Lightroom Classic comes with 20GB of space on Adobe’s cloud service (Lightroom CC/Web/app) but did you know that you can sync photos to the cloud and then edit them on your phone without using that space?
The original photos are not synced, but a smaller cut down smart preview is which in most cases will be indistinguishable from the original.
If you create a collection, all the photos in that collection can be synced with the cloud. They’ll appear as an album of the same name in the Lightroom app on your phone or iPad. They won’t take up any of that valuable 20GB of space. Right-click on the collection and click “Sync with Lightroom”. You can also click the checkbox to the left of the collection name.
Unfortunately Adobe won’t allow you to sync smart collections, and I presume that is intentional for whatever reason. However, with the help of the Any Source plugin you can configure it to sync smart collections with the cloud. This very handy plugin syncs the smart collection with a dumb collection that can then be synchronised.
I use it to synchronise the following smart collections:
- Published photos.
- Unpublished photos.
- Photos on my TODO list.
- Recent Photos from the last 3 months.
The plugin has a free trial but is PWYW and well worth paying for!
Syncing my recent photos with the cloud is simple.
- Create a smart collection.
- Call it “Recent Photos”.
- Add one rule: “Capture Date” “is in the last” 3 “months”.
- Save.
That will create your new smart collection. Now follow the instructions to synchronise smart collections on the Any Source homepage. It might take a few minutes for the album to appear in mobile Lightroom but it will eventually.
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It’s possible to sync recent photos without any plugin now. I published this post in 2020 but this help page describes the “Add to collection” checkbox on the import dialog that has been there since 2021.
I haven’t used it, but you could use it to add your imported photos into a synced collection.
Since Lightroom 13.3 I have noticed that syncing appears to take a heavier toll on my machine, even when generating synced images for small phone Jpeg files. Lightroom Classic is barely usable while syncing images. It might be better to disable syncing until you’re done editing your new photos.