Learn how to move all of your photos from Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic over to the new Adobe Lightroom (Cloud-Based) ecosystem with this in-depth video tutorial. If you are someone who is certain that the time has come to make the switch from the traditional desktop-focused Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic image storage model over to the new Adobe Lightroom cloud-based image storage system then this video is for you.
The migration process that I cover throughout this tutorial is not very hard but this process might take a while depending upon the size, and the complexity, of your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic Catalog. Before you begin moving all of your images from one program to the other, you should also be aware that migrating images from Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic over to Adobe Lightroom (Cloud-Based) is meant to be a one-way street.
You have nothing to fear here, if you are really ready to change image management programs, but you need to know that there isn’t an easy way to move everything back from the cloud-based type of Lightroom to Lightroom Classic at this time. Likewise, trying to use both Lightroom programs to manage the same group of images is a risky proposition and working with both programs simultaneously is definitely not advised.
The most important thing that you need to do before you can start the transition process away from Lightroom Classic is to make sure that all of the images that your Lightroom Classic Catalog references are currently available. Photos that are currently offline, or missing, inside of your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic Catalog will not be migrated. Any photos that are currently missing inside of your Lightroom Classic Catalog will not be uploaded to your online storage account at Adobe.com as you make the move over to Adobe Lightroom (Cloud-Based.)
Once you have tracked down, or removed, all of the missing images inside of your Lightroom Classic Catalog then there are a couple of extra steps that you should take if you have used a lot of Snapshots in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic’s Develop Module. If Snapshots are a feature that you used to save different looks for your images then these extra steps are necessary since this is a feature that the cloud-based type of Lightroom lacks.
There is are a couple of extra steps required too if you are one of those Lightroom Classic users who built a complex folder structure using words rather than the date of capture for your folder names. Neither of these additional steps are very hard and they might not even be necessary for you depending upon the way that you currently have things set up inside of your Lightroom Classic Catalog.
Finally, there is an important step that some users will need to take before they can activate the Migration Utility that lives inside of Adobe Lightroom (Cloud-Based.) If the Lightroom Classic Catalog that you are about to import contains a relatively small number of photos, and if the hard drive inside of your computer has plenty of free space available, then you probably will not need to make any changes to your preferences inside of Adobe Lightroom (Cloud-Based) before you activate the Migration Utility. Click here, if needed, for more advice from Adobe on a couple of other minor features that cannot be migrated over from Classic to Adobe Lightroom (Cloud-Based.)
If on the other hand, if you are about to migrate over a Lightroom Classic Catalog that indexes thousands of photographs then you will need to think carefully about how much free space you can afford to use for this project on your computer’s internal hard drive.
The reason that you might need to stop and do some thinking here has to do with the way that the cloud-based version of Adobe Lightroom actually works. When you import new images into Adobe Lightroom (Cloud-Based,) then a copy of your new photos gets stored temporarily inside of your computer. Ordinarily these copies, which Lightroom cloudy temporarily stores inside of its own “staging area” while your new images are being uploaded, is no big deal. But if you are about to migrate over a Lightroom Classic Catalog that references a ton of photographs then your computer’s internal hard drive might not be large enough to hold all of these temporary copies.
If your computer’s internal hard drive is not going to be big enough to complete this process then you might need to attach an additional hard drive to your computer so that there will be enough free space available for Lightroom to use for your “staging area.” Once all of the images from your old Lightroom Classic Catalog have been uploaded to your account at Adobe.com then this extra hard drive space can go away, but the math required here is definitely something that you want to consider before you begin the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic to Adobe Lightroom (Cloud-Based) migration process.
The good news is that if you follow all of the steps in this video, and if everything works as planned, then all of your images will be safely stored for you at Adobe.com. Once you move your images from Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic over to the cloud-based Adobe Lightroom world then you will be able to access all of your original images from any internet connected device anywhere in the world!