Moving Photos in AND OUT of Lightroom CC

[bengrossdotcom]

I've been a long Lightroom (now Classic) user and am interested in moving to Lightroom CC, but do not want to get "stuck" if I ever decide to leave Adobe. My current catalog is organized so all of my events are in an individual folder with a date attached, and all folders are organized by year (e.g. "./2017/2017-07-04 Fourth of July Party"). I shoot in raw which I convert to DNG, and then once I've done some developing, I export the finished album to jpeg using the same file structure. This way the files are organized on my drive and ready for sharing. This leaves me with two sets of folders for originals and processed which gives me some comfort that I can migrate to another photo program if I choose to.

I get that if I migrate over to CC, I will be able to keep the organizational hierarchy I've created using Albums. Fine with me, sounds good. But what if I want to leave Adobe?

Can I export ALL photos as originals and keep the folder hierarchy? Can I export all photos as processed and do the same? It's over 24k photos so I don't want to have to manually organize the files again if I need to leave Adobe for whatever reason. It looks like the local storage option uses its own db style organizational structure (makes sense for db management, but not for humans).

Has anyone tried moving files out of Lightroom CC? Can I get some reassurances that this isn't a one-way trip?

[Bill Sprague]

You have a well developed and orderly system.  I don't think the new (cloud based) Lightroom CC fits your needs.  Stick with the folder based Classic Lightroom CC. 

[john beardsworth]

As wsprague says....

bengrossdotcom  wrote

Has anyone tried moving files out of Lightroom CC? Can I get some reassurances that this isn't a one-way trip?

Adobe provide a tool to download synced Lightroom photos and videos from the cloud to a computer . Assuming there is enough space, It downloads everything into one big folder. 

If you want to use LRCC, just use it like you've been using LrMobile - as a dumbed-down version of real Lightroom but running on a second computer.

John

[kewe1965]

that downloader app only supports Windows 10.  How is this done using Windows 7?

[selondon]

Lightroom CC‘s (cloud based) System Requirememts are Windows 10.

[bengrossdotcom]

Thank you whsprague and john beardsworth for your input. The Lightroom Downloader would (I think) fix my problem, IF I could download everything in an Album-based hierarchy, rather than a date-based hierarchy. Any idea if that’s possible?

[99jon]

The safest method to future proof is to save tiff versions which will include your editing. The downloader will give you back your originals with sidecars.

[Jao vdL]

bengrossdotcom  wrote

Thank you whsprague and john beardsworth for your input. The Lightroom Downloader would (I think) fix my problem, IF I could download everything in an Album-based hierarchy, rather than a date-based hierarchy. Any idea if that’s possible?

No that's not possible. It's unlikely to get added. I would heed John's advice and stay with Classic if you want to be able to free your images easily and exactly like you want. Lightroom CC is quite a one-way choice in this respect. You can get your stuff out by exporting or the download tool but it is a painful process.

[bengrossdotcom]

Bump

Just want to see if there's been any updates that would support using Lightroom CC (without Classic) in a way that allows downloading all original and edited images in an orderly fashion.

[john beardsworth]

No change. Originals and edited images are downloaded in an orderly fashion, ie strictly date-based.