What is actually happening during the Lightroom CC import and what do the settings truly mean?

[tmichellemoore]

Hello,

I am importing/uploading my pictures to the Lightroom CC Storage site. I have read the following help text multiple times and a few items are missing or not explained thoroughly. Can you provide specific detailed information about what is actually happening, what is happening to the original files on my hard drive or in the catalog, and what is happening with the store a copy of all originals locally.

My Question	Help Text or Screen Item
Revised: There is a link under this section that says "Your Lightroom CC files" which when clicked takes me to C:\Users\Tmich\AppData\Local\Adobe\Lightroom CC\Data this is not the path to the Customer location. What exactly is this for? Can I change this to an external drive location?	Target Available Disk Space Usage Set the slider value to a desired amount to specify how much of your available disk space Lightroom CC is allowed to use. To let Lightroom CC retain more content on your computer, increase the target available disk space percentage. If you prefer to save disk space by downloading the content when you need it, decrease the target available disk space percentage.
No question	Your Lightroom CC Files Displays your Lightroom CC files in the Explorer (Win) / Finder (Mac).
What does this mean? My originals are on my hard drive. I do understand that images such as the ones I take with my cell phone may download. I would like much more specific information about what is happening here.	Set a location for storing the Originals In the Advanced section, you can specify where Lightroom CC stores your Originals. To change the default location or change the current custom location, click Change Location, choose a folder in the Select New Storage Location dialog, and then click Select Folder. The new location is now displayed in the Advanced section. To restore a custom location to the default location, click Use Default Location.
I originally checked this item and then unchecheck and it seems to still continue syncing. Can you explain syncing? Can you explain how to stop syncing, this could be done in Lightroom Classic CC by deleting a file in the preferences or cache folder.	Store A Copy Of All Originals Locally Select to always keep all the original files on your computer’s hard drive, in addition to backing them up to the cloud.
Can you please provide more details on the process. Not developer level, but for the more technically interested person?	na
This seems logical. No question.	Import (I am finally seeing this on the screen. The sync has been the only indicator I have seen and now there is an import progress bar.

Thank you for any help!

Message was edited by: Thelma M Moore

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

Note that the is a user to user folder, so we are all just other users here. Only a few Adobe employees wander around in here. So from another user here is my attempt.

What exactly is this for? Can I change this to an external drive location?

This is local storage of your Lightroom CC files. You can change this to an external drive if you want as long as it is directly connected and not a network drive,

What does this mean? My originals are on my hard drive. I do understand that images such as the ones I take with my cell phone may download. I would like much more specific information about what is happening here.

This is normally used as temporary storage for the most recently used files so it doesn't redownload images all the time. Lightroom CC does not use local files the same way that Lightroom Classic does. The main file lives on Adobe's servers and it makes a local cached copy of that when needed. So when you import files what happens is that it will upload them into the cloud and then it might delete the local copies if it needs local disk space or if you haven't used those images in a while.

I originally checked this item and then unchecheck and it seems to still continue syncing. Can you explain syncing? Can you explain how to stop syncing, this could be done in Lightroom Classic CC by deleting a file in the preferences or cache folder.

The real change with Lightroom CC is that your local files are no longer the master copy of the files. Lightroom CC uploads everything you put into it. The "store a local copy" option simply keeps local copies of all the images so you always have them. For Lightroom they are copies though, not the master files which live on Adobe's servers.

Can you please provide more details on the process. Not developer level, but for the more technically interested person?

You mean the import or migrate process? What happens is that Lightroom CC imports the files and copies them to a temporary area on your hard disk. It will then start uploading everything to the cloud. If it is done with that after a few hours of uploading, it might delete some of the local files if you went over the storage limit set in the preferences. Again to Lightroom CC the local files are only copies of the masters living in the cloud. they are expendable. This causes a lot of deep questions you need to consider with respect to backup and such but that is the way the program works and operates. Everything in the cloud.

Note that if you are more comfortable with the non-cloud way of doing things there is always Lightroom Classic which works like it always has and your local files are the masters.

[tmichellemoore]

Jao vdL,

Thank you so much for this reply! I am reading and processing it and it is helping. To be safe I have a totally separate external drive that is unplugged with my original catalog and photos. I believe that I can work in the online Lightroom CC version at my current photography skills. I like the product and can't wait for version 2.0. Thank you again and I will probably have another question related to your reply.

!

[alexis_argyris]

Why networked drives cannot be used as location for originals? Thanks in advance

[Jao vdL]

Not clear why Adobe made this restriction. Do note that there is no such thing as originals on your own computer or networked drives in Lightroom CC. You can store local copies but the originals are in the cloud. Only during the import process are your originals on your local drive. After they are uploaded they become the local copies that Lightroom CC might delete if needed and if you haven't ticked the preference to store local copies of everything.

[alexis_argyris]

Thank you very much. My problem is that here I read: "Ensure that there's enough disk space in that location to accommodate the original, full-sized images in the Lightroom Classic CC catalog. The migration process creates a copy of your images. If you're running low on space on an internal drive on your computer, you might want to connect an external hard-drive and specify a location on it as the custom location." So now it seems we need: a) the original photos location (e.g. mounted drive, usable by old lightroom) b) the new originals location, as expected by lightroom-cloud (i.e. an external but not mounted drive) and c) a place in adobe's cloud storage where copies will be stored (i.e. originals, as far as lightroom-cloud is concerned). Is this practical if you have tens of thousands of pictures? Hundreds?

[Jao vdL]

That is all correct. On import it creates a copy of your images. By default this is on your internal drive but can be somewhere else if you set that up. So at import, you at least double your hard drive space needs. Note that by default after the images are uploaded to the cloud, Lightroom CC will start deleting the copies it made upon import/migration so as to satisfy the Target Available Disk Space Usage setting in preferences. So:

a) the original photos location (e.g. mounted drive, usable by old lightroom) b) the new originals location, as expected by lightroom-cloud (i.e. an external but not mounted drive) and c) a place in adobe's cloud storage where copies will be stored (i.e. originals, as far as lightroom-cloud is concerned). Is this practical if you have tens of thousands of pictures? Hundreds?

a) only for as long as Lightroom CC is copying these files to its local storage

b) Yes but it will start deleting images from here as soon as they are uploaded to the cloud

c) Yes that is now your new place for the master catalog and images

Is this practical if you have tens of thousands of pictures? Hundreds?

It depends. At hundreds to even low 10's of thousands it probably is. But if you're like me and have 100's of thousands of images taking multiple terabytes of storage it definitely isn't.

[alexis_argyris]

Do you think it is feasible to use a large external drive (directly connected) as an originals storage location while lightroom-cloud copies the files to the cloud and after the process finishes change the originals location to the (much smaller) internal disk and re-purpose the external drive?

[Jao vdL]

Yes I think that should work. The external does need to be connected for all the time that it takes to upload the images though, which can take many days.

[alexis_argyris]

thanks very much for this