Lessons

Lesson Info

Lightroom Classic: Cleaning Up the Cloud

1 So we've talked 2 about the issue where Lightroom Classic 3 is sending a Smart Preview up to the cloud. 4 And that Smart Preview storage area 5 is kind of a freebie. 6 So when we send Smart Previews up to the cloud, 7 they don't cost us in space. 8 So we want send more of those 9 and we want to send less 10 full high-resolution images to the cloud, 11 especially if we have a small amount of space. 12 So if you only have a terabyte 13 or maybe 200 gigabytes, 14 you really gotta conserve some space. 15 And so you wanna send most of your images 16 up as Smart Previews. 17 Unfortunately, you don't have the option 18 here inside of Lightroom, 19 the new version of Lightroom 20 or inside of your iPad or your iPhone. 21 Any photo from these devices 22 that is running the new version of Lightroom 23 is going to send up 24 the full high-resolution image 25 up to the cloud. 26 And so as a result of that, 27 you don't get a choice 28 to send up a Smart Preview. 29 You should have the choice 3...

0 but that's how they make some money 31 on the cloud, obviously. 32 So we want to use that, 33 I want to use Lightroom 34 to send the full high-resolution image 35 to the cloud because it's a great backup 36 for immediate safety. 37 So I want to do that. 38 But at some point I have to be able 39 to take those off the cloud 40 and replace them with a Smart Preview 41 so that I can kind of take 42 this one terabyte of space that's getting full 43 and I can take it and limit the amount of space 44 that I'm taking up. 45 So it's a matter of just kind of, 46 refreshing the system. 47 So imagine if you could just go up 48 to the cloud and say, 49 " Okay, I've got a terabyte full 50 of high-resolution images. 51 Highlight all those and right click 'em," 52 and say, "Replace these with Smart Previews." 53 Wouldn't that be cool? 54 And then it'd be a free bunch of space. 55 But they're never gonna do that 56 because that's way too easy. 57 And so I'm gonna teach you 58 how to take 100 gigabytes 59 of high-resolution images 60 and convert them to Smart Previews 61 so that they cost you nothing in storage space. 62 And you can keep doing this and doing this. 63 That way your one terabyte of space 64 that you have can be constantly being reused. 65 So you bring images in, 66 you work on 'em, 67 and then once they're delivered 68 and it's time to go to 69 kind of a portfolio management kind of style, 70 I'm gonna show you how to convert 71 those portfolio images to Smart Previews. 72 That way they're not taking up space. 73 Let's do it. 74 So we're gonna go into Lightroom Classic, 75 and I've just gone to some images 76 that are full high-resolution images. 77 Now, they are HDR images from my phone. 78 They're not from a high resolution, you know, 79 Canon camera or something like that. 80 But still, nonetheless, 81 this is a great way to show this to you. 82 So I've got these shots from New York City 83 that I took on my phone. 84 I like 'em, I want to keep them, 85 but I don't want 86 to have them taking up extra space. 87 And obviously this is particularly more important 88 when you have really large photos 89 from your camera, 90 but this will show you how to do it. 91 So these are all high-resolution images. 92 You can see if I go over 93 to the info panel here in the metadata. 94 If I zoom on in here, 95 you'll see that the dimension is 96 4,000 by 3,000 pixels. 97 They're DNGs, they come from the iPhone. 98 I want to take these images off the cloud 99 and replace them with Smart Previews 100 so that they don't take up any space 101 because right now they are 102 in this area right here. 103 They are in the full-resolution cloud. 104 They are not in the Smart Preview storage area, 105 which is my free area. 106 And so I want to change that. 107 I'm gonna highlight all of these images 108 and I'm going to go up 109 to the All Synced Photographs area. 110 So it's right below All Photographs, 111 All Synced Photographs. 112 I'm going to click on All Synced Photographs. 113 Now, you see that not only are these images 114 in the cloud, 115 but there are some other images right 116 around those images. 117 And so, probably these are on the cloud 118 somewhere else in a different folder. 119 They probably came down and I moved them, 120 they might be duplicates, 121 that kind of stuff going on. 122 So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to highlight 123 everything that I shot on the iPhone here. 124 So I'm gonna take this entire set of images. 125 So we're starting here and we're going to 126 here. 127 This entire set of images was shot on my iPhone, 128 and I want to get them off the cloud 129 and then back on the cloud. 130 So, I saw the images in a little folder 131 from one specific day coming 132 down from New York City 133 but when I went to All Synced Photographs, 134 I find that there are ton more 135 that are already up there. 136 So I want to do this to all of 'em, 137 I might as well take care of it all at once, 138 so we're gonna take care of it all at once. 139 So what I'm gonna do 140 is I'm going to first make note of all 141 of these images, 142 because I want to put them all back up. 143 So I'm gonna hit Command+N 144 to make a new Collection. 145 And that new Collection is just going to be 146 a temporary folder or a temporary Collection. 147 So I'm just putting "temp", 148 'cause that means I can always delete it later. 149 So always put "temp" at the beginning. 150 That way you can sort by "temp" 151 and you can delete them. 152 So then I'm gonna say 153 "Temp-New York iPhone 154 photos for Smart Preview", 155 right? 156 So I'm just telling myself what they are. 157 You can name it anything you want. 158 You could just put "temp" 159 and only have that one as a "temp" all the time. 160 I'm gonna put this inside of our lectures 161 inside of this workshop 162 so that I can find it really easily. 163 So it is this one here. 164 So I'm putting it inside 165 of our workshop on Lightroom Classic, 166 oh, sorry, Lightroom workflow. 167 And then I'm going to make sure 168 that I include the selected photos 169 and I don't need to synchronize it 170 with Lightroom right now. 171 Don't want to do that, okay? 172 And trust me, just don't do it. 173 So I'm turning that off 174 and I'm hitting Create. 175 I've just created a new Collection 176 and that Collection has all of those images 177 that I want to take off of the web. 178 So now I'm gonna head up to the top. 179 I've got all these highlighted 180 and I'm gonna go to All Synced Photographs. 181 It's looking for all the photographs 182 so sometimes when you click on this, 183 it takes a little while to like, 184 open it up because it looks 185 at all the photographs. 186 And you can see 187 that they're all still highlighted 188 because all of them are synchronized somewhere 189 in the cloud. 190 So what I'm gonna do now 191 is I'm gonna right click all of them. 192 So they're still all highlighted. 193 I'm gonna right click them all, 194 and I'm gonna go down 195 to the very bottom to this option 196 "Remove from All Synced Photographs". 197 If I do that, it's gonna say, 198 " Okay, but 230 images are getting removed 199 "from the cloud but they'll stay 200 "on your computer. 201 "Is that okay?" 202 Yeah, that's absolutely okay 203 so I hit okay 204 and now these are going to 205 be pulled off of my All Synced Photographs. 206 Now that means that 207 the high-resolution images are going 208 to be pulled from the cloud. 209 Sucked down, no longer there. 210 See that? They're gone. 211 So now what I'm gonna do is 212 I'm gonna go back down to that Collection. 213 So I'm going back down to my Collection 214 and I know where that is. 215 There's the "temp" right there. 216 These are all the images 217 that I pulled off the cloud 218 and they're no longer on the cloud. 219 So the first thing I'm gonna do here 220 is I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna sort 221 by all the virtual copies. 222 So that's right up here at the top, 223 that little thing with a folded page 224 in the corner there, 225 that is a virtual copy. 226 So I'm taking all of these virtual copies, 227 highlighting 'em 228 and I want to not just remove them from this 229 particular collection. 230 I want to actually delete them, 231 get rid of them, pull 'em out of, 232 just forget about 'em. 233 And remember, they're just virtual. 234 They're not the real thing. 235 So there's a copy or 236 there's the original version is 237 sitting right next to 'em. 238 And so when I remove the virtual copy, 239 it's just gonna take that and forget about 'em 240 because they're virtual anyway. 241 So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go 242 to the photo menu and down at the bottom, 243 there is an option to remove these photos 244 from the catalog. 245 You can also hit option Delete to do that. 246 So I'm gonna do that 247 and it's going to remove all of those 248 from this catalog 249 and by virtue of removing a virtual image, 250 you are deleting it. 251 If you were to remove a real image, 252 not a virtual one, but a original, 253 removing means Lightroom forgets about it, 254 but it would still be in the folder. 255 But when you remove a virtual image 256 because it forgot about it 257 and it's not real, it just disappears. 258 So it's kind of like if I had delusions 259 and I forgot about the delusions, 260 then the delusion, which is maybe it's a dragon, 261 disappears because it's not real. 262 Okay, so now I have a bunch of real photographs. 263 They are not the delusional photographs, 264 they're the real photographs. 265 And I am going to highlight all of these 266 'cause remember, we've pulled them off. 267 They no longer exist up in the cloud. 268 And I'm going to just sort by one star and above. 269 So I'm gonna go either down here 270 to the filter right here, 271 or I can go up here to the filter up top. 272 And I'm just gonna click on one star and above. 273 There's all my one star images. 274 Those are the images that I want to 275 keep up on the cloud. 276 So now I'm going to highlight all of those. 277 I'm gonna hit Command+N. 278 I'm gonna make a new collection called 279 "Travel to New York", 280 and I'm going to synchronize 281 that one with Lightroom, meaning with the cloud. 282 And of course include the selected images 283 and I hit Create. 284 And now, I have just made those into 285 Smart Previews and sent them to the cloud. 286 So if you go here, you can see now 287 that I've got a new collection, 288 "Travel to New York", 289 it is synchronized with the cloud 290 but now these 32 images are Smart Previews 291 that are going up 292 to the free section of Lightroom. 293 Essentially what happened was 294 my phone sent high resolution images 295 to the cloud. 296 I was paying for that space. 297 It also sent them down to Lightroom Classic 298 inside of a Collection. 299 I just simply found the images 300 that I wanted to replace 301 and I told Lightroom classic, 302 " I don't want those images 303 on the cloud anymore." 304 So Lightroom classic instructed the cloud 305 to forget about 'em. 306 By doing that, 307 now I have emptied out that section of the cloud 308 and I just simply put them in a new Collection 309 and re-uploaded them. 310 And because Lightroom Classic uploaded 'em, 311 they came up as Smart Previews. 312 So now, you know, 313 30, 50 images or whatever that it was, 314 that were taking up space are now not 315 taking up space in the cloud, 316 even though they're still up in the cloud 317 as Smart Previews. 318 So that's how we do it. 319 Take 'em down, put 'em right back up. 320 That's all you have to do 321 and it will free up space. 322 So if you are running outta space on your cloud, 323 'cause you have a 200 gigabyte limit 324 on your cloud, 325 don't worry about it. 326 You can use that space temporarily, 327 then go into Lightroom Classic, 328 follow the instructions I just gave you, 329 re-upload them as Smart Previews, 330 and now you will have the 200 gigabytes back 331 on your cloud. 332 So just go to your cloud button here 333 and click on the gearbox here. 334 And then once you've gotten to the gearbox, 335 you can go to the more Account Info online. 336 So if you click on that, 337 it's gonna take you to your account online 338 and figure out how much space you have. 339 And if you are at 200 gigabytes, 340 that's pretty low for these days 341 and they're kind of trying to 342 phase people out of that anyway. 343 So you might as well look for an opportunity 344 to change your account over 345 to the one terabyte plan. 346 'cause the one terabyte plan is not all 347 that much different in price from 348 the one that you're on if you're 349 on the 200 gigabyte plan. 350 So just go to the one terabyte plan. 351 And then of course there are, you know, 352 options for more terabytes if you need 'em 353 but if you have one terabyte 354 and you follow this policy, 355 you probably won't need all that much space.