Easy way to remove originals but keep smart previews in the cloud?

Question

I think I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm going to need to use a combination of Lightroom CC on my mobile devices and laptop and Lightroom Classic on my desktop computer so trying to come up with a method that's going to work well...

I've been using the Lightroom Mobile functionality to upload photos from mobile devices extensively for the past couple of years and as such have been ended up with quite a lot of data in the cloud already without doing any migration from my existing Classic catalogue (57GB at last check).

Now that the unlimited storage associated with Lightroom Mobile has gone it looks like I need to do some housekeeping on the cloud storage to keep it below the 20GB limit (as I'm not convinced by the price point of £20 for the 1TB option).

So, my plan, if I can find an easy way to do it, is to continue to keep all my images (smart previews) in the cloud (I like being able to browser old photos on the go sometimes :-) ) but to only keep the originals for photos that I'm currently working on in the cloud.

So, ... is there an easy way to leave the smart preview there and remove the originals?

Victoria Bampton · Answer

Since you already have 57GB up there, double check https://lightroom.adobe.com > LR icon top left > Account Info and see how much storage is listed. If it already says 1TB, it's your lucky day. ;)

James Simms · Answer

Lol, yes, I was holding off from mentioning that I seem to have been given 1TB already :-) ... mainly because I'm currently on an annual pre-paid plan which is due to expire next month and I'm not sure what they're planning to do to my account when it does!

e.g. if I do another year pre-paid on the 20GB plan would it reduce my storage to 20GB and tell me to delete some photos (hence me trying to work out how without losing them from my mobiles entirely)? Or would it carry on as is... (which would be great but unlikely!)? Or is paying monthly more likely to keep the 1TB...? All questions that I'm not sure that the helpdesk will answer for me!

Flavio Tischhauser · Answer

I'm in the same boat and would prefer to switch to smart previews in the cloud for older pictures. I haven't found a simple way yet, other than re-importing it with LR classic. I thought I could trick it by converting the files to DNG in LR Classic, but surprisingly this causes it to be re-uploaded as a full DNG instead...

Adobe Photoshop Family

James_S

Easy way to remove originals but keep smart previews in the cloud?

Responses

Victoria_Bampton_Lightroom_Queen

James_S

Victoria_Bampton_Lightroom_Queen

James_S

reed_cavanagh

ftischhauser

Victoria_Bampton_Lightroom_Queen

Helpful Widget

Tags