How to remove photos from “All Synced Photographs”
All Synced Photographs means all photos on Adobe’s Lightroom Mobile server
After removing pictures from a synced collection or after stopping a collection from syncing, the images remain on Lightroom Mobile and in “All Synced Photographs”. How do I find these photos so I can remove them from Adobe’s server?
When Lightroom Mobile began, photos were automatically cleared from Adobe’s server whenever you removed them from a synced collection or when you stopped syncing the collection. I liked that clarity. If a photo was in a synced collection, it was on Lightroom Mobile. If it wasn’t, it wasn’t.
Sadly, sometime last year Adobe changed things. I’m not sure why, but photos now remain on Adobe’s server unless you remove them from “All Synced Photographs”. In one sense this doesn’t matter. This web space is unlimited, and it doesn’t really make it any harder to find pictures on mobile devices or in Lightroom on the Web. Still, many of us don’t like to clutter up our online library with photos that we no longer want on Adobe’s server.
The way to remove them from Lightroom Mobile is to remove them from “All Synced Photographs”. Easy enough? Unfortunately it’s not so easy to identify which pictures are in synced collections, and which aren’t. So how can we find them?
The solution isn’t automatic, but it is surprisingly easy and logical:
Create a smart collection
- Add a single criterion Collection Name / Contains / a e i o u (or whole alphabet).
- Let’s call it “Photos in All Collections”
- Select all the photos in “Photos in All Collections”
- In the Catalog panel, click “All Synced Photographs”
- Be careful not to change the selection which now consists of those photos that are in collections and which are also in “All Synced Photographs” – so just the photos we want on Adobe’s server
- Use the menu Edit > Invert Selection
- so our selection is now those photos that we don’t want to sync
- Press Remove
- Job done!
- If you get a dialog box about removing photos from collections, you’ve done something wrong. Cancel and repeat the above steps more carefully.
Please clarify. When I create a smart collection named “Photos in All Collections” with the criterion “collection contains aeiou” [with no spaces], I get an empty set with no photos. So there are no photos to select as stated in the second step of the method. What am I missing here?
Why no spaces? Omitting them means that your smart collection is searching for photos in collections with the letters aeiou in that order. The screenshot shows spaces, so the smart collection looks for collections with a or e or i or o or u.
I tried both with and without spaces, but was getting the same empty set result. However, I have found my mistake. There are two easily confused criteria. I was using the criterion “collections” in the root menu which gave me the null result. The correct criterion is to click on “source” and then select “collection” without the “s” in the submenu. It’s the little things. Thanks for your help.
Genius! A problem that I have been wrestling with for ages. Such an easy fix. THANK YOU!
Doesn’t this method still leave synced any photos which are in a unsynced collection?
Yes that’s what I’m finding!
I observe the same behaviour. Has anyone found a solution to this problem?
In lieu of the “not in any collection” collection, use the set of images selected by doing the following:
Click the magnifying glass at the left edge of the “Filter Collections” field and select “Synced Collections” (instead of “All”). Then select the first collection showing, scroll to the end of the list, shift-click. You have now selected every Synced Collection (and no unsynced collections). Then proceed as before, namely, Ctrl-A to select all the images. Select the special collection “All Synced Photographs” (under the “Catalog” heading). Edit -> Invert Selection. Your selected set is now the set of orphans. From here if you want to inspect, create an new unsynced collection of the selected images. If you trust your process, Backspace to remove the orphans from All Synced Collections (or right-click or Photo -> Remove from Collection).
If you want to avoid creating orphans (from within Lightroom Classic), you can do it, though it’s tedious. The key concept is that while deleting a member of a synced collection orphans it (if it is not in another synced collection), whereas deleting a synced collection will not orphan its members (you get a popup asking if you do want to leave them as orphans, default is no orphans). So don’t delete individual images from synced collections. Instead, duplicate the collection. The duplicate is not synced (yet). Do deletions from the duplicate. Rename the original synced collection to a temporary name. Rename the duplicate to the original name (remove ” Copy” suffix). Sync it. Delete the renamed original collection. If you delete the original before syncing the duplicate, all the images will have to be uploaded again. If you have sorted the original collection into a hierarchy of folders in LRCC or LR Mobile, you’ll have to redo that, because your duplicate is a new collection that will be added at top level, not replace the old one. Tedious, but can be done if important. You’ll forget sometimes though or not take the trouble, and there are other sources of orphans, so you’re going to want to purge orphans once in a while anyway.
Correction: the situation is better than described above in 2d paragraph. Deleting a single photo from a synced collection on LR Desktop (Classic) also gives you a popup window with the choice whether or not to keep the photo in “All Synced Photos” even if it isn’t a member of another synced collection. The default is “Yes” but you can answer no (i.e. do not orphan the photo), and if you check “do not ask me again” LR will remember the “no” answer.
Thank you!
So far as I see, there is zero way to keep adobe from TAKING our photos now. Every time I make any collection, even after doing this exercise several time, it always calls EVERY collection I try to make a SYNC collection. Sorry, this just tells me Adobe wants customers to have no choice but to let them have all our photos for free. Detest this firm more every time I have to use these products. Looking for (and found one) to replace this stuff.
Adobe doesn’t want to “take” your pictures. When you are creating these collections, you are leaving the “Sync with LRCC” box ticked – untick it once and leave it that way. If you want to stop its Sensei artificial intelligence analysing your synced pictures, there are opt out instructions here https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/machine-learning-faq.html
Great tip. You can also avoid inverting the selection if you define your collection as ‘doesn’t contain’ a e i o u. Try it out — it will only show photos that are not in any collection.
This doesn’t actually work the same way, if you have collections that aren’t synced to the cloud (which is the issue). If you have photos in a collection that is synchronized to the cloud, and then unsync that collection, those photos return a FALSE to the search (they are in a collection with a/e/i/o/u), but still need to be removed from the cloud. The search for “any collection” necessarily includes the subset of collections still synchronized to the cloud, so by searching for those and then inverting you identify the photos stored on the cloud but not in a collection.
This statement makes no sense. I’ve capitalized the contradicting parts to make this more obvious.
“If you have PHOTOS IN A COLLECTION that is synchronized to the cloud, and then unsync that collection, those photos RETURN A FALSE TO THE SEARCH (they ARE IN A COLLECTION WITH A E I O U)”
The method put forth by ‘A Photographer’ is indeed easier and works exactly the same. This is simple set theory.