Lightroom cloud storage.

When I get back to my computer and fire up Lightroom Classic, it downloads any new photos from the cloud. You can tell Lightroom Classic where you want those downloaded photos to go. I set that to the same location as I have in the Import dialog for camera card imports, so I automatically have one unified storage location for photos from any source, set up to auto-organize the same way. If photos are taken on October 12, 2019 on any camera or device I have, whether those come into Lightroom from a card or down from the cloud from my phone, they all go into the same 2019-10-12 folder on my computer's local storage. Because they all end up as files on my drive, they can naturally be managed the same way in Lightroom (editing, renaming, deleting).





This is important to understand:

When Lightroom Classic downloads from Lightroom cloud storage, the complete original image file joins the local master storage. That makes it safe to delete the cloud copy. In Lightroom Classic, all cloud copies are in the All Synced Photographs collection; deleting from that collection does not delete local originals. In Lightroom Classic, the only place where deleting will trash the original is in the Folders panel.
When any other Lightroom (cloud, phone, tablet, web) downloads from Lightroom cloud storage, it gets a local cache of the photo in the cloud. Deleting that makes it unavailable to all other Lightroom instances tied to that account, since there are no permanently stored local copies, only temporarily cached ones.
I don't think there's a way that deleting images in Lightroom cloud storage can ever delete an image in Lightroom Classic local storage.
I don't use the cloud version of Lightroom except occasionally as a "terminal" to Lightroom cloud storage, if I'm on some other computer and want to edit my cloud-stored photos. It's handy for that.


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## Auz (Oct 13, 2019)

Conrad Chavez said:


> I still prefer Lightroom Classic, so I also use a variant of #2. The way I do it isn't too hard once you set it up and practice maintaining it.
> <snip>
> I don't use the cloud version of Lightroom except occasionally as a "terminal" to Lightroom cloud storage, if I'm on some other computer and want to edit my cloud-stored photos. It's handy for that.


Thanks for all this detail, Conrad.  There is a lot I didn't know here, but it does raise a lot more questions for me.  I like to have a really simple model of what is going on, and I feel things getting a little cloudy...

I would say you and Cletus are using a hybrid approach with your own inventive variations (my #3).  Maybe that is what I will end up doing too, although I think my primary system, at least for new photos, wants to be in the cloud.  I want to have Classic more as an archive and, of course, for a few of those missing features occasionally.


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## clee01l (Oct 13, 2019)

Auz said:


> Thanks. Your plan sounds pretty good to me, although it shows me that my understanding of syncing is still weak. I understand syncing collections up to the cloud and having smart previews used in the cloudy apps. In my experiments, it seems to work well. I am much less clear on how cloud-originated photos get back to classic. I think you get the full original file in classic by giving a directory where you want your files stored. I'm not sure what sort of control you have over those files. There must be some limitations. Can I rename them for example? They probably have to stay right where LR puts them. I can put them into collections, I guess, and do editing, but not keywords. Sounds a little messy.
> 
> Concerning your other comments, I'm not sure what iDevice Photos storage is and what sort of cleanup you doing on it.



In the cloud Adobe monitors the file type. Originals (that started in Lightroom (cloudy)) will always sync back to Classic. Once the Originals have been sync’d to Classic, the original resides on the computer running Classic. They can then be deleted from the mobile device running Lightroom (cloudy) and if you remove (not delete) them from the special collection in Lightroom called “Synced Photographs”, the originals will be deleted from your 20GB or 1TB of Cloud storage. If you add these images to a Classic Collection that syncs to the cloud, a Smart DNG will get sent to the Lightroom Cloud and not charged against the 20GB limit. 
The file name is simply an metadata attribute assigned to an entity stored in the database in the cloud or elsewhere. You can rename , keyword or add any other metadata to that entity. Hierarchical keywords in Classic do not sync to the cloud. There is also other Classic metadata that is not recognized by Lightroom (cloudy). All metadata in the Lightroom Cloud will be transmitted back to Lightroom Classic. Only the metadata in LR Classic that is recognized by the Adobe cloud will be propagated through out the Adobe cloud environment.

Photos created by your iPhone are stored on the iPhone. If you sync Photos with iCloud those images will be propagated to every device that syncs with iCloud. This can include your PC or Mac and you really don’t want this to happen IF you are going to have Lightroom manage your image inventory. On your phone or other iDevice, go into iCloud Settings and turn off Photos sync. And since Lightroom is going to manage a copy of your images in the Adobe Cloud AND locally in Classic, you do NT need iCloud to save a copy at Apple. You can turn off the Lightroom iCloud backup too


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## Auz (Oct 13, 2019)

clee01l said:


> In the cloud Adobe monitors the file type. Originals (that started in Lightroom (cloudy)) will always sync back to Classic. Once the Originals have been sync’d to Classic, the original resides on the computer running Classic. They can then be deleted from the mobile device running Lightroom (cloudy) and if you remove (not delete) them from the special collection in Lightroom called “Synced Photographs”, the originals will be deleted from your 20GB or 1TB of Cloud storage. If you add these images to a Classic Collection that syncs to the cloud, a Smart DNG will get sent to the Lightroom Cloud and not charged against the 20GB limit.
> The file name is simply an metadata attribute assigned to an entity stored in the database in the cloud or elsewhere. You can rename , keyword or add any other metadata to that entity. Hierarchical keywords in Classic do not sync to the cloud. There is also other Classic metadata that is not recognized by Lightroom (cloudy). All metadata in the Lightroom Cloud will be transmitted back to Lightroom Classic. Only the metadata in LR Classic that is recognized by the Adobe cloud will be propagated through out the Adobe cloud environment.
> 
> Photos created by your iPhone are stored on the iPhone. If you sync Photos with iCloud those images will be propagated to every device that syncs with iCloud. This can include your PC or Mac and you really don’t want this to happen IF you are going to have Lightroom manage your image inventory. On your phone or other iDevice, go into iCloud Settings and turn off Photos sync. And since Lightroom is going to manage a copy of your images in the Adobe Cloud AND locally in Classic, you do NT need iCloud to save a copy at Apple. You can turn off the Lightroom iCloud backup too


This is invaluable information, and very clearly written.  Thank you so much for your time posting it!

My own strategy is forming, but I'm going to let my new knowledge settle for a few days and experiment with fine details of the plan.  Because of the way I work (multiple far-apart locations), I will be adding most new photos in Cloudy and probably editing there too.  When I get to my iMac, I can further organize them in Classic and, in some cases, delete from the cloud.  This why I'll probably need the terabyte of cloud storage where you may not.  I'm going to hold off buying it for now anyway.


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## Auz (Oct 16, 2019)

In spite of my professed caution, I still jumped in too quickly and syncing started before I had all my ducks in a row.  The information in this thread has been valuable, as have Victoria's books, but there is no substitute for slow experimentation.  The details of syncing take time to digest and if you make a small mess of it, as I did, finding the way to clean it up is yet another challenge.  I think I've got it mopped up now, but the floor still seems a little sticky.


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## Auz (Mar 20, 2020)

Cletus--

Since my (and your) last post in this thread I have taken a detour to other photo solutions and also spent time on other concerns.  I had pretty much lost track of what I wanted to do Lightroom, but now, with the March lockdowns, I have time to relearn it.  I've pieced most of it together again, but I thought I'd pitch you on the idea of writing an article about the way you use the two Adobe Lightroom products.  It really seems like the optimal setup to me, but there are a lot of elusive details.  It shouldn't be that hard, but unfortunately it is.  It would be great to see a complete exposition of those details in the full context of the overall problem.

If you took up this idea, I'm not sure how you should publish it.  I see you had a blog many years ago, but there may be a better place these days.


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## clee01l (Mar 20, 2020)

Auz said:


> pitch you on the idea of writing an article about the way you use the two Adobe Lightroom products. It really seems like the optimal setup to me,


Such and article would be most suited for Victoria's blog (there may already be something similar out there. I haven't checked).   Such an article from me would have to be on a collaborative effort as I have drawn much of my workflow from help I have received from Victoria, Jim Wilde, Johan Elzenga, John Beardsworth and probably others.


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## Victoria Bampton (Mar 20, 2020)

Auz, have a look at the Other Downloads page relating to your Lightroom Classic book and you'll find a bonus ebook that covers a typical mobile/Classic travel workflow, which would also apply to everyday use. We're working on expanding further workflows too, but there are so many different permutations, it's a bit brain boggling. Once we get them fine tuned a bit, we'll get some simplified versions on the blog too. We're very open to suggestions though.


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## clee01l (Mar 20, 2020)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Once we get them fine tuned a bit, we'll get some simplified versions on the blog too. We're very open to suggestions though.



If you decide that you need such a blog article I’d be happy to flesh out such an article. Integrating Lightroom on my iPadPro with my master Lightroom Classic catalog has worked well for me


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## Auz (Mar 20, 2020)

Well done, Victoria!  I had not noticed that little bonus download.  It looks like it covers just about every aspect of this workflow.  And it is so up-to-date that it even includes the ability to directly import from memory cards with iOS 13.2.  

Sorting out the possible workflows one might use in Lightroom is a challenge, so thanks for your plans to help.  Many people, like me, come to Lightroom with an existing photo library and/or workflow.  A new user has to figuring a  workflow, somehow gain confidence in that new workflow, and then do the  work to convert.  It is pretty daunting.


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## johnbeardy (Mar 20, 2020)

I have always felt that the message needs to be simple and strongly-stated - if you want to use both Lightrooms, treat Cloudy Lightroom as if it's Lightroom Mobile running on your other Mac or PC. Any other activity flows from that core principle. Stick to it and you _can_ gain workflow benefits from also using Cloudy, but also remember that Adobe are not promoting the idea of using both Lightrooms.

So for instance, don't do work to convert because you're not converting - you are trying to use both Lightrooms, and once Classic Lightroom is syncing, it is the boss, the master catalogue. By all means import new photos into Cloudy when you're on your other Mac/PC, just like you might when you take photos with the Lr Mobile app on your phone, but remember that these will end up being safely downloaded into Classic. So importing into Cloudy or Mobile is just a convenience - you're away from Classic and just want to get working on photos. And then identify the small number of Cloudy features that Adobe have decided not to sync to Classic, and avoid using them - essentially this means don't waste effort keywording in Cloudy or Mobile. Add captions and titles, ratings and flags, when you're in a hotel room or on a long train home, maybe tweak some adjustments or the crop, or create a new collection grouping pictures - this detail will sync with Classic and makes good use of your time. And this stems from that fundamental idea.

John


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