Today’s Question: I have synchronization enabled in my Lightroom Mobile app on my smartphone and in Lightroom Classic on my desktop computer. A part of my preferred workflow is to capture raw images with Lightroom Mobile and transfer them to my desktop computer automatically via syncing. I would then like to delete the photos from my smartphone and retain them on my desktop computer. If I do this, will the photos that I delete from my smartphone also be automatically deleted from my desktop machine via syncing?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Once the photos have successfully synchronized to Lightroom Classic on your computer, you can safely delete them from your smartphone and they will not be deleted from your computer. However, I do recommend moving the photos to a “permanent” storage location within Lightroom Classic as part of this workflow.
More Detail: As long as synchronization is enabled in the Lightroom app on your mobile device as well as Lightroom Classic on your computer, the photos you capture using the camera feature in the Lightroom mobile app will automatically synchronize to Lightroom Classic on your computer. Those photos will appear in a folder shown below your mobile device, with that mobile device listed as though it was a hard drive within the Folders list on the left panel in the Library module.
Once the photos are shown in the applicable folder within Lightroom Classic on your computer, the source capture files will be on your local hard drive. If you then delete the captures from within Lightroom on your mobile device, the files on your computer will not be deleted.
That said, I still prefer to move the photos within Lightroom Classic to a more “permanent” folder structure within your existing workflow. So, once the photos have synchronized to your computer, you can simply drag-and-drop them to the desired folder location on the drive where you store all of your other photos.