Lightroom CC migration requires too much disk space

[pinoguin]

I've got thousands of photos and raws around 3 drives in my pc. When I try to migrate to LR CC it's asking me 3tb of space to continue, but none of my disks has that amount of space. I can't even combine them because those were my backups...

What exactly is LR CC doing? was that 3tb it's asking for are duplicates of my photos and to be copied locally? Why can't it just reference those files like the old Lightroom?

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen · Accepted solution]

Yes, it moves them into its own space while it uploads them to the cloud.

Just to double check, it is the new cloud-native version 1.0 app that you intended to install? I only ask because lots of people have been accidentally installing that when they actually wanted the latest version of the folder-based Lightroom, which is now called Lightroom Classic.

[pinoguin]

But why must it do that... I simply have no space left..

@ cloud native: yes, I want to try both

[Jao vdL]

Lightroom CC migrates catalogs by first copying over all the images to its own local folder and then uploading it to the cloud before then deleting them again from your local machine. It cannot work with referenced files in different locations. Just stating how it is and how Adobe apparently designed it. You can assign a different location for local storage - i.e. an external disk and it will copy everything there first although some people are reporting this not working right. That said, if it wants 3TB of disk space there is no way that that catalog will migrate to Lightroom CC very well even if you had the disk space. The default is that you get 1TB of space on the cloud. You can buy more though but it will cost you. Also that is going to take several weeks to upload to the cloud on typical internet connections. You probably shouldn't migrate your "classic" catalog to try out Lightroom CC.

[joachims25232702]

I will be in the same situation and wonder if Adobe would also make hard disk available for rent for the migration process. 

So, is there a way to make LR CC to only upload the smart previous? It seems to complain when it does not find the originals, but could it be made to work with the smart previous alone?

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

If you sync the photos from Classic, they'll sync up to the cloud as smart previews, and when you open LRCC, they'll all show up.

[joachims25232702]

That sound like the perfect workflow.

I just started LRCC but see no photos, but I believe that I have to install LRCCCL first, upgrade, re-sync and then they are there...

What happens then if I modify these photos with LRCC? Can I prevent these changes to be backsynced?

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

If you're currently on LR CC 2015, you can sync photos from there too. If you want to sync them all, select them all in All Photographs (in the Catalog panel) and drag them to All Synced Photos (also in the Catalog panel).  If you want to sync your collection organization too, you'll find a little checkbox to the left of the collection name in the Collections panel. This all works in both LR Classic and the older LR CC 2015.

They'll all upload to the cloud, and when you open an LR CC app on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android or Apple TV, you'll be able to view, organize and edit any of these photos. Most of the changes (currently excluding album folders and keywords) will sync back to LR Classic, so when you next open your Classic catalog, they'll sync down.

[originalmule]

What do you mean sync from classic? I’d love to sync classic to the cloud just to have access to photos for clients while traveling.

I migrated to CC a few days ago and I have a local disc issue and 15,000 photos have no albums...total disaster.

[Jao vdL]

originalmule  wrote

What do you mean sync from classic? I’d love to sync classic to the cloud just to have access to photos for clients while traveling.

I migrated to CC a few days ago and I have a local disc issue and 15,000 photos have no albums...total disaster.

As Victoria said above, syncing from classic has always been available. You don't need to migrate to LR CC to get your images on the cloud. I Classic you designate which collections should sync to the cloud and it will do that and they will be available on lightroom.adobe.com, on iPad, iPhones, and android devices and on Lightroom CC. The only caveat is that Classic will only sync smart previews so they will not be full resolution images but they are more than good enough to work with and to show to clients. So major advantage of using Lightroom Classic to push images of the cloud is that you get to choose which ones (Lightroom CC puts everything in the cloud) you sync. Small disadvantage is that it only syncs smart previews.

[joachims25232702]

Elaborating on this: This is great.

LR CC will see all synced photos from LR Classic (not from previous LR versions, those synced photo are not visible  for LR CC. LR classic seems to generate new smart previews, those might be needed by LR CC). From the status message it seems that the smart previws are counted against the 20 GByte initial volume.

The neat thing is, that now synced collections can be organized in Folders in the cloud. That was not possible previously.

So finally a workflow: I work as usual, Sync photos in the end from LR classic as smart previews. I enjoy them in LR CC plus I can quickly upload photos directly from LRCC before I load them into LR classic and massage them and then sync them. Therefore I can give people quick access.

Now it all makes sense for me.

[Jao vdL]

Yeah a mixed workflow is what I am doing too. I just wish that Lightroom Classic could upload full raws (see here for feature request: Lightroom Classic should be able to Sync full raw files to the cloud, not just smart previews | Phot...) and that Lightroom CC's keyword edits would sync back to Classic (they don't currently), then I would be in heaven. Still have the power of Classic and be able to selectively sync only parts to the cloud.

[Howieh]

So to be able to sync photos from LR Classic to the cloud as Smart Previews, do I have to import my originals with "Build Smart Previews" enabled?

[Jao vdL]

No they will get built automatically when you set an image to sync

[Howieh]

That's great! I have all my originals stored in an external hard drive (not in the computer hard drive), so to be able to sync the photos to the cloud, I have to leave the external hard drive plugged in constantly huh?

[Jao vdL]

Only for a little bit while the smart preview is being uploaded. After that you don't need to have it connected ever.

[olegdulin]

The RAWs don’t seem to sync from Lightroom Classic  to CC...

[Jao vdL]

In Classic you have to explicitly mark certain collections to sync to the cloud. You can set this when you create the collection or by editing the collection.

[Jao vdL]

So, is there a way to make LR CC to only upload the smart previous? It seems to complain when it does not find the originals, but could it be made to work with the smart previous alone?

No, LR CC always uploads the original image. After that happens the original image is no longer the original but is a local copy. The image in the cloud is now the master image to LR CC. LR CC cannot upload just smart previews. You also cannot designate which images should be uploaded and which shouldn't.

[swartzwerk]

They copy all images at the same time and THEN upload to the servers?  That's really inefficient and taxing on the users machine, not to mention uses a ridiculous amount of drive space to handle.  I could see maybe doing 3 or 5 files at a time to a temp folder, but many users of Lightroom have been using backup drives as normal laptops only have 500GB to 1TB drives in them normally.  Adobe needs to sort this out.  I'm not going to buy yet another backup drive to use as a temp directory just so I can get files into Adobe's cloud.

[Jao vdL]

They copy all images at the same time and THEN upload to the servers?  That's really inefficient and taxing on the users machine, not to mention uses a ridiculous amount of drive space to handle.

I don't know what they were thinking but I would guess that the rationale is that they need the images to be available for upload all the time and uploads can take a long time so copying everything into local storage is a safeguard against the images going offline before they are uploaded. They might also figure that people with large catalogs are not going to want to migrate their catalogs to Lightroom CC anyway and that this product is not for people with long Lightroom histories that shoot large amounts of images on DSLRs. Again, I have no clue on Adobe's rationale here - just guessing.

[Squidy666]

I tried it as well, I have 2 4tb drives but my main drive is a 512gb SSD. It wants to copy all photos (800gb) to the 512gb and giving me the error. What ever happened to "import at current location" and then uploading them?

It seems to mean that people who upgraded to SSD don't have the full functionality available to them?

Also, if I'm using LightroomCC on the go is it going to try to download all files to my Macbook Pro as previews etc? Because that's also going to wipe out my storage

[Jao vdL]

What ever happened to "import at current location" and then uploading them?

For whatever reason they did not implement this in Lightroom CC. You could first set your local storage folder to one of your externals before migrating.

It seems to mean that people who upgraded to SSD don't have the full functionality available to them?

It really is mostly about the size of your original catalog. Most laptops that people use have 512 GB or so as an internal drive nowadays. I also guess that the majority of Lightroom catalogs out there only has a few thousand images in it.

Also, if I'm using LightroomCC on the go is it going to try to download all files to my Macbook Pro as previews etc? Because that's also going to wipe out my storage

It is quite efficient at that stage. There is a setting in Lightroom CC that sets how much of the storage it can maximally use. It will then only download what it needs and throw away from local storage if it no longer needs an image right away.

[originalmule]

so i deleted everything that i migrated to CC, but i still only have 56gb of space left, before the migration it was about 300gb. I tried finding files regarding CC specifically and cant locate them. I'm tempted to move all files over to my external, delete the lightroom files and start over with bringing each folder back into lightroom classic.

mike

[Jao vdL]

Space on your local disk? If you now open Lightroom CC it should delete all that