# Lightroom Classic/CC Family Usage Model



## neilhunt (Jan 8, 2020)

I'm having cloud sync issues with LR Classic 9.1 on MacOS 10.15.2, and I thought I would outline my usage model and see if anyone has comments that could illuminate.

My use-case is a family photography team, and we want to maintain an integrated set of images shot on multiple cameras on the same shoots, sharing collections, picks, ratings, and edits.
The team is small (really just me and my spouse), and I do 90% of the work; other team members contribute to picks, ratings, titles, etc., but occasionally to edits too.

My model is to manage all the image files in Lightroom Classic on my Mac, sync the "keepers" to the adobe cloud, and let other team members view/edit/manage via Lightroom CC or Lightroom Web (lightroom.adobe.com).

I manage output from my physical cameras using Lightroom Classic to import RAW, apply standard profiles, apply keywords, and dump all the files into folders organized as:
Lightroom/<camera>/2020/01/_DSCNNNN.ARW
I make a quick pass flagging rejects, and assemble a _sync'd _collection for each shoot, plus some year time-range category collections (2020 Top Picks, 2020 Landscapes, 2020 Nature, 2020 Animals, 2020 Birds, 2020 Flowers, 2020 Activity, etc.)
I use smart collections to conjoin my category collections across the years.
I use Lightroom Web to validate that the sync worked, and then the tedious step of organizing the Lightroom CC collections into collection sets (why don't these sync with Classic?).  At the point, I invite other team members to use Lightroom CC (desktop, and/or mobile, iOS and/or Android) to pick/rate/edit and otherwise handle the choice shots from each shoot.

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Since upgrading to Lightroom 9.1, and since also upgrading to a new Mac over the holidays, I am stuck with a huge number (now 7k, and seems to grow each day) of pending sync issues, which appear to be blocking many pending syncs.  I have 260k images in LR Classic, 140k synced to LR CC.

What is "pending" - I know what "uploading" and "downloading" mean, obviously.  Pending state images appear to be matched on LR Classic and LR CC, but something is trying to happen, and isn't.  What drives this?
What's the best way to unblock pending?  I've had some success with:
In LR Classic: setting the sync status of collections containing such images to unsynced
In LR Web: selecting the images in the now dangling collection, choosing "all synced images" at the top, and removing the selected images from all synced images.  It takes perhaps half an hour, but then the sync list moves on to another candidate.  Problem is, with 7k images pending, that's unmanageable.

I've tried rebuild sync data.  An hour later, identical situation.
I am ready to try Delete All Cloud data, and start over - what should I beware of?
How long is a rebuild after Delete All Cloud data likely to take for 140k images synced?


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 13, 2020)

Hi Neil. Sync issues are always a bit of a nightmare, as you've gathering. I would imagine the sync issues started with the move to the new Mac, so let's start there. First things first, when you go to Lightroom Web, is there a Sync Issues collection listed under All Sync Photos? That might offer some clues about the jam. And also in Classic, if you go to Library menu > Find Missing Photos, are any of them marked as missing?


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## neilhunt (Jan 13, 2020)

Thanks for your ideas:

> when you go to Lightroom Web, is there a Sync Issues collection listed under All Sync Photos?
> also in Classic, if you go to Library menu > Find Missing Photos, are any of them marked as missing?

Both good hints.  But negative in both.   Zero sync issues in All Sync Photos.  No missing photos in any syncd collection.

I did - amazingly - resolve the problem with the following steps:

I renamed my Mac with a three-letter name, and restarted everything.  Now at least I can see enough in the sync listing to get a hint of the files in question.  I noted that all are from an old Canon A620 (2004/5 era), which were in old collections I was starting to sync.
In LR CC I _paused syncing_...
In LR CC, I removed "sync" from all the collections I had added since the move (about 30-40).
In LR Web, I found all the same collections, selected all the photos by the offending camera, and then selected All Synced Photos - now I had about 1,000 photos, all from the same camera, all selected from recently synced collections.  These are the potentially stuck files.   At this point, I switched back to LR CC...

In LR CC, I _resumed syncing_.  Now in LR Web, some of the collections from which I had just selected the potentially stuck files started to disappear.  However, the collection disappearing doesn't remove the photo from "All Synced Photos"...
in LR Web, with the same 1,000 photos selected from All Synced Photos (with the original collections rapidly disappearing), I chose "Remove from All Synced Photos".
This step may have been unnecessary: In LR Web, All Synced Photos collection, I filtered for all A620 photos, found a few hundred, verified that none of them were in any _specific _currently synced collections, and removed them from All Synced Photos.
At this point, the LC CC queue jumped to 10,000 long.  Pretty soon, the changes I had made in LR Mobile started to appear in LR CC.  And overnight the stuck problem cleared!

Later, I was able to turn back on "sync" for the old 2005 collections containing A620 photos - I started with one test collection, and when that worked, added one or two more real collections, and then all of them.  At present, sync is keeping roughly up to date.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 14, 2020)

Oh well done Neil!


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## neilhunt (Jan 14, 2020)

The summary, for others in a similar situation, is figure out which files are stuck, from the LR Classic _Preferences/Sync _list, mark those photos as not synced, and on LR Web,  remove them from all synced photos, by selecting them in the All Synced Photos meta-collection, right clicking, and choosing the eponymous menu “Remove From All synced Photos”.

After the sync is unstuck you can probably put them back in a synced collection without issue.

One question remains: what does_ “Pending” _mean?  It’s obvious what _Downloading_, and _Uploading_ mean, although _Metadata_ is ambiguous (is it uploading or downloading metadata changes?)


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 15, 2020)

Pending means it's waiting for something. That's often waiting for something to finish uploading to the cloud on other devices, so those are usually the ones that show up in the web sync errors.


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