Storing Catalog in the Cloud

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Today’s Question: Could you store a copy of your [Lightroom Classic] catalog in the Adobe Creative Cloud folder?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you could store a copy of your Lightroom Classic catalog in the Creative Cloud folder, as long as you only use that as a backup of your catalog, not to actually work within Lightroom.

More Detail: When you subscribe to an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription plan (https://timgrey.me/ccplans) you get a certain amount of cloud-based storage, based on the plan you choose. While that storage is primarily intended to be used for the images and documents you create with Adobe Creative Cloud applications, any files you’d like can be copied to that folder location.

Your creative cloud storage is represented by a Creative Cloud Files folder on your computer, and any files in that folder will synchronize too the Adobe Creative Cloud. Similarly, files you save to that location from another computer or device will synchronize and appear in the folder on your computer.

You can navigate to the Creative Cloud Files folder easily from within the Creative Cloud app on your computer. Click the icon for the Creative Cloud app, and go to the Files tab. Click the Open Folder button, and a window will open for your operating system, showing you the Creative Cloud Files folder. You can copy any files you’d like to that folder (including your Lightroom Classic catalog), and they will be synchronized to the Adobe Creative Cloud. This will provide a backup copy of your files on the Adobe servers.

Note that if you are using this approach to backup your Lightroom catalog, you only really need to copy the file with the “lrcat” filename extension, as that is the actual catalog. In other words, there’s no need to consume a significant portion of your Creative Cloud storage by backing up the previews files, as those previews can be re-generated at a later time if needed.