Lightroom, creative cloud and file storage expert required!

[satans worm]

Sorry, I am a Luddite and I need help!

So I have a light room package( 2 it seems at usd9.99 each, working out what I have v need can be done another time) but one of them includes1 TB of online storage of which I have used 220gb of online data according to the web site when I log in

I also have the original files on a separate SSD , however I also have them on my hard drive on my Mac book taking up 220gb as well.

I really don’t want them on my hard drive on the mac, just on the ssd.

I’m afraid if I delete them it will copy this on the cloud and delete them there as well.
So questions, as I have the originals on SSD what happens if I delete online ones and the Mac hard drive ones? That is, what are they if I have them on the SSD, why does light room create dups/ tripes of the file?
If I do need to keep a copy how can I delete the hard drive ones and not affect the cloud storage ones as 1 copy is more than enough( assuming you need back up at all)

If you can reply like your speaking to a 5 year old so I can understand it it would be appreciated
;-)

[StevieBee]

satans worm said:

If you can reply like your speaking to a 5 year old so I can understand it it would be appreciated
;-)

Don't worry; the magic cloud fairies will look after you

Let's start with the two subscriptions. Unless there is a specific reason for having two, I would recommend ditching one of them.

It's possible that you have Lightroom (Lr) and Lightroom Classic (LrC).

Lightroom is cloud based so you could delete all originals on all your drives and your photos will still be available.

Lightroom Classic isn't cloud based so delete the originals and they're gone.

For the sake of simplicity, I'll assume you're on Lr only.

The most important thing to think about is the Lightroom 'Library'.

The library is a folder of folders (normally stored in the 'Pictures' section of a Mac) into which your photos are placed when you load them into Lr. The details of any adjustments you make to the images are also stored in the library. Any adjustment to these libraries such as renaming them or moving them to a different location must be done from within Lightroom itself.

Because the images you load onto Lr go into the library, you have three copies of the same image; those on the SSD, those on the HD and those in the Lr library. And they're on the cloud too. And because you have two subscriptions, you're likely to have two libraries so you need to consolidate the two libraries into one.

Go on You Tube or the Adobe help centre and search 'Consolidate Lightroom Libraries'.

Once you've done this, you can cancel one of the two subscriptions you have. But be careful not to bin the one that you will actually be using. To do this, you should name the two libraries differently (Lr1 and Lr2).

Again, hit You Tube and search 'Renaming Lightroom Libraries'

Once you've got a single Lr subscription and everything in one place, you can then sort the originals.

As I mentioned, you do not need to have a folder containing all your originals as they are also in the Lightroom Library and on the cloud. But there's no harm in having at least one further fail-safe.

Delete the folder of originals on your internal HD and keep the one on the SSD.

Before you do this, go to the folder on your HD and move two or three photos to your desktop or SSD. Go into Lr and see if those photos are still available and editable. If they are (and they should be), then you can delete the folder containing the image files on your HD.

Hopefully that makes sense. There's a lot of good walk-throughs on YouTube and the Adobe helpline is rather good if you prefer to speak to someone.

Good luck!

[satans worm]

StevieBee said:

satans worm said:

If you can reply like your speaking to a 5 year old so I can understand it it would be appreciated
;-)

Don't worry; the magic cloud fairies will look after you

Let's start with the two subscriptions. Unless there is a specific reason for having two, I would recommend ditching one of them.

It's possible that you have Lightroom (Lr) and Lightroom Classic (LrC).

Lightroom is cloud based so you could delete all originals on all your drives and your photos will still be available.

Lightroom Classic isn't cloud based so delete the originals and they're gone.

For the sake of simplicity, I'll assume you're on Lr only.

The most important thing to think about is the Lightroom 'Library'.

The library is a folder of folders (normally stored in the 'Pictures' section of a Mac) into which your photos are placed when you load them into Lr. The details of any adjustments you make to the images are also stored in the library. Any adjustment to these libraries such as renaming them or moving them to a different location must be done from within Lightroom itself.

Because the images you load onto Lr go into the library, you have three copies of the same image; those on the SSD, those on the HD and those in the Lr library. And they're on the cloud too. And because you have two subscriptions, you're likely to have two libraries so you need to consolidate the two libraries into one.

Go on You Tube or the Adobe help centre and search 'Consolidate Lightroom Libraries'.

Once you've done this, you can cancel one of the two subscriptions you have. But be careful not to bin the one that you will actually be using. To do this, you should name the two libraries differently (Lr1 and Lr2).

Again, hit You Tube and search 'Renaming Lightroom Libraries'

Once you've got a single Lr subscription and everything in one place, you can then sort the originals.

As I mentioned, you do not need to have a folder containing all your originals as they are also in the Lightroom Library and on the cloud. But there's no harm in having at least one further fail-safe.

Delete the folder of originals on your internal HD and keep the one on the SSD.

Before you do this, go to the folder on your HD and move two or three photos to your desktop or SSD. Go into Lr and see if those photos are still available and editable. If they are (and they should be), then you can delete the folder containing the image files on your HD.

Hopefully that makes sense. There's a lot of good walk-throughs on YouTube and the Adobe helpline is rather good if you prefer to speak to someone.

Good luck!

Thanks so much for the comprehensive answer, i need to go home and digest that

Re 2 subs, i think 1 is Lr with a 1 TB of cloud storage and the other LR classic with 20GB storage,
I enjoy using the Lr Classic, but i think needed the other for the cloud storage , but now thinking, if i have them on my (external SSD) hard drive, maybe ill dump the cloud storage subscription and not worry about light room on other machines as i dont use it on my iphone only the lap top?

As i said ill digest what you have written on the train home tonight , will be so good to release 220 GB on my local HD as its not much bigger than that and cant even update the OS to Montana due to inadequate HD storage !

[Simpo Two]

satans worm said:

If you can reply like your speaking to a 5 year old so I can understand it it would be appreciated
;-)

This is a fine example of software adding needless complexity because it sells software.

My files are in two places - on my PC's hard drive, and on a plug-in HDD. I don't need anything else and don't trust the 'cloud' - which is basically handing over your stuff to - well, who knows?

An image comes into your computer as a JPG or RAW file. Process it if required, then save it to somewhere you feel comfortable with. That's all you need to do

[StevieBee]

Simpo Two said:

satans worm said:

If you can reply like your speaking to a 5 year old so I can understand it it would be appreciated
;-)

This is a fine example of software adding needless complexity because it sells software.

By biggest gripe is that they don't tell you when they're changing stuff. You open Lr or whatever and expect to jump into something to be faced with the need to watch a tutorial on how to do something you were perfectly capable of doing yesterday - and 90% of the time, the benefit of the 'improvement' is imperceptible.

The one thing I don't understand is why Lr and LrC are so fundamentally different. I would have thought that it's easy enough to provide cloud access to one and leave to the user to decide whether to use that or not; why provide a completely different platform?

[velocemitch]

Sorry to highjack the thread but my question is reasonably relevant.

I currently have the Adobe Photography plan, which gives me Lightroom on my PC and also on my Ipad (if I had enough memory on it!!), it also gives me Photoshop and a few other bels and whistles. but only 20gb of storage.

I see they now do a Lightroom package which has 1Tb of cloud, but doesn't include Photoshop. Now given I don't use Photoshop this seems like a decent deal. The question I have is can I still use lightroom on my Ipad?, reason I ask is there appears to be a separate app on the photography package, for Ipads, but the one on the Lightroom package is just for 'mobiles'. Am I going to loose functionality?

[StevieBee]

velocemitch said:

Sorry to highjack the thread but my question is reasonably relevant.

I currently have the Adobe Photography plan, which gives me Lightroom on my PC and also on my Ipad (if I had enough memory on it!!), it also gives me Photoshop and a few other bels and whistles. but only 20gb of storage.

I see they now do a Lightroom package which has 1Tb of cloud, but doesn't include Photoshop. Now given I don't use Photoshop this seems like a decent deal. The question I have is can I still use lightroom on my Ipad?, reason I ask is there appears to be a separate app on the photography package, for Ipads, but the one on the Lightroom package is just for 'mobiles'. Am I going to loose functionality?

You can choose up to three devices from which to run Lr. I believe the iPad/Phone versions are just a different layout to accommodate the different way you would use on them compared to a computer but have the same functionality.