Removing Photos from All Synced Photographs Took them All out of my Collections

[JCrossonNYC]

I have a photo library of approximately 45,000 photos. I noticed that over 40,000 photos were part of the "All Synced Photographs" special folder and showing up on Lightroom Mobile, even though I had removed the Collections which contained those folders and did not want them on Lightroom Mobile.

I removed all photos from the All Synced Photographs catalog, but this had the unexpected and extremely negative outcome of also removing all my photos from all of their collections! Now almost all of my Collections are empty -- A Catalogue of 15 years of photos 45,000+ this is a huge problem!

I tried the "Undo" function but it did not appear to bring any of the photos back. The photos still appear in their Folders, but there was little congruence between the Collections and the Photos.

Please try and help me understand why this happened (Why is this designed this way?) and if there is anything I can do to revert to the previous state?

[Just Shoot Me]

Were those collections synced with LR mobile?

All Synced Photos is just a shortcut to view every image you have synced with LR mobile. To stop syncing collections and images in those collections you click the Sync icon to the left of the collection. That in turn will remove those images from the All Synced Photos shortcut.

By removing the images from that All Synced Photos shortcut you told LR to remove them from there corresponding collections.

You may be able to restore a backup catalog and get your collections back. Not sure I've never tried it.

In the future set up only one or two collections that you sync with LR mobile. You can have the same image in as many collections asd you like. Collections are just a grouping of images. Images don't get duplicated by having them in 2 or 100 collections at the same time.

[john beardsworth]

Just Shoot Me wrote:

You may be able to restore a backup catalog and get your collections back. Not sure I've never tried it.

In the future set up only one or two collections that you sync with LR mobile. You can have the same image in as many collections asd you like. Collections are just a grouping of images. Images don't get duplicated by having them in 2 or 100 collections at the same time.

No, that's completely irrelevant! Set up as many as you want.

[Just Shoot Me]

john beardsworth wrote:

Just Shoot Me wrote:

You may be able to restore a backup catalog and get your collections back. Not sure I've never tried it.

In the future set up only one or two collections that you sync with LR mobile. You can have the same image in as many collections asd you like. Collections are just a grouping of images. Images don't get duplicated by having them in 2 or 100 collections at the same time.

No, that's completely irrelevant! Set up as many as you want.

Well clearly the OP had synced every image in his catalog with the mobile system. Having 1, 2 or 3 collections for this purposes seems to me the right thing to do.

I don't use LR mobile but if I did I certainly would not sync all my images with it.

[john beardsworth]

Just Shoot Me wrote:

I don't use LR mobile but if I did I certainly would not sync all my images with it.

Please take it nicely, but that shows - and not for the first time. It might be more helpful if you tried using it for a while?

I don't sync all images with it, but the fact that the OP did so just isn't relevant to the actual problem. People can sync as many images as they wish, and shouldn't be advised to sync only one or two collections.

[Just Shoot Me]

What is wrong with only syncing 1, 2 or 3 collections with LR mobile?

That way you can have a better handle on what is and what isn't synced with the mobile app. Seems to me a better way of understanding what is and isn't synced and could stop problems the OP created for himself. But I guess you don't see it that way. So be it.

[john beardsworth]

Limiting sync to only 1-3 collections means that the more photos you choose to sync, the less focussed each collection becomes and makes it less useful for any purpose. Users should sync as many collections as they want.

The OP created a different problem for himself because he misunderstood what All Synced Photos has now become. It used to be like a smart collection of all (intentionally or explicitly) synced photos, but recently it changed and is a list of all photos that are on Adobe's servers. By removing all photos from All Synced Photos, he/she removed from the servers not just photos that were no longer in synced collections, but also those photos that were still in synced collections, that he still wanted to be synced.

[Just Shoot Me]

Your first statement is your opinion. My opinion is different.

Thanks for your input.

[john beardsworth]

Just Shoot Me wrote:

Your first statement is your opinion. My opinion is different.

No, not my opinion but a statement of obvious fact. Yours is misleading advice - which is perfectly understandable since you don't use Lr Mobile. One doesn't need to use a feature to make suggestions, but it certainly helps.

[JCrossonNYC]

Thank you for your thoughtful feedback!

I restored a backup version of my Lightroom Catalogue to double check certain aspects of my Collections. I can now confirm that my original post was misleading - Only images which were synced to Lightroom Mobile through a Collection were removed from said collections. If the item was in a non-synced Collection on my Desktop, then removing them from All Synced Photographs had no impact. The damage was more localized than 40,000 images, and I was able to spend some time cleaning things up last night.

The paragraph above is further evidence that the All Synced Photographs design doesn't seem entirely thorough -- In one instance the software is taking liberties to change collections on my desktop when I am instructing it to remove something from LR Mobile (My response to john)... But in the above case the software is doing something totally different for images not synced to LR Mobile. Seems like a lot to keep track of for the user eh?

It's also very strange that Adobe will create a master-set of images which remain on Adobe servers even after I un-sync them using the Collection. When I un-sync a collection I'm expecting the photos to not be available on LR Mobile, not to go into a completely unorganized master bucket which is almost impossible to manage at scale because I need to understand exactly what collections the images are part of and if those images are synced.

Given this feedback and discussion, I'll probably just try and pretend that All Synced Photographs does not exist for a while until Adobe figures this out.

[frommel]

I completely agree with your thoughts here.  I also expect that, when I unsync a collection in Lightroom on my desktop, that the images should be removed from the adobe servers and not synced to my mobile anymore.

[timashley]

The problem is that if we were to easily be able to remove photos from Adobe's servers, they wouldn't be able to sell online storage at twice the price per TB that Apple charges. I suspect that this is all about revenue model and sweet FA to do with the right solution for the photographer.

I have been struggling with this bull all day. I have, within the Catalog tab on the left side of my library grid view, a folder called All Scynced Photos. I went out of my way to remove all those that I din't want syncing and got it down to 65. However, in Folders theatre's an item called From LR Mobile and that has thousands of images in. I have tried going to CC rather than CC classic and deleting stuff but whatever I do, I cannot (with the certainty of being able to know I will not lose originals) get that damned thousands number down.

What is the difference between  All Scynced Photos and From LR Mobile? Search me? I have searched the internet and all I find is a lot of angry frustrated customers being pushed into situation they do not understand.

It isn't enough o say 'keep a backup' - one can't backup after every tine experimental effort to second guess the non existent manual.

I want to shoot in the field, load images onto my iPad Pro, do first pass editing there and have them sync back to my main machine, I then want them to appear in LR CC Classic with those edits. I THEN want to delete them from Adobe's "soak the photographer" cloud and be certain that they remain on my main desktop machine.

Eventually, when it is sufficiently feature rich, I will move everything to CC regular - though I will wait for the price they are charging for storage to come into range of what others charge. But for now, this is an incomprehensible mess with moving goalposts and inadequate online support.

[john beardsworth]

"What is the difference between  All Scynced Photos and From LR Mobile?"

The From LR Mobile folder is a folder - it does not sync, because it is a folder. It is created by default as the folder where files are deposited when sync downloads originals that are on Adobe's server but aren't in your catalogue. Generally these will be phone-captured photos. You can set this physical location to be another folder (in Preferences). So the From LR Mobile folder is the physical location of the files.

All Synced Photos is a pseudo-collection. In my view it should have been called On Adobe's Server, but it does mean what it says - all synced photos. Photos sync when they are in a collection which is synced, so All Synced Photos includes all those photos in collections. Photos also sync when they are in All Synced Photos, even if they are not in a synced collection.

When you remove photos from All Synced Photos, they are removed from Adobe's server and don't count against your disc space.

Clear?

[timashley]

Thank you, but not really, no....: my All Synced Photos contains 63 images when viewed on a desktop copy of LR CC Classic, which claims that syncing is up to date. However when I look at LR CC on my desktop, or laptop, or iPad or iPhone, there are nearly threee thousand images there and I can recall and edit full resolution versions of any of them on any device.

So it sadly cannot be true that All Synced Photos is what it says on the tin.

This is about the worst piece of software progression I've ever seen!

[john beardsworth]

Obviously something has gone wrong at some point. In Classic, is sync paused? What is shown in Preferences - try holding Alt/Option and choosing Rebuild Sync Data. Try signing out, signing in. Have you more than one Adobe account?

[timashley]

Thanks John. Actually I took the bull by the horns and exported everything that looked like it was on an adobe server to a new catalog, re-imported it into LR Classic and checked that the files were on my main drive, then deleted all the server side files so that I now, on CC, Classic, Pad and Phone have nothing synced and nothing on a server. Time to start, gingerly, afresh with no legacy issues, and see where I get....

[john beardsworth · Accepted solution]

JCrossonNYC wrote:

I have a photo library of approximately 45,000 photos. I noticed that over 40,000 photos were part of the "All Synced Photographs" special folder and showing up on Lightroom Mobile, even though I had removed the Collections which contained those folders and did not want them on Lightroom Mobile.

I removed all photos from the All Synced Photographs catalog, but this had the unexpected and extremely negative outcome of also removing all my photos from all of their collections! Now almost all of my Collections are empty -- A Catalogue of 15 years of photos 45,000+ this is a huge problem!

I tried the "Undo" function but it did not appear to bring any of the photos back. The photos still appear in their Folders, but there was little congruence between the Collections and the Photos.

Please try and help me understand why this happened (Why is this designed this way?) and if there is anything I can do to revert to the previous state?

Think of "All Synced Photos" as being "Photos on Adobe's servers"....

When LrMobile was first introduced, photos had to be in a synced collection. If you removed them from a collection, or stopped syncing it, those photos were removed from Adobe's servers (aka All Synced Photos). Personally, I liked that.

A few months ago (sorry I can't recall when) that changed. If you removed photos from a synced collection or stopped syncing it, the photos stayed on Adobe's servers (aka All Synced Photos). To be honest, I wish they hadn't changed this, don't quite understand why they did it, but don't see it as a big deal. These not-in-synced-collection photos don't taken much space on my phone or tablet, as they aren't downloaded for offline editing. If I change my mind later and add those photos to a synced collection, it should mean the sync is quick. And on my phone or tablet I find photos by looking in the collection I want, not by looking in the huge pot of all photos. That's the background.

Removing "all" photos from  "All Synced Photos" should have presented a dialog box that told you what it was going to do. To get back to the previous state, do you have a recent backup of your catalogue?

John

[JCrossonNYC]

Thank you very much for your thorough feedback.

I can't say I care for this design... Sitting on my Desktop computer, when I find an image within "All Synced Photographs" which I no longer want on Lightroom Mobile... If I remove it from the All Synced Photographs special-collection, it should not take it out of the Collection on my Desktop computer.

The Alert notification displayed to me as the user before removing items from All Synced Photographs makes it clear that the image would be removed from Lightroom Mobile but would remain on my Desktop computer. It does not state that images would be removed from their collections on my Desktop computer.

When the user wants to remove an item from a collection, they typically will locate the image within the collection and select "Remove from Collection". Having this as a side-effect of something to do with Lightroom Mobile will lead users, such as myself down a rabbit hole where we've inadvertently made a mess of our photo collections.

I appreciate your help!