# Using iCloud to store LR Classic cc photos



## kittie.mulloy (Mar 29, 2020)

I use Lightroom Classic cc and All my photos are currently stored on my hard drive. I would like to move all these photos to iCloud.   Will LR read iCloud as an 'external' drive?  
I also backup to an external drive.  THANKS


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## Zenon (Mar 29, 2020)

You can't get your files to the cloud using LR Classic. When you sync it only sends smart previews.  Lightroom (cloud based version) sends files to the cloud automatically.  People have found work arounds but it is not recommended to use both on the same device.


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## Johan Elzenga (Mar 29, 2020)

Lightroom Classic needs the photos to be locally. Unless you can mount iCloud as a drive, it won’t work. Of course there is iCloud Drive, but as far as I know that is a synced local folder (like Dropbox), so that means (a copy of) your images would still be on your hard drive.


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## kittie.mulloy (Mar 29, 2020)

Excellent. Thank you for your advice.  I've been trying for days and couldn't find a way to do it.  Just confirms my suspicions.


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## clee01l (Mar 29, 2020)

iCloud stores some files locally and they have to be local before LR can access them.  Take a look in the local folder /Users/{UserID}/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/ to see which files are present locally and which file iCloud will D/L on demand.   Since MacOS need to D/L the files before LR can use them it makes little sense to store them in iCloud.


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## kittie.mulloy (Mar 30, 2020)

Thank you everyone. Answered my question.


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