Lightroom Classic Download Location Won't Change

[SidewinderX]

Hi -- I'm slowly starting to try and integrate Lightroom CC into my workflow, where I'm planning import many photos on the road with Lightroom CC, then edit them from the comfort of my desktop using Lightroom Classic. The issue I'm having right now is that Lightroom Classic is, stubbornly, downloading the synced photos from CC into C:\Users\David\Pictures\Lightroom\Mobile Downloads.lrdata\COMPUTERNAME . I have very specifically tried to change the download location (to D:\LightroomWorking\LightroomClassicDownloads) by changing it in the Edit/Preferences/Lightroom Sync tab AND by adding that folder to LRClassic, right clicking, and "set as lightroom CC downloads location". Neither approach seems to work. If I move or delete the C:\...\Pictures\Lightroom folder, LR Classic will happily recreate it and then start redownloading my synced LR CC photos back into it and ignore where I've tried to set the folder.

Anyone else have this problem? Any tips? Any SYSVAR magic I should be doing to try and solve this? My C:\ drive is a relatively small drive, mostly holding Windows things, so always downloading photos into that folder is not an option.

Thanks,

     David

[Mohit Goyal]

Hi SidewinderX,

Please let us know the exact version of Lightroom you are using now by going to the help menu > System info? Also, you may try resetting the Lightroom preferences back to defaults and check if that helps. Refer: Preference file and other file locations | Lightroom Classic CC and Lightroom 6

Regards,

Mohit

[SidewinderX]

Mohit,

My exact version is: Lightroom Classic version: 7.1 [ 1148620 ]

I've reset my preferences as well; a few notes:

1) The reset seemed to obviously reset most of my preferences; as I started getting tooltips again

2) It did not seem reset my download location as displayed; as it still showed the D:/ location I am trying to it to use.

3) It did not seem to solve the problem, as Lightroom recreated C:\Users\David\Pictures\Lightroom\Mobile Downloads.lrdata\ folder to resume downloading images (after I had deleted that folder, again).

Any additional suggestions?

As an aside; this link: How to set Lightroom Classic CC preferences  was a better guide than the one your originally posted -- the link your originally posted did not tell me to hit shift+alt and then launch LR Classic, which is what I had to do to get the dialog launched to reset.

[Mohit Goyal]

Thanks for the update and correcting me on Lightroom preference reset article.

Could you please try setting another location except for the D:/ drive and check if that location stays there? Are you facing this issue after any certain Lightroom update?

Regards,

Mohit

[SidewinderX]

I've tried setting an additional location, this time G:\LRFolder, and then deleting the folder that Lightroom had previously created (C:\Users\David\Pictures\Lightroom\Mobile Downloads.lrdata\). That didn't make any difference; after deleting the folder, Lightroom recreated the C:\ drive folder and began re-downloading the photos.

I'll see what happens the next time I import photos into LR CC and have them sync down to LR Classic; I'm wondering if there's some sort of history with this set of photos that has them "locked" to the C:\ drive location because that was the first place they were downloaded to.

Any other suggestions? I just updated LR Classic CC to latest version that came out (now LR Classic CC 7.2), and that didn't seem to make any difference.

[SidewinderX]

Update: I had a few shoots over the weekend and uploaded the photos via LR CC on my laptop. When I opened up LR Classic CC on my desktop, the new photos were downloaded to the proper folder (the G:\LRFolder folder). It looks like there is some built in historesis in LR Classic CC where it is locked to whatever the first location it started downloading the photos to for any given album/collection. Maybe a bug to fix in a future release?

[Just Shoot Me]

If you have LR C CC, V7.x, syncing with LR CC Mobile and Web then any images up upload through the Mobile and Web versions, or even LR CC desktop, Cloud Centric version, on another computer, get downloaded to the folder you have listed in the LR C CC preferences on the Lightroom Sync tab.

They do not get placed in the same location as they would if you used the LR C CC import dialog.

[SidewinderX]

@Just Shoot Me -- you're correct, but that's not the scenario that I'm talking about. This is what I've found:

1. I upload, in LR CC on my laptop, a batch of photos from shoot (let's call it "Lake").
2. I open LR Classic CC on my desktop to edit the photos, and it downloads them into the folder I have on my LR Classic CC Lightroom Sync tab. In this case, let's say it's the default folder C:\Users\David\Pictures\Lightroom\Mobile Downloads.lrdata\
3. I decide that I no longer want to use the C:\ folder as the download folder (because, in my case, my C:\ drive is really just an OS drive, and I have more storage capacity on another drive, like G:\)
   1. I go to the LR Classic CC Lightroom Sync Tab and change my sync location to be "G:\LRSyncFolder"
4. Now, having change the sync location, I go out and shoot another batch of photos (let's call it "Mountain") and upload it on my laptop with LR CC.
   1. When I open LR Classic CC on my desktop to edit the photos, the "Mountain" collection/album is correctly downloaded to my selected folder "G:\LRSyncFolder" -- happy days!
5. My "Lake" collection/album is still on the default C:\ folder where it was originally downloaded to, however I don't actually want to keep the photos there. The issue is that I can't find a way to move those photos to the G:\LRSyncFolder location.
   1. I have tried deleting the files/folders from the C:\ location and then letting LR Classic CC re-download them from the cloud; however, despite changing the sync location, that collection/album always syncs to the place it was originally downloaded to (C:\), even though new collections/albums are being synced to the correct drive (G:\)

Does that make sense? Any thoughts?

[Just Shoot Me]

Try this.

In LR C CC select the collection "Lake" to display all the images in the Grid view of the Library module.

Select All of them, Ctrl + s.

Expand, open, the G drive to display the G:\LRSyncFolder in the Folders area of the left hand panel.

Click and Hold on one of the images from the Lake collection you have selected in the Grid view and Drag and Drop them into the G:\LRSyncFolder.

That should move them in the LR C CC Catalog reference to that folder.

I'm not sure what will happen on the Web and in LR CC on your notebook.

They may need to re-Uploaded to the Wed and downloaded to the Notebook LR CC.

I had to do something similar when I got back from my trip to Key West. I had used my notebook in Florida to upload some images to the LR Web system as I didn't want to use LR CC on my notebook and I didn't want to sync my notebook copy of LR C CC with LR Web.

When I got home all the images I uploaded when in Florida downloaded to the folder I have for LT Sync. I didn't want them there. I wanted them in the folder structure I used on my notebook copy of LR C CC. So I had to jump through some hoops to re-sync those images from the folder structure on my desktop then Delete the images downloaded to the Sync folder.