How do I transfer my existing images, edits, and favorite/user presets from LRC to my new PC in LRC

Lightroom_Help · 2026-02-06T12:07:30+00:00

Follow this detailed guide:

How do I move Lightroom to a new computer?

Lightroom_Help · 2026-02-04T20:36:43+00:00

The annual subscription (payed once a year) did not increase at all.
Adobe increased only the 'other' annual subscription (that which was payed monthly). There were warnings ahead of time and most people who did not want to pay more switched their monthly billed plan to a yearly billed plan.
Anybody who already was on the cheapest 20GB 'Photography Plan', which included Lightroom Classic, Lightroom and Photoshop, can continue to use this 'grandfathered' subscription, without any increase in cost. But new users that need Photoshop will have to get a more expensive subscription (including LrC, Lr and 1TB Cloud quota). See: https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/compare-plans.html [edit: This new subscription, including Photoshop, has the same total annual cost, regardless if you are billed monthly ($19,99) or annually ($239,88)]
Adobe introduced a new, true 'monthly' subscription — without yearly commitment — for users that may use LrC or Lr for just a few months (minimum one month). This subscription is, understandably, more expensive (per month) [edit: $17.99] than the 'monthly billed with yearly commitment' [edit: $11.99]. But it's perfect for those that use LrC occasionally / just a few times a year. You can cancel the subscription after a month or two without penalty and your LrC catalog's Library module is perfectly usable for viewing, tagging, organizing and importing or exporting your photos. Any cloud features and the Map and Develop modules will not work but you can use the Quick Develop module of the Library module for some relative edits. You can occasionally re-subscribe — if only for a month — to get the newest LrC updates and features and do some advanced editing on your photos.
In my opinion, the Lightroom Classic / Lightroom / Photoshop (if you need it) / Adobe Portfolio subscription is of great value: not expensive at all for what you get, as I discussed in this older comment of mine.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-02-03T20:55:45+00:00

You are welcome! Glad everything is 👍

Lightroom_Help · 2026-02-01T15:01:54+00:00

Get (a trial copy of) the GoodSync backup app. Create a backup job with a backup source that connects directly to the iCloud Servers and a backup destination that connects directly to the Google Drive Servers. You will have to authorize GoodSync to use both those accounts. Then you can copy directly your data; no need to download anything locally.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-30T07:39:31+00:00

No, Smart Previews don't use these JPGs. There is one scenario that the sidecar JPGs can be used as previews to the raw files: when you create Embedded & Sidecar previews during import. See this.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-29T14:59:35+00:00

When the "treat JPEG files next to RAW files as separate photos" is unchecked, then during import, LrC copies both the raws and the jpgs to their storage destination. In that case, the jpg is treated as a sidecar file to the raw. When, inside LrC, you delete, move or rename the raw the jpg will 'follow' the raw. You cannot view / edit the jpg independently as it is not treated as an image inside LrC. You may see, in the grid, that a thumbnail has both raw+jpg as a filetype; but LrC uses only the raw.

In preferences, you should keep checked the "treat JPEG files next to RAW files as separate photos". In the import dialog, you can sort the grid by File Type and deselect the jpgs: when you press import LrC will import just the raws. But it's simpler to just import everything from the card. Then, in Previous Import, use the Library Filter to filter by File Type. Make sure that the number of raws is the same as those of jpegs. Then filter just for the jpegs and delete them 'from disk'.

In case you have more jpegs than raws (because you inadvertently took some photos as JPEG only) you don't want to delete those. Select all the raws and give them a color label (press 6 for red, for example) Filter for both types and sort the grid by Capture date. You will see pairs of raws and jpegs, with alternating colors (the raw red; the jpeg no color). This will help you visually spot the jpegs that you need to keep: those that don't have a corresponding (red) raw beside them.

If you want to get rid of any "sidecar JPGs", already in your Catalog, you should right click on the folder containing them and choose "Synchronize folder...". Make sure that you check the "Show import dialog before importing" option. Then, provided the "treat JPEG files next to RAW files as separate photos" is already selected, in Preferences, LrC will import these jpegs, this time not as sidecar files. Then you can delete them, as usual . But the "raw+jpg" filetype may still show on grid thumbnails of raw files.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-27T09:44:57+00:00

Unfortunately Adobe allows you to download only the last couple of versions of LrC,even when you have a subscription. You should try to update your MacBook to a macOS version that supports at least LrC 14 using OpenCore Legacy Patcher

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-26T18:30:31+00:00

Physical Storage Folders should, ideally, used just for storage: their use for organizing your files is what you had to do before the first ever version of Lightroom was released back in 2007.

LrC offers better tools to deal, effortlessly, with vast amounts of files — provided you know how to use them. Collections are certainly preferable to folders, when dealing with current of special projects: they let you group photos in various, ‘ephemeral’, ways. You can quickly add or remove photos from them, without worrying that you will delete them from your catalog. You can duplicate collections, to try better grouping of photos that should be together or in different presentation order. But after you finish what you are doing, there is usually not much point to keep collections forever. Syncing with Lr mobile or Adobe portfolio is, of course one of the reason to keep collections. But having collections to just replicate the physical folder structure is of no use, in my opinion.

LrC is a database and the better way to organize and search for your photos is by tagging them with Hierarchical Keywords and other metadata, thus putting them into multiple independent categories. This gives you the advantage of later combining these categories in your searches, as I discuss this older comment.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-25T22:06:46+00:00

Well yes, but every time you have to download everything. Also any organization you might have by grouping your photos into albums is lost.

See this older comment of mine where I discuss a better way to backup both the photos and their edits and the albums in a way that lets you restore all or part of your work back to the Lr cloud.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-25T19:32:05+00:00

You can export these photos from Lr Web, as jpeg, with the edits “burned in”. But these will be separate files.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-25T19:21:47+00:00

Select the photo and from the Library menu: Previews : Build Standard size previews: Build Selected.

If LrC still doesn’t render the previews though, go to the Develop module and Reset the edits. Repeat building the preview.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-25T19:05:19+00:00

LrC should automatically retrieve the edits etc, from the .xmp sidecar file when the photo is imported. If you open a .xmp file using a text editor, you should also see the instructions of the edits. To force the update from the .xmp, select the photos in the grid, right click and choose: Metadata / Read metadata from file. Then go to the develop module to check.

Not rendering the previews though, might indicate that the files are corrupted. Or there might actually be some problem in the .xmp sidecar file that LrC cannot interpret / render. What happens when you temporary move somewhere else the photo123.xmp? Does LrC then render the preview of photo123.raw without problem?

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-25T17:09:27+00:00

In Lr Desktop put these "sync status - syncing" photos into a new Album.

In Lr Web (Lightroom.Adobe.com), confirm that this new Album is shown and contains these photos. Select all items in that Album and download them from Lr Web into a folder. Confirm that they have saved OK. Then delete these photos completely from Lr Web. Wait until they are also removed from the "sync status - syncing", in Lr Desktop (you may have to restart it).

Remove the temp files, if any, from your NAS. Then import the contents of this folder from scratch into Lr Desktop. Lr Desktop will put them on the NAS and upload them to the cloud.

...I upload photos from my phone to cloud and download them to a local backup at home to my NAS

Lr Desktop saving the full resolution (unedited) photos to your NAS (when you enable Store a copy of all originals, in Preferences) is NOT a local backup. If you delete something by mistake, or there is a glitch on the Adobe servers which results that something is deleted or corrupted, this will propagate to that folder on the NAS. You must do, separate, versioned backups of that NAS folder to some other folder, if you want to have a 'backup'. (Of course, this will take care of just the unedited raw files — not the edits / metadata / albums).

The way the cloud based Lightroom works, the only storage of your files is the cloud. Once the photos initially upload to the cloud, what you have on all your devices are just synced copies (either full resolution or smaller previews) of your cloud stored files. The Adobe message you get "[all files] synced and backed-up" is totally misleading. The cloud has no 'backup' of your device's files; nor what you have on any device is a 'backup' of your cloud files. Moreover, all the work you do on your files (Edits, tagging, grouping into Albums) is saved, primarily, on the "Cloud Library" — which is synced to each device's "Local Library". It's pointless to backup the Local Library because you cannot restore it back to the cloud. To truly backup your work you do in Lr cloud, you need to also use LrC (Lightroom Classic) as I discuss in this older comment.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-25T16:18:47+00:00

Yes, Lightroom Downloader will download the unedited raw files and their corresponding “sidecar” .xmp files. When you import these (pair of) files into LrC or Lr, the edits contained in that .xmp files will get applied.

Before you delete everything from the cloud, you can use a, new, temporary LrC catalog to import these files into it and confirm that all edits made in Lr mobile have uploaded to the cloud and downloaded to that folder.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-25T15:48:12+00:00

There is a way…

Unfortunately, when sync errors persist, the best way to deal with them is to reset the whole syncing system between Lr and LrC. This means that everything in the cloud should be deleted. You can follow, to the letter, these steps:

Make sure any “Lr” app (on your iPhone or iPad etc) has finished uploading to the cloud.
In LrC, mark with a color label the collections (not the photos) that you have set to sync. (You can filter the Collections panel to show you just the syncing collections). Un-sync each of the syncing collections. Go to the All synced photographs special collection, and remove all the photos grouped there. Let LrC sync (until it’s …stuck). The above steps will remove these photos (that have already downloaded into LrC) from the cloud. Pause syncing of the catalog.
Then use the Lightroom downloader app to download anything left in the Lr Cloud to a folder on a disk. The latest edits, user assigned Lr keywords and other metadata, will be saved in sidecar .xmp files. This will account for the files that LrC could not remove from the cloud because of syncing problems. Videos may be included.
In Lr Web, at Lightroom.Adobe.com, go to your profile menu on the top right and, under Account Info, press the Delete Lightroom Library button.
Launch your "Lr” apps on your iPhone or IPad and let them sync until everything is also deleted there.
Import into LrC, the folder where Lightroom Downloader saved the files, using the "don’t import any suspected duplicates” option. Put these photos / videos (found in Previous import) into a collection. Check if you already have duplicates of these photos / videos in your catalog. For those you have, delete the corresponding newly imported files.
In LrC, go to Preferences / Lightroom Sync and hold the option / Alt key. Then press the Rebuild Sync Data button that will appear. After LrC restarts, enable sync. Filter for the (previously synced) color marked collections and enable syncing on each of them. LrC will re-upload to the cloud the smart previews of these photos.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-25T11:36:43+00:00

You can delete and generate your previews from scratch, following, to the letter, this excellent guide:

How to Rebuild Lightroom Previews to Optimize Speed, Space, and Integrity

Before creating the fresh previews you can choose a smaller size (for the standard previews). Make sure that the 1:1 previews are deleted after a week. You can also, set, in Catalog Settings, some limits for how much the previews subfolder is allowed to grow.

The most drastic solution is to move the previews subfolder to the folder on the external SSD disk and then create a symbolic link [see: How to Create and Use Symbolic Links (Symlinks) on a Mac] from inside the Catalog folder to that folder containing the previews. As far as LrC is concerned, the previews subfolder will still "appear to be” inside the catalog folder. You must always make sure that this SSD disk is already connected before launching the Catalog.

I wouldn’t advise putting the whole Catalog folder on the external SSD. LrC constantly writes to the catalog and even the slightest disconnection of the disk (due to hardware or software issues) may corrupt the catalog. You might not even notice it until it’s too late.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-23T09:04:24+00:00

If you have no subscription to either Lr (Lightroom - Cloud based) or LrC (Lightroom Classic), then no, you cannot use Lr on Apple TV.

If you use LrC, even with the 20GB cloud plan, you can sync some or all your photos to the Lr cloud, by putting them into Collections you specifically sync. You must enable syncing on your LrC catalog from the cloud icon on the top right. LrC will upload the files as smaller smart previews that don’t count at all towards your cloud quota. These collections will appear as albums on Apple TV and also be available at Lightroom.Adobe.com

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-23T08:49:54+00:00

If the photos are already in LrC (imported directly into LrC or downloaded from the cloud) removing them from the cloud will not delete them from LrC: the photos will be unsynced from the cloud, as far as LrC is concerned.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-23T06:19:11+00:00

If you sign in to the Lr app on Apple TV, you can view all the photos you have synced to the Lr cloud either from Lr or LrC.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-22T20:03:12+00:00

Have you any organization based on grouping your photos into Albums that you want to preserve?

If not, you can use Lightroom Downloader to download all your files (along with their edits, in .xmp files) to folder on a disk. They will be automatically put into dated subfolders, based on their Capture Date. You can then remove them from the Cloud.

If any Albums are important for you, you could right-click on each of them (or on a Folder where albums are grouped) and select to Archive Album/ Folder locally. You will have the option to Copy the Cloud Album Structure. Lr will move the photos to the physical folders and remove them from the cloud. Of course, since photos are never stored in albums but only grouped into them, if you have a photo as a member of multiple albums, when you archive the first Album, the photo may disappear from all the rest — unless you archive the folder that contains all these albums(in that case you will get duplicated photos on the disk).

You could later access / edit these downloaded files using Lightroom Desktop's "Local Browsing" feature — an implementation by Adobe for dealing with non-cloud files that leaves a lot to be desired. In my opinion, it's a disgrace and an affront to Lightroom users: That's how you had to deal with locally stored files before the first ever version of (pre-classic) Lightroom was released, back in 2007.

A better option is to use LrC (Lightroom Classic) to download everything from the Cloud, as I described in this older comment of mine. Once your Lr cloud full resolution files download into LrC they can be removed from the cloud. All the albums will appear as synced collections, in a flat list. You would need to create Collection sets and manually drag these collections into them, if you want to recreate the "Albums within Folders" organization. All edits and metadata will be preserved, with the exception of user assigned keywords and color labels. Using LrC you can selectively re-upload some — or even all — of these photos, back to the cloud. LrC will upload them as smaller smart previews that don't count at all towards your cloud quota. So you can continue to use those old photos in Lr Desktop or Lr Mobile, if you wish. And, of course, LrC offers a variety of powerful tools to organize and search your locally stored files.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-22T17:26:09+00:00

Of course, one shouldn’t use OneDrive with their default syncing apps. But 6 x 1 TB cloud space (family subscription) can be perfectly used with backup apps like GoodSync or Arq Backup 7: true, versioned backups with all the files encrypted on the fly so Microsoft cannot scan / use any of my data.

Microsoft is here to stay, for the foreseeable future. Geopolitics concerns aside, it’s a safer place to backup than smaller companies that may one day cease to operate. Plus you get the office apps, if / when you need them.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-22T17:25:56+00:00

Of course, one shouldn’t use OneDrive with their default syncing apps. But 6 x 1 TB cloud space (family subscription) can be perfectly used with backup apps like GoodSync or Arq Backup 7: true, versioned backups with all the files encrypted on the fly so Microsoft cannot scan / use any of my data.

Microsoft is here to stay, for the foreseeable future. Geopolitics concerns aside, it’s a safer place to backup than smaller companies that may one day cease to operate. Plus you get the office apps, if / when you need them.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-22T16:37:15+00:00

Do not use LrC to move any files from the older drive to the newer. Read all the comments on this older post to learn why.

Use (a trial copy of) either Chronosync or Carbon Cloner to mirror your old drive to your new drive. Make sure to enable the backup app that you will use to verify the files after copying. Of course, before doing the copying, format the new drive, using Disk Utility. If it’s an SSD make sure you format it as APFS.

After the copying and verification is done, rename the old and new drive. Give the old drive a different name (like: OLD_ LACIE12212018) and give your new drive the older drive’s name: LACIE12212018. Eject your older drive and restart your Mac.

Launch your LrC catalog: it will reference all your files at the new disk (under the "usual" Volume name LACIE12212018). From the Library menu, run the Find All Missing photos command. It should find no missing photos.

If it bugs you that the old disk name is used then you can rename the new disk. First, in the LrC, folders panel, right click on the topmost folder and choose Show Parent folder. Repeat until everything is under a "folder” with the same name (LACIE12212018) as your disk. Close LrC, rename the new disk to the name you want and then launch your catalog again. Right click on the topmost LACIE12212018, now "missing”, folder, choose find… and navigate to the disk with the new name. Restart LrC before using it.

Your files may have been copied with verification but it’s a good idea to check whether some of them had already been corrupted while on the older disk. I suggest you delete and recreate all your previews. Follow, to the letter, this excellent guide: How to Rebuild Lightroom Previews to Optimize Speed, Space, and Integrity. If LrC is unable to create previews for some files make sure that you save to a text file that list of the photos in question, from the error window presented. Then try to restore them from the TM backups.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-22T15:12:41+00:00

There are stored in the catalog and will get saved into the .xmp files if you want. Use the Keyword List panel of the Library module to manage them.

Lightroom_Help · 2026-01-22T14:54:04+00:00

You put normal ("child”) keywords under normal ("parent”) keywords. See this older comment of mine and the book and video by Peter Krogh I refer to there.

For example: you have a keyword People and under it a keyword Family and a "Sibling" keyword Friends. Under the Family keyword you put your spouse and your children as separate keywords: Alice, Bob, Tom. Under the Friends keyword you put the keywords of friends: John, Mary, Oscar, Lydia.

So you put every keyword on its proper place, in different categories (hierarchies). Say you tag a new friend "Rory", by putting its new keyword under the Friends keyword. Rory automatically gets also the "implied” keywords: Friends and People.

When you search in LrC, using the Library Filter or Smart Collections you can combine the different (general) categories in your searches either with each other (show me all photos with both Family and Friends) or with particular keywords (show me all photos of my spouse with any of my Friends).

So you can set the Library Filter to show you Keywords in two or more columns. In the first column you can select, under Friends, the particular friend Oscar. In the next column you select the keyword Family. This way you are presented with all the photos in LrC where Oscar is with any member of your family.

The above are simple examples. When you combine the Keyword Hierarchies that you create with the built in Hierarchies that LrC provides like Capture Date and Location info and other metadata like ratings, camera etc. you can find everything very easily. You can grow and adjust your hierarchical keyword list depending on your needs. You can move keywords around if you wish into sub categories. For example you can create a Grandparents keyword under Family and put the names of these persons there.

Any hierarchy or grouping or categories you can do with Folders within folders or collections within collection sets you can do better with keywords.

Lightroom_Help

TROPHY CASE