Storage limits???

[TimJWatts]

Hi,

I'm very confused... Wonder if anyone could enlighten me please?

The basic photographers CC subscription including LR and PS is limited to a tiny 2GB and you don;t seem to be able to purchase add-ons (odd) - but there are rumours that Customer Services will increase to 71GB (also an odd number) if you ask nicely...

But what is that 2GB used for? I read somewhere else that LR-sync is unlimited.

I've got 97GB of photos (and some videos) most of which are cruft, with a smattering of ones I wanted to tag and star-rate in LR and make available via LR Mobile to the family.

So does this mean that I can't (97GB > 2GB) or is the 2GB only used for stuff I maybe "publish" explicitly to the general public (I assume you can do that in CC)?

Also - a side question:

Can I limit what syncs? I have some commercially sensitive photos that I prefer to never touch any cloud system. Is that just a case of "do not ever let LR see those" or is it possible to say sync only stuff I rate as (eg) 3 stars and higher or apply a certain tag to?

And as an aside AND/OR question: I know that older versions of LR can publish to many different photo sites - but is there any cloud storage that is not Adobe CC that LR can work with 2-way? (ie does it all have to be in CC's LR-sync storage to be flexibly accessible across mobile and desktop machines?).


Sorry - that's all very n00by - but would be very grateful

Cheers, Tim

 

[thommy]

Theoretically, the space at Adobe is unlimited. However there is a practical limit which is the available storage on the iDevice (in your case, the AppleTV). I have an iPhone the has 64Gb of storage. Storage for OS, other apps and Lightroom Mobile images.

I would say that it's absolutely unlimited space at Adobe, if we mean the cloud space at Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. And if you work online at this site with your photos, there are no limits whatsoever!
And regarding the mobile amount of Gb storage, I would like to know how photos from LR desktop are synched to my mobile phone and then editable and viewable on my LR app.
I have a couple of photos synched that way but cannot find the photos physically on my mobile storage. Just did a test synching 50 photos from LR desktop and opened LR app in my Android phone, and checked storage used before and after in my mobile phone - no difference.
I understand that your mobile storage has to be considered if you take photos with your phone. But the other way around?

 

[Jim Wilde]

AFAICT, it's a three-stage process when syncing from LR Desktop to LR mobile. When you sync a collection, and you've waited until the upload has finished, when you open LR mobile on your iDevice you'll see the changes happening in the sense that the collection will appear, with the relevant number of images alongside, and the Lightroom Photos special collection number will also increase.

At that point all that I think has been downloaded is a single thumbnail preview, which you see as the "cover photo" for that collection. So virtually no space on the iDevice has been used at that point.

When you open the collection you'll initially see one thumbnail and blank place-holders for the other images. If your iDevice is online, you should immediately see those place-holders populated with the appropriate image thumbnail....so now a little bit more space has been used.

The smart preview is not downloaded until you open an image into the Loupe view, so now bigger chunks of space are being used. If you choose in the collection's preferences to "Enable Offline Editing", then you should see a dialog box telling you how much space is needed for the download, and how much is available on the iDevice. If you confirm, all the SPs will be downloaded. So it's only this third stage which really starts to utilise your space.

All of the above relates to the iOS versions of LR mobile, but I'm assuming the same or similar will happen on Android.

 

[thommy]

Thanks for the explanation!
That means that storage usage is really not very much affected until you start downloading for offline editing.
Are the Loupe view smart previews stored forever or just cached?

 

[Jim Wilde]

Are the Loupe view smart previews stored forever or just cached?

The user can decide. If you do nothing then yes they will remain cached on the iDevice until no longer needed. However, at the collection level, one of the preferences is "Clear Cache" which does as expected and deletes all downloaded SPs (and raw captures) in just that collection. Useful for getting rid of the cached original raw captures when they've been uploaded, and then replacing them with SPs.

 

[thommy]

Now I understand a lot more how it works.
There is however no Android version of the "Clear Cache" at the collection level, only at the highest level and for entire LR cache.

 

[Jim Wilde]

Must say I'm a bit surprised about that. However, in some areas the Android version is playing "catch-up", so hopefully that option will appear soon.

 

[Gnits]

Two different file types. Web uses pre-rendered JPEGs, which are 2048px. Mobile uses pre-rendered JPEGs for some views, and 2560px smart previews for editing.

Useful info ... thanks.