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Lightroom Cloud vs Local File Management

Lesson 10 from: Editing and Organizing your Photography in Lightroom

Jared Platt

Lightroom Cloud vs Local File Management

Lesson 10 from: Editing and Organizing your Photography in Lightroom

Jared Platt

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Lesson Info

10. Lightroom Cloud vs Local File Management

<b>Lightroom has a new feature that allows you to review your images without sending them to the cloud.&#160; It is called &#8220;Local Management''.&#160; This makes Lightroom a little more like Lightroom Classic (if you want it to be).&#160; In this lesson you will learn the difference between Local and Cloud storage in Lightroom and why and how to use both options.&#160; And yes, you can use both at the same time.</b>

Lesson Info

Lightroom Cloud vs Local File Management

1 We're going to leave our imported photos for a minute 2 because at this point I don't wanna get too far 3 away from the idea of looking at new images 4 or bringing new images in without going 5 to the opposite side of the spectrum in Lightroom, 6 which is local storage. 7 So we were just talking about the way 8 that we bring images into Lightroom 9 and those images getting put on the cloud, 10 so you saw that whole process. 11 Now there's another way to look at images 12 inside of Lightroom and bring them into Lightroom. 13 And that's through the local tab, 14 so we just did it in the cloud tab, 15 so there's the cloud storage tab, and you saw what happened. 16 We brought them in, 17 it put them in a specific place on the computer, 18 and then it started immediately uploading 'em to the cloud. 19 If I hadn't told it to make 20 that specific album available offline, 21 it would've then deleted them from there 22 and just left them on the cloud. 23 But because I told it to leave it 2...

4 or because I told it to make the album available offline, 25 it left it in both places, 26 so now it's on the cloud 27 and it's locally on the computer inside 28 of that storage bin 29 or that area that we chose in our preferences. 30 So that's the cloud option, now let's talk about local, 31 so when you go to the local drive, 32 you're going to see all of the drives that are available 33 at that time. 34 So as you plug drives in, they'll be available here. 35 So then if I go to a working drive, SSD 36 and just kind of drill down to some jobs, 37 and then I click on a particular job folder, if I do that, 38 you can see that it's not showing anything, 39 and that's very unlike Lightroom Classic, 40 whereas with Lightroom Classic, 41 if you clicked on a main job folder 42 and there were interior folders, 43 it would show you all the interior folders 44 and what's in them. 45 But in this case, Lightroom requires you to actually go in 46 and click on the interior folder, 47 and then that gives you a set of images 48 and you can see that it's building in the images 49 and it takes a little while, 50 see how it's slowly building them in, 51 because it's actually looking at them 52 and building them as it opens up that folder, 53 'cause it's not a catalog situation, 54 now it's a file browser. 55 So the cloud area that is a catalog, 56 we're bringing stuff in, sharing it with the cloud, 57 it's got a catalog circumstance in it, 58 whereas the local option is literally a file browser. 59 It's looking into a file, showing you what's there, 60 and then once it shows you what's there, 61 you could certainly click on a particular image, 62 so you could double click an image. 63 Once you open that image, you can go in and adjust it, 64 you can see all of my adjustment options are over here, 65 just like if they were on the cloud option. 66 And if I adjust that image, 67 and let's just say let's turn it to black and white. 68 So I've turned this to black and white, 69 and then if I right click it, 70 I can show that in the finder. 71 And when I show it in the finder, 72 it's actually gonna pull it up 73 inside of that particular folder. 74 See, there's the job folder, there's the selects folder, 75 and then inside there you see 76 that there's image number 339, right? 77 It keeps the setting inside of light room's brain 78 until you move away from that file. 79 Soon as you move away from that file, 80 then it goes and puts an XMP file next to that image. 81 So there's image number 333 or 0339, 82 and then there's an XMP file 0339. 83 And the purpose of that XMP data file 84 is to tell Lightroom the next time it comes, 85 what did you do to that file? 86 And if it sees that there's an XMP file next to it, 87 then it's going to take the information 88 that's in this file and apply it to this file 89 when it looks at it. 90 So now if I go back to this file, when I click on it, 91 it says, "What did you do to that file?" 92 It's in the XMP right next to it, 93 and it loads up black and white. 94 If I turn this back to color, 95 and then as soon as I move away from it, 96 that XMP file just got written 97 and now that XMP file will have color in it 98 instead of black and white. 99 So that's how it decides, 100 or that's how it tells Lightroom what you did to the file, 101 because it's not putting it into its own database, 102 it's just writing the information 103 right next to the file, okay? 104 So that is how the local area works. 105 Now, if you decided that you wanted to take 106 these images here, this entire job here of images, 107 and you wanted to put this on the cloud version, 108 you wanted it to be over here in the cloud area, 109 so you wanted a copy up in the cloud 110 and you wanted it to kind of work inside 111 of the Lightroom catalog system, 112 then all you need to do is right click 113 the actual selects folder and say "Copy to cloud." 114 Or if you just want to add one photo, 115 you can right click that one photo 116 and you can copy that photo to the cloud, 117 or you can add that photo to an album. 118 And if I go in and I click on that image 119 and I go to favorite images, 120 let's go to Lightroom, desktop, favorite images, 121 and I add it to that particular album, 122 it's gonna warn me that this is going to be copied 123 and synced to the cloud. 124 So I hit okay, 125 and now see how it just added it to the cloud. 126 When I go back to the cloud 127 and I go to that particular album 128 and I go to favorite images from the workshop, 129 there's the one we added at the beginning of the workshop, 130 there's the one we just added, 131 and now there's a copy where it originally was 132 that stayed there, it didn't move it, 133 and it copied it over into my hard drive 134 that stores all of my files, 135 'cause remember that that other one is on that other drive, 136 it's on a completely separate drive. 137 And by clicking add to the cloud, 138 it copied that image to the cloud drive 139 that is associated in my preferences, 140 so in this drive here, it copied it to that drive, 141 and then it added it to the cloud, 142 so now there's a copy in the cloud. 143 So I have three copies of this photo, 144 the one in the original drive where I was kind of browsing, 145 then I have the one in my Lightroom photos, 146 and then I have the one on the cloud. 147 Now, because this particular album 148 is not available offline, 149 that means that once the image was delivered to the cloud, 150 it is now removed from that hard drive 151 unless I right click it 152 and I say, "Make this available offline." 153 When I do that, go ahead and hit download there, 154 now those two images are available offline 155 and anything that I put in it afterwards. 156 So if I go to a set of images 157 and I grab this image here, 158 and I drag it into my workshop favorites, 159 now there are three images that are available 160 on the computer and that are in the cloud. 161 And you notice that it didn't have to synchronize 162 that one up to the cloud, why? 163 Because that one was already in this album down here, 164 this select album, 165 so see how it's already available 166 down here on the computer and up in the cloud, 167 so it didn't need any synchronization whatsoever. 168 The image was already in the cloud, 169 so it didn't have to sync, 170 and it was already on the computer, 171 so it didn't have to sync, 172 it just made a reference. 173 Far be it from me to tell you exactly 174 how you would use local versus cloud storage, 175 but let me give you some basic ideas. 176 There are some people who would rather not use the cloud 177 because they have a very small area of cloud, 178 maybe they have 250 gigabytes, maybe they have a terabyte, 179 but they don't want to use it all. 180 So start with the local option, 181 go through and adjust and work on your images locally, 182 and then once you've finished selecting your images 183 and adjusting your images and doing what you want with them, 184 take the ones you love and copy them to the cloud. 185 Then only your portfolio worthy things 186 will be on the cloud, and everything else, 187 the thousands and thousands of photos 188 that you don't necessarily want to see 189 on your iPad and on your phone and everywhere, 190 those images that were here inside of your local drives 191 are still just sitting on your local drive 192 and only your really good stuff, 193 the stuff that you really love is available on the cloud. 194 And as a bonus, not only is it available on your computer, 195 but it's also up in the cloud as a full resolution backup. 196 So start locally and then start adding stuff 197 into the cloud when you're finished with it, 198 and you're ready to kind of keep it forever. 199 That's one way to use it. 200 The other way to use it is to put everything 201 on the cloud to start with. 202 That way you know you have a high resolution backup 203 of everything that you've shot. 204 Then as you're working through your images, 205 when you finish them, 206 you can then take those images offline 207 and put them in your local drives, 208 and only keep the stuff that you really love up in the cloud 209 and everything else gets deleted off the cloud 210 and moved into this local storage. 211 And I'll show you how to do that a little bit later 212 as we wrap up the entire workshop. 213 We'll show you the process of archiving, 214 but for now, the idea is how do I use these? 215 Well, you can start local and move to the cloud, 216 or you can start in the cloud and move local. 217 Either way is a great idea, 218 but it just depends on how you wanna work.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials

Adaptive_JP_LR_Presets.zip
Jared_Platt_-_Editing_and_Organizing_Photography_in_Lightroom_Photo_Examples.zip

Ratings and Reviews

Tim Byrne
 

Great job, Jared! You have delivered a master class for anyone beginning a journey into Lightroom, presented in absolutely clear and relaxed style. And for those with more experience with the program, every old dog can learn a few more new tricks. Teaching software is tough. Jared does it by breaking down each function and including not only the what, but the how and why as well. And each step is amplified by crystal clear photos which are manipulated with the function at hand. Bring a pad of paper, some snacks, and a cup (or two) of coffee. He is relentless in his presentation. You might watch this course as a freebie, but buy it to be able to refer to it for specific steps and processes. I've been using Adobe products since the mid 1990s and this is the best instructional presentation I've taken. ABSOLUTE WINNER1 Thanks, Jared

Student Work

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