# Cloned catalog detected - sorting out things without losing original pictures and edits on 3 devices



## DavidMFR (Jan 19, 2020)

Hi all,

When starting Lightroom CC on my iMac, I have a message "Cloned Catalog Detected", then the corresponding help says:
---
It appears that you may have cloned your hard drive or transferred your local catalog from one machine to another.
Back up all of your local originals.
(Mac)
To back up originals on a Mac, do the following:

From the Finder menu, choose Go > Go To Folder and type ~/Pictures/Lightroom Library.lrlibrary
Control-click the Lightroom Library.lrlibrary file and choose Show Package Contents from the menu.
Inside the bundle, look for a folder with a long name made up of random letters and numbers (for example: '1c1fad228a024c1987b5f82737c1b293'). Open this folder to find a folder titled 'originals'.
Copy originals folder to a new location outside the bundle.
Delete your local Lightroom CC catalog.
---
I am puzzled because I don't have a clue what are the "local originals" that I am required to backup and it is a lot of stress as I am not sure what to backup exactly, I feel that what this is calling "originals" may not be what I consider to by my orignal pictures, and I would also like to make sure I also don't loose edits I took long time to do.

Before using Lightroom, I used to store pictures in folder on a NAS synology server at home, by date and I wanted to use lightroom just to edit pictures, correct exposure sometimes, improve contrast, remove spots, nothing else.  I came to subscribe to lightroom CC because I liked the idea of the software being updated but I wasn't specially looking for the cloud storage.

So far, after storing my pictures in the NAS, I added them to LightRoom on my iMac,  did some editing and then exported the edited pictures (since I edit pictures one by one, I export them one by one too, not fast but anyway the spot removal cannot be automated and on some pictures I like the contrast enhancements, on others I don't, so this has to be one by one).

On my last vacation, instead of waiting to be home to store the pictures on the NAS and then import them to Lightroom on my iMac, I imported them to lightroom from my MacBook and started editing them. Is that the reason why Lightroom CC on my iMac is now complaining with this "cloned catalog"? 

Then, I am not sure what do exactly:
- Do I need to duplicate all pictures in my NAS that were added to lightroom before in case lightroom would remove them when I delete the "local Lightroom CC catalog"?
- I have edited pictures with the iMac and with the MacBook (not the same pictures though), also with my iPad as it was looking nice to be able to do it, the ones edited on the MacBook I have not exported any of them, the ones edited on the iMac I probably forgot to export some, I'd like to make sure I don't lose any of these edits but I actually can't find which are the edited pictures. I read some help saying that there should be some "+" mark on the edited pictures on the film strip but I can't see any, although when I look at some pictures I remember I edited, selecting the spot removal tool shows the removed spots, so clearly they were edited and lightroom still has that. How to do to see them all? Also, if I delete the "local Lightroom CC catalog" as advised, will that  remove the edits or not? Do I need to find them all and export them all?

After this is sorted out, I need to understand how to not reproduce the problem. I found it nice to have this cloud feature but if it is so that it does not  allow to add photos from different devices, then this is more a pain to me than a help, maybe lightroom cc is not the right choice for me.`

Sorry for a very long description but I felt I'd rather provide all details to make sure I don't do anything wrong.

David.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 19, 2020)

Don't panic David, doesn't sound like there's anything to worry about. Couple of questions:

As far as you know, have all of your photos and edits synced to the cloud? You can check at Online photo editor | Photoshop Lightroom
And it sounds like you have a copy of all of the originals on your NAS anyway?

If they have, then you're fine to just go ahead and delete the Lightroom Library.lrlibrary file and then when you next sign into LR, it'll download an updated copy of the database from the cloud.

You'll also want to update Lightroom to the latest version if you're running Catalina, as 2.3 is a few months old.


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## mikebore (Jan 20, 2020)

Did this message appear out of the blue? Or had you just done some cloning, moving library,  reconfiguring of your system?

I have had that message a few times but always after doing something like the above, never out of the blue.


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