Creative Cloud workflow under the Photography Plan?

[bbchops]

I apologize in advance for the length of this post. I thought if I explained what I was trying to do in a little more detail, it might make it easier to help me out of the weeds.

I'm an amateur that had been using Google Picasa (now Google Photo) for years, and I've built up about 120 GB of photos in my Google Drive account. Recently, my son finally convinced me to try using the Adobe products to edit my photos, so I signed up for the "Photography Plan," which I really like so far. However, I'm not sure how all of the Creative Cloud pieces are designed to work together. With only 2 GB of cloud storage (or even the 20 GB that comes with the "All Apps" plan) there is nowhere near enough room to store all my photos, so I can only guess that Adobe intends for the cloud storage to be used for something else, but what? What is the intended workflow for a guy like me?

For example, I just got back from a European vacation. I took a several hundred photos, which Google Photos automatically backed up to the cloud for me. I've got Google Drive loaded on my MacBook Pro at home, and it sync'd my photos down to a "Google Photos" folder on my local hard disk that is organized by year, then within each year, by month. (I don't have to do anything special. This is just what Google Photos does.) I had already added the "2017" folder to Google Lightroom, so all I had to do to have my vacation photos show up Lightroom was re-synchronize the folder. After rating the photos and editing the best of them, I created a Smart Collection of the ones I wanted to share with my kids, and this is where I got stumped.

The photos I have in Google Photos are essentially just raw data. I could recreate the Smart Collection on Google Photos by putting the best photos into an album, but they wouldn't reflect any of the edits I made in Lightroom. I didn't want export my final edits out of Lightroom then upload to Google Photos because they'll get mixed up with the originals and a bunch would have been duplicates (albeit edited). I decided instead to export them into a folder and sync them to Creative Cloud, but then what?

My Creative Cloud storage is now full, and when the Creative Cloud app prompted me to "Link your account with Behance" I clicked on the link, and it led me to something called Adobe Portfolio. (Is "Adobe Portfolio" the new name for Behance, or are they completely separate products?) For a minute, I thought maybe I could use Portfolio to house my vacation photos, so I picked a template and began the process of creating a site. I couldn't see any limits on the amount of space I could upload to Adobe Portfolio, so I thought maybe this could be where Adobe intends for me to store ALL my photos!

But when I went to add my first photo to the site, the only option I had was to *upload* a photo. I couldn't populate the site with the photos already sync'd to Creative Cloud. This seems very odd to me. If Creative Cloud isn't the conduit to something else (like Portfolio/Behance), what is it for? All of the marketing material says it is the means by which I can keep my photos/videos along with their edits in sync across my Mac, my phone, and my PC. But if I can only store a small fraction of my photos there at any given time, where should they go on a more permanent basis? And what is the workflow to get them there? I think I must be missing something.

Again, I apologize for the length of this message, but I thought the extra context might help.

Regards,

Jim

Dallas, TX

[Nexahs1138]

1 The cloud storage is mainly for the programme files, such as PSD, but Photoshop gives you the option to save your raw pictures in a variety of formats such as, save for web, these will give you small KB or possibly MB sized files.

2 & 3 this is where file compression comes in, you don't need a huge file size for a photo, when you have the large raw data it's like baking, you edit it in Photoshop/Lightroom and take all the stuff you need and then get rid of what you don't need so now you have this file with a much lower size than what you started out with.

4 Behance and Portfolio are different things, portfolio is a custom website hosted by Adobe for subscribers that allows them to create there own website in the same way wordpress does. This is mine atm

5 CC works the same as Google Drive, once you have the file in the CC folder then you can access it from the Portfolio. I just tried it out there by creating a new gallery and it brought up this menu.

Hope this helps.

[bbchops]

Thank you very much for your detailed reply! It's becoming a bit clearer, but I think I'm still missing a few concepts.Since I work almost exclusively in .jpg file format, I don't think compression is really applicable to my situation. In order to shrink file sizes, I have to give up resolution--something I was hoping to avoid. I realize I don't need high resolution for simple web viewing, but I would like to retain the resolution for printing. (Or do others maintain two resolutions of each photo, publish the smaller format on the web, and save the higher resolution photo somewhere else?)

It's interesting to me that the link to Behance sends you to Portfolio first without explanation. (An opportunity to improve the documentation?) When I attempted to create my first project on Portfolio, the first thing I tried to do is customize the cover photo. That prompt wouldn't let me do anything but upload a photo and the photo size is limited to 8.4 MB. There was no way to link to a photo on CC, but once past that point I was able to import photos from CC as you indicated.

When I went to save (or publish) my work, I received a prompt asking me if I want to publish my project to Behance. I'm still a little fuzzy about the differences, or the purposes, of the two sites. When I think of Wordpress, I think of blog sites. (In fact, Wordpress advertises itself as a place to create your own personal website (whatever that is) or blog.) My artist son has used Behance off and on to showcase his portfolio, so I have some sense of what that is for. But neither Portfolio, nor Behance seem like the appropriate place to host a photo album like my vacation photos. Am I missing something? What do others do?

Finally, although I was able to import my photos into Portfolio, where are they being stored? Once in Portfolio, can I delete them from CC? I got the distinct impression that I was creating a link to the photos in CC when I added them to my project. I tested my theory by removing a photo I had posted on Portfolio from the Creative Cloud Files folder on my local PC. When I viewed that folder on the web, the photo had been moved to something called an "Archive" folder. And much to my surprise, the photo still showed up in Portfolio. What is the "Archive" and how big is it? Is it part of my 2 GB of CC storage?

Thanks again for your very detailed reply. It was very helpful.

Jim

[davescm · Accepted solution]

Hi Jim

You are right, the cloud storage is limited.

I tend to use mine (bear in mind I have 20GB) for :

a. Storing working files during a project. The reason is that the cloud, as you spotted, has an automatic archive of the old files. So I have a chance of recovery if something goes awry. The old files are kept in the archive you refer to above for a limited time period. You can delete from the archive to free up space once you know you don't need those back ups.

b. Sharing files on a 1 to 1 basis - the cloud allows you to quickly create a link and send a largish PSD for example to someone so they can download.

I do not use the cloud for storage for the same reasons as you stated. So it will not replace your Google Drive.

Your Portfolio is not associated with your cloud storage. It is a quick way for a "non webby" to put together  a passable portfolio website to share their work. An image uploaded to the Portfolio site is stored completely separately from your cloud storage.

Behance and Portfolio are separate but easily linked - so you can make a project available on Behance when you have loaded it to Portfolio

There are specific Behance and Portfolio forums in these sites. If you go to the welcome page https://forums.adobe.com/welcome  and click the "see all forums" drop down box you can get to both.

Dave

[Nexahs1138]

Wordpress is primarily used for blogging but there are other free site builders like Wix and Weebly which you could create to have specific menus and such for your photos, this is my site on weebly here and I was able to use a supplied theme that fitted my taste, there are loads more to choose from.

[bbchops]

Thanks, guys. This really helps a lot.

Jim