# Sync this catalog instead ?



## MarkNicholas (May 2, 2018)

My Lightroom Classic Catalog is on my desktop computer. From there I have many photos synced with LR CC as smart previews.

I also have LR Classic on my laptop. The catalog is currently empty and I don't have any photos on my laptop.

When I start LR Classic on my lap top and try to start syncing with LR CC I get a pop up box which states the following :-

*Sync this catalog instead ?*​​*You can only sync a single Lightroom catalog. You are currently syncing "Lightroom CC-2.lrcat" *(This is my desk top catalog)​​*Would you like to sync"Lightroom Catalog-2.lrcat" instead ?* (this is my lap top catalog) *If you choose to sync this catalog, photos that you've already synced will be added to this catalog.*​​*There are then two options. "Cancel" or "Yes. sync this catalog instead"*​
My question is what will happen if I choose to sync with my laptop catalog instead ? Will it merely add all the LRCC synced photos to my laptop catalog ? What will happen when I start my desktop catalog and try to sync. Will i get the same message in reverse ?


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## Johan Elzenga (May 2, 2018)

Yes,  because the catalog is empty, sync will only add the current CC photos (which are only smart preview size) to the catalog. And it will stop synching the main catalog. You could get that question in reverse there, so you’d have to turn off sync on one of the computers so you don’t get it each time you start Lightroom.


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## clee01l (May 2, 2018)

MarkNicholas said:


> My question is what will happen if I choose to sync with my laptop catalog instead ? Will it merely add all the LRCC synced photos to my laptop catalog ? What will happen when I start my desktop catalog and try to sync. Will i get the same message in reverse ?


When you switch catalogs for sync'ing, Adobe will remove all sync'd images that are currently in the cloud and then proceed to sync images (if there are any) from the new catalog. The same thing happens if you switch from a master catalog to a backup of that catalog


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## Johan Elzenga (May 2, 2018)

clee01l said:


> When you switch catalogs for sync'ing, Adobe will remove all sync'd images that are currently in the cloud and then proceed to sync images (if there are any) from the new catalog. The same thing happens if you switch from a master catalog to a backup of that catalog


No, that used to be so, but that is no longer true. The images currently in the cloud will remain in the cloud. And so they will download into the newly synched catalog. See the message quoted by the OP.


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## clee01l (May 3, 2018)

JohanElzenga said:


> No, that used to be so, but that is no longer true. The images currently in the cloud will remain in the cloud.


So you are saying that now you can sync more than one catalog to the cloud.   Only one active catalog at a time?   Which version of Lightroom Classic 7.x did this change take place?


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## MarkNicholas (May 3, 2018)

clee01l said:


> So you are saying that now you can sync more than one catalog to the cloud.   Only one active catalog at a time?   Which version of Lightroom Classic 7.x did this change take place?



That does seem to be what the message says on the pop-up.  It looks like you can incrementally add to the Cloud / Catalog and things wont get deleted.  Anyway I am not going to try. I was just curious.


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## prbimages (May 3, 2018)

Hmmm, that's quite a big functional change ... like Cletus, I'd like to know when this changed, and also, why I haven't heard or read about it before? Shouldn't Adobe have documented this somewhere (release notes, etc.)?


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## johnbeardy (May 3, 2018)

With a backup, the message is different. It tells you that  it is a backup and doesn't switch so brutally.


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## Jim Wilde (May 3, 2018)

clee01l said:


> So you are saying that now you can sync more than one catalog to the cloud.   Only one active catalog at a time?   Which version of Lightroom Classic 7.x did this change take place?


It was actually introduced in LR6.8, IIRC. It was touted as a "catalog recovery feature" which I remember extensively testing at that time. Basically it allows a user to create a new catalog, set it to sync, and all previously synced images and collections/albums will be downloaded into it. It also has some smarts (but not enough, as there were a few bugs that I filed which are still open), such that if you still have your images (i.e. it's only the catalog that's failed), AND they're in one of the standard date-based folder structure, AND you set the download preferences to target the same parent folder and date-based format, it should match the downloads to the actual images. That latter point is very useful if you only originally sync-uploaded smart previews. Of course if you've lost catalog AND images and only have Smart Previews uploaded you'd only get the SPs downloaded.

It's an often overlooked "feature", though it did help a few users out. But the consequences are that you can now switch syncing to a different catalog without the cloud being wiped, though how useful that might be is not something I've figured out.


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## clee01l (May 4, 2018)

Jim Wilde said:


> though how useful that might be is not something I've figured out.


Where it would have helped me is the time I needed to Export my catalog to a new catalog to overcome some corruption that Adobe introduced in one of their updates (LRCC2015.x).   Doing this wiped out ALL of the work that I had invested in getting my cloud collections/albums like I wanted.   I still haven't recreated my cloud efforts.   But then several other life events have intervened to keep me from focusing on my LR portfolio.


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