# Auto Upload Camera Roll & iCloud Photo Library



## Packhorse-4 (Nov 14, 2016)

I searched the forum for my issue but did not find any results - hopefully this is a user issue with an easy solution.

Prior to turning on the iCloud Photo Library I would import my Camera Roll into LR using Auto Upload and that served as an easy way to get a copy of my iPhone images into the LR catalog. 

About a month ago I turned on the iCloud Photo Library and suddenly all of the images in my mac photo library were being uploaded into LR. (Because iCloud Library makes all of my photos available on every device).  I noticed I no longer have a "Camera Roll" folder but instead have All Photos.  The All Photos folder seems to be the default folder being used to Auto Upload so now I have all my images in apple Photos and all of them again in LR.  Not exactly what I wanted.

Essentially I'm looking for a "One Way" gate to upload my iPhone images into LR and then have the option to move those images into another LR folder I call Mobile Archive.  I would like to keep the process as automated as possible, but I may need to consider a different workflow to get the iPhone images I really want to keep into LR. 

BTW: Prior to LR Mobile I was simply exporting my favorites from iPhoto on my mac and importing them into my Mobile Archive folder in LR.


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 15, 2016)

Not sure exactly what you're referring to when you talk about "All Photos" and "Auto Upload", but my way of working, using LRmobile, is as follows:

1. I have iCloud for Photos turned off. 
2. I have "Auto Add" enabled in the LRmobile preferences.
3. I have selected "Enable Auto Add" on one designated collection on LRmobile. Thus all new pictures added to the Camera Roll will automatically be added to that collection in LRmobile and be synced to the Adobe cloud and from there down to Lightroom on desktop/laptop.
4. In Lightroom's Preferences>LIghtroom mobile tab, I have designated my existing date-based folder scheme as the location for these newly synced images. You could, of course, designate any folder of your choice, e.g. your Mobile Archive folder. I used to do something similar until I realised there was no point in separating them physically, as I can isolate them if needed by filtering on the metadata.

So, I take a picture on my iPhone, I launch LRmobile on the iPhone, I wait until it appears in the designated collection and finishes syncing to Adobe cloud. And that's it really, next time I start Lightroom desktop that photo will download into my existing folder system.

Is that what you're looking for?


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## Packhorse-4 (Nov 15, 2016)

Jim - Thanks, That is what I was doing before turning on the iCloud Photo Library.  In your #1 step "iCloud for Photos turned off" - I turned mine on and that's when the "Camera Roll" folder on my iPhone disappeared and LR started pulling in "All Photos".  

So, I guess I'm looking for a way to keep iCloud Photo Library turned on and use a different folder in the Photos App as the designated "Auto Add" folder for LR to pull from.


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## clee01l (Nov 15, 2016)

Packhorse-4 said:


> So, I guess I'm looking for a way to keep iCloud Photo Library turned on and use a different folder in the Photos App as the designated "Auto Add" folder for LR to pull from.


I use the same method as Jim.  I have LR Mobile on multiple devices and the LR Sync'd collections are acting as the iCloud Photostream would for this devices. I have an iMac and a rMBP. the rMBP can not participate in the CC cloud using its LR catalog there. So, my master catalog on the iMac is the one that syncs with LR Mobile.  I can see the LR Mobile collections on the rMBP by only using the web browser. 
The Photos app on the Mac(s) are turned off and disabled to avoid interference with LR.  So nothing is using Apples iCloud Photostream.


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## Packhorse-4 (Nov 17, 2016)

clee01l said:


> The Photos app on the Mac(s) are turned off and disabled to avoid interference with LR.  So nothing is using Apples iCloud Photostream.



Ok, it sounds like I will need to turn off the iCloud Photo Library.  It's a nice feature, but I think I would have a more effective system of automating my iPhone photos into LR by going back to the previous system as described by Jim and Cletus.


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## Aleksander T. E. (Dec 11, 2016)

I signed up just to ask this question;

Now you have images in iOS camera roll, Lightroom Mobile and Lightroom desktop - what to do with 2x space usage on iOS? My 128Gb iPhone is full of the roll-originals and Lightroom Mobile takes about 3/5th of the same space on device. Start to delete images from iOS camera roll next? Not going to use iOS for sorting anything since it suck at that. Just covering my back in case I do this so I don't mess up.

BTW. I tried this: 
Import image from camera roll, edit and synced. Then I deleted image from LR Desktop collection (autoimport-iphone) so it disappeared from LR Mobile too. I could actually find the same image still on PC in my (_Mobile_cloudsync) folder on drive. So I guess I maybe answered my own question - I'm covered no matter how I do IF image is synced to desktop.

Thanks


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## Jim Wilde (Dec 11, 2016)

Aleksander T. E. said:


> BTW. I tried this:
> Import image from camera roll, edit and synced. Then I deleted image from LR Desktop collection (autoimport-iphone) so it disappeared from LR Mobile too. I could actually find the same image still on PC in my (_Mobile_cloudsync) folder on drive. So I guess I maybe answered my own question - I'm covered no matter how I do IF image is synced to desktop.



Hi, welcome to the forum.

I'm not sure why you would delete the photo from LR Desktop if it is a photo you intend to keep. The best place to organise all my pictures, no matter if imported via Desktop or Mobile, is Lightroom, so I'd never remove them from there simply to try to preserve space on my iDevices. So if space on the iDevice is the concern, I'd work in this way for those images that I import from camera into an iDevice:

1. I have the same collection on each iDevice set to "auto import".
2. So as soon as I've imported into the Camera Roll and started LRmobile, those originals are added to that designated collection, and from there they are synced to LR Desktop.
3. When the download to the desktop has finished, those originals now exist in 4 places: desktop, Adobe server, LRmobile, Camera Roll. And as you point out, that's too much space on the iDevice being taken up.
4. So I'd first delete them from the Camera Roll.
5. If I intended to edit the images in LRmobile, I'd obviously carry on working on the originals there. But once I'd finished editing, it's safe to then remove the originals from LRmobile and replace them with the much smaller Smart Preview. I do this by using the "Clear Cache" option on the collection, after checking to make sure that the "Load Full Resolution" option is disabled in the LRmobile preferences. From that point on, opening that image in LRmobile will only download the Smart Preview.
6. And that's it really....I can always download an original again to LRmobile if needed, simply by changing that preference and opening the image again. If I no longer want the image synced to my iDevices, but still want to keep it in Lightroom, I'd just remove it from the "All Synced Photos" collection in LR Desktop.


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## Aleksander T. E. (Dec 11, 2016)

That was for testing purpose if you read first words  Excuse my rusty English. It was to test if I deleted from collection on LR Desktop that image was still kept on disk. Sometime down the road the files in collection will fill up my LR Mobile, I'm already planning to make year-by-year based folders and collections of older iPhone files that will not be synced anymore. 

Thanks a lot for your input. I was unsure about this strategy myself - but now I know I'm not alone!  

Merry Christmas to all
-Alex


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## Jim Wilde (Dec 11, 2016)

Aleksander T. E. said:


> It was to test if I deleted from collection on LR Desktop that image was still kept on disk.



Sorry, yes I misread your first point, I thought you'd deleted from Lightroom itself, not just the collection. Yes, deleting from a collection does not remove the image from Lightroom, it'll still be viewable in "All Photographs" or by selecting the folder in the Folders Panel. However, when you remove an image from a synced collection you should get a message asking if you want the image to be removed also from the "All Synced Photos" special collection....if you don't remove it from that collection as well, it'll stay synced to LRmobile.


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## Aleksander T. E. (Dec 12, 2016)

Aha, yeah I saw! That image popped up again in LR Mobile for some reason, haha. Thanks, now I know even more. 

I think Adobe should make better info about all those things, this forum helped me a lot more than watching videos and reading Adobe help pages. I dont have a single image in iOS camera roll anymore, all synced through CC.


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