When is it safe to delete from iOS Photos?

[nclee1]

Hello! I'm hoping someone can help me better understand what happens to my photos with Lightroom Mobile and the iOS photos.

I usually shoot photos, bursts, and videos using my iPhone camera. Lightroom Mobile auto-imports these into my Lightroom Mobile Catalog, and then when I get home, I see they have appeared in my Lightroom Desktop catalog.

Base on what I have read, Lightroom Mobile with Creative Cloud only synchronizes smart previews of images to save space. But it looks like the items that have synced to my Lightroom Desktop catalog are full-size and original format. My questions:

1. Is the Desktop → Creative Cloud direction sync Smart Previes, while Lightroom Mobile → Creative Cloud is full-size and original format?
2. Is it safe to delete the items from my iOS photos once they have been imported into Lightroom Mobile, or only once they have appeared in Lightroom Desktop?
3. Is there any difference between what will go into my Lightroom Desktop catalog if I import from my iPhone with a cable, or auto-import into Lightroom Mobile and then sync?

Thank you!

[selondon · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Lightroom Mobile and Web will upload Full Res to the Cloud (this is not connected the 20GB Creative Cloud Storage, although it's hard to find details of storage limits but some users have hundreds of GBs, but even then it's not supposed to be used as a guaranteed back up). These will sync back to Lr Desktop at Full Res.

I would say if you are not around LrD, then check sync staus in LrM or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to see it that they have at least made it to the Cloud before deleting from Camera Roll (in case you delete LrM App for instance).

If you import directly into LrD, you'll get the Full Res there but you can only sync them, once in a Collection, as Smart Previews to the Cloud (which may be all you need).