Today’s Question: In the Catalog section [on the left panel in the Library module of Lightroom Classic] there is a caption marked “All Synced Photographs.” Can you explain this feature?
Tim’s Quick Answer: The “All Synced Photographs” collection in Lightroom Classic automatically includes all photos you have synchronized to the Creative Cloud online storage. These are the photos contained within collections that have synchronization enabled.
More Detail: In Lightroom Classic you manage the storage of your photos locally, such as on hard drives connected to your computer and with a folder structure that you define. This differs from the cloud-based version of Lightroom, where online “cloud” storage is the primary method of managing photos.
However, you can still make use of synchronization of photos to online storage for selected photos in Lightroom Classic. That enables you to access those synchronized photos from virtually anywhere by using the Lightroom app for mobile devices or accessing Lightroom through a web browser by signing in to your Creative Cloud account at https://lightroom.adobe.com.
To synchronize photos to the cloud using Lightroom Classic, you can simply turn on synchronization for a collection. First, make sure synchronization is enabled within Lightroom Classic by clicking the cloud icon that appears at the top-right of the Lightroom Classic interface.
You can then enable synchronization for a collection. If you hover your mouse over the name of a collection in the Collections section of the left panel, you’ll see an icon appear to the left of the collection name. An empty checkmark indicates that synchronization is not enabled for the collection. A double-headed arrow icon indicates that synchronization is enabled. You can click on the icon to toggle synchronization of the collection on or off.
Of course, before synchronization a collection you need to create a collection and add photos to it. To create a collection, click the plus (+) button to the right of the Collections heading on the left panel in the Library module, and choose “Create Collection” from the popup menu.
In the dialog that appears you can enter a meaningful name for the collection and turn on the “Sync with Lightroom mobile” checkbox so synchronization will be enabled for the collection. Click the Create button to create the collection, and then drag-and-drop photos into the collection to add them to the collection and initiate cloud synchronization for those photos.