What do you think of the adobe's cloud offering?

[maflynn]

So I've not posted in this forum in a while, here I am asking for advice.

I've stopped using the adobe subscription but when I did have it, I had the classic. I've kept my images on a separate partition that I backed up as needed, mostly just using a copy synchronization process.

Anyways I'm thinking of moving my images to the cloud, I'm kind of thinking of going to back to abobe - here's why:

I have office 365 and a terabyte of storage, whoever my experience with OneDrive has been less then stellar. On occasion the service/app has crashed but a reboot has fixed it, but overall I'm not sure if I want to trust my images.

Another option is to iCloud, my photography has largely been on the iPhone of late, while I have a small canon that I really like life has been such that I've seemingly gravitated towards the iPhone - BUT (and this is a big but). I don't use a mac. So that more or less seems to negate any possibility of using that plus I still want to use my cameras.

Finally is adobe - but using the non-classic plan which gives me a terabyte of storage. The downside is that I don't get photoshop but truth be told, I really don't use PS much. Another positive is that I get to use LR on my iPad which may very well be something that I do more now that I have an iPad Pro

Has anyone cancelled this plan, and how painful was it for you to pull your stuff off the cloud?

 

[Steven-iphone]

If this helps. I use Adobe's Photography Plan - PS and LR Classic 20GB cloud storage for $9.99 / month. Too little storage for my needs.

I also use a Windows Surface GO2 tablet and OneDrive.

The LR catalog is stored locally on the Surface. The image and sidecar files are located on OneDrive, and are synced automatically as I use LR (note: I don't use PS).

This allows Cloud (image) storage and little impact (LR catalog) on the storage space on the Surface tablet.

There is over 8GB of LR images on OneDrive and LR is showing only 3mb of Adobe Cloud use.

If use this method, you may want to generate Smart Previews, else when you access an image in LR, the image file will be downloaded from OneDrive. Not an issue if you have a fast internet connection.

I did this method since I prefer LR Classic over the limited LR Cloud version.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

Since One Drive seems to sometimes apply sharpening filters to my images I have more or less abandoned it. Personally when I do move images to the cloud (DropBox) I do not use the synching app. Limit myself to access via my browser. Just feels a lot safer than any synching app. But we all have our own comfort levels.

 

[Steven-iphone]

Since One Drive seems to sometimes apply sharpening filters to my images I have more or less abandoned it. Personally when I do move images to the cloud (DropBox) I do not use the synching app. Limit myself to access via my browser. Just feels a lot safer than any synching app. But we all have our own comfort levels.

Interesting, I have not noticed any sharpening on the Raw images retrieved from OneCloud. These images are stored in their own folder, not the Pictures folder.

 

[maflynn]

Since One Drive seems to sometimes apply sharpening filters

Oooh that’s good to know

 

[maflynn]

Too little storage for my needs.

Same, my storage requirements are up 300 to 400 - I’m away from my computer and so I’m guesstimating

 

[Dockland]

Since One Drive seems to sometimes apply sharpening filters to my images I have more or less abandoned it. Personally when I do move images to the cloud (DropBox) I do not use the synching app. Limit myself to access via my browser. Just feels a lot safer than any synching app. But we all have our own comfort levels.

That's horrible if OneDrive "fixes" images.

I use Dropbox, it's the only vendor providing 3 TB of storage (on a consumer level) Don't know the cost, I think I pay ~$200 a year or around that amount.

 

[jz0309]

I use Adobe's plan that includes LR classic and PS, but I manage my photos locally, ~650GB of photos + 130GB of index ... I personally have no plans to ever put my photos just in cloud, but everyone is different.
One issue I found with Adobe's cloud is that a set of photos I wanted to share with family was not accessible by my relatives in Europe, US worked fine.
I do have 1 TB of onedrive (Office 365) but the "album" feature has some other quirks I do not like, eg cannot have an album within an album.

 

[Apple fanboy]

As above. Just use LR Classic and PS and manage my own storage and back ups.

 

[deep diver]

I use licensed versions of LR and PSE. I'm a control freak so I don't use subscriptions or Cloud storage, and I keep a few backups. There are quite a few excellent non-subscription programs that are LR alternatives. There are several threads you can find in the digital photography forum to get information on them. You will get a lot of good but conflicting advice here. Ultimately, you have to feel secure in your choice.

 

[Steven-iphone]

Choices, choices. I've tried the stand alone products, and did not find one that migrated the LR image adjustments well.

 

[Ray2]

I use iCloud and CC. I've lost near 5 gb of data in iCloud. Apple worked with me for 3 weeks to recover the data. To no avail. The folders were there. They took up 5 gb. They could not be opened. Adobe is too slow to be taken seriously as a cloud service. But it has worked so far. I like CC and it offers some services I use for free. Dig beyond Lightroom and PS.

Just never lose sight of the fact the cloud is for convenience. Local drives are your backups.

 

[fcortese]

I use the LrPs photography subscription plan and store my photos on an external HD with plenty of backup to another external HD and the cloud thru Backblaze. I'm on a Mac system. My personal preference is to control my images (41+K) and not store them in the cloud. I only use the cloud as a backup precaution. Since switching totally to Fujifilm camera and lenses, I have been toying with using Capture One. However, I'm deeply ingrained in the DAM system of Adobe. Should the subscription plan increase in price switching to another system is something I would be anxious about doing. So I share some of your concerns with your situation and am curious to see what others think and do.

 

[mollyc]

Have you considered a NAS at home that allows for remote access? I can access my Synology NAS anywhere. I cannot use LR to access it while mobile since my LR catalogue lives on my iMac hard drive. But I can access all my files and use it as backup.

 

[maflynn]

Have you considered a NAS at home that allows for remote access?

Yes, but truth be told, it seems over kill for my needs - having access to my images across multiple devices is one aspect of going with a cloud and I understand this fits the NAS functionality as well.

I've lost near 5 gb of data in iCloud.

This is the concerning part - not specific to iCloud, as others stated you're giving up control over your files. For some providers they've proven themselves trust worthy. Truth be told, while I have 1TB of storage with OneDrive, but I really don't trust them all that much

 

[loybond]

I have unlimited Google drive storage. About 72 TB at the moment. I also get unlimited Google photos storage at full size. I've found this to be an excellent option, costs me about $13 CAD per month.

 

[deep diver]

I think that you should consider what "convenient" means to you. The experience @Ray2 describes is my worst photo nightmare. (My gear is insured.). One of my backups is on a portable external SSD drive. It's easy for me to grab it and drop it in my bag. Some have objected that this is too complicated and time consuming. It's no more so than logging into an account. Even if it is, I can spare a literal 2 minutes of my life to have peace of mind.

 

[Steven-iphone]

I think that you should consider what "convenient" means to you. The experience @Ray2 describes is my worst photo nightmare. (My gear is insured.). One of my backups is on a portable external SSD drive. It's easy for me to grab it and drop it in my bag. Some have objected that this is too complicated and time consuming. It's no more so than logging into an account. Even if it is, I can spare a literal 2 minutes of my life to have peace of mind.

Good plan.

I use OneDrive as image storage and access since it is integrated with Windows. And my Surface tablet is limited on storage (no Nas, or primary External drives). Like to kept it mobile and simple. Backups are kept on an external encrypted drive and another encrypted cloud service.

 

[tlnargi]

You do know that even if you have the 20GB plan, if you sync from LR classic on desktop, only smart previews sync and it doesn’t count against your cap. The smart previews are high enough res to share on social media.

 

[4sallypat]

I use Adobe CC and manage storage on my work's NAS (100+ TB) connected on VPN from anywhere and Google Drive / Filestream (Unlimited storage).

Don't use iCloud much except for iOS backups.

 

[jeabraham]

So I've not posted in this forum in a while, here I am asking for advice.

I've stopped using the adobe subscription but when I did have it, I had the classic. I've kept my images on a separate partition that I backed up as needed, mostly just using a copy synchronization process.

Anyways I'm thinking of moving my images to the cloud, I'm kind of thinking of going to back to abobe - here's why:

I have office 365 and a terabyte of storage, whoever my experience with OneDrive has been less then stellar. On occasion the service/app has crashed but a reboot has fixed it, but overall I'm not sure if I want to trust my images.

Another option is to iCloud, my photography has largely been on the iPhone of late, while I have a small canon that I really like life has been such that I've seemingly gravitated towards the iPhone - BUT (and this is a big but). I don't use a mac. So that more or less seems to negate any possibility of using that plus I still want to use my cameras.

Finally is adobe - but using the non-classic plan which gives me a terabyte of storage. The downside is that I don't get photoshop but truth be told, I really don't use PS much. Another positive is that I get to use LR on my iPad which may very well be something that I do more now that I have an iPad Pro

Has anyone cancelled this plan, and how painful was it for you to pull your stuff off the cloud?

Lightroom on the iPad Pro is enough reason alone to subscribe to Adobe's Photography Plan. Editing on the iPad in Lightroom is very satisfying and productive.

Having all me "real" photos in the same place (Lightroom catalog) on all the computers, the iPad, and the iPhone is also reason enough to subscribe to Adobe's Photography Plan.

As for "pulling your stuff off the cloud", the correct way to do it is to have one desktop computer with big hard drives and run Lightroom Classic on that computer. People don't realize that you get both version of Lightroom with the plan. Use Lightroom Mobile on all devices except that one desktop. Use Lightroom Classic on that one desktop. You then tell Lightroom Classic to synchronize all your photos from Lightroom Mobile. That way you always have a copy of all your photos on your one desktop.

So, yeah, if you're a photographer, thats actually three amazing reasons to subscribe. Even if you never use Photoshop.

 

[Ray2]

Lightroom on the iPad Pro is enough reason alone to subscribe to Adobe's Photography Plan. Editing on the iPad in Lightroom is very satisfying and productive.

Having all me "real" photos in the same place (Lightroom catalog) on all the computers, the iPad, and the iPhone is also reason enough to subscribe to Adobe's Photography Plan.

As for "pulling your stuff off the cloud", the correct way to do it is to have one desktop computer with big hard drives and run Lightroom Classic on that computer. People don't realize that you get both version of Lightroom with the plan. Use Lightroom Mobile on all devices except that one desktop. Use Lightroom Classic on that one desktop. You then tell Lightroom Classic to synchronize all your photos from Lightroom Mobile. That way you always have a copy of all your photos on your one desktop.

So, yeah, if you're a photographer, thats actually three amazing reasons to subscribe. Even if you never use Photoshop.

As I spend 3 to 4 months traveling each year, another benefit of CC is I don’t concern myself with backups during travel. Import to iPad > files move to the cloud > home Mac starts on Energy Saver schedule > LR Cloudy is launched on boot > cloud images (originals) come down automatically > TimeMachine and a staggered (weekly and daily) SuperDuper run backups > Mac shuts down on schedule.

 

[Ray2]

I use the LrPs photography subscription plan and store my photos on an external HD with plenty of backup to another external HD and the cloud thru Backblaze. I'm on a Mac system. My personal preference is to control my images (41+K) and not store them in the cloud. I only use the cloud as a backup precaution. Since switching totally to Fujifilm camera and lenses, I have been toying with using Capture One. However, I'm deeply ingrained in the DAM system of Adobe. Should the subscription plan increase in price switching to another system is something I would be anxious about doing. So I share some of your concerns with your situation and am curious to see what others think and do.

Ex C1 user here. Have you looked at Iridient Transformer to do the raf conversions and create dng's for LR? Uncheck the LR sharpening and NR boxes for sure. Then see what settings you like. Frankly, set right (obviously the render you find right) I believe it outshines C1. Plus LR is easier to use and has superb DAM.

 

[Steven-iphone]

Ex C1 user here. Have you looked at Iridient Transformer to do the raf conversions and create dng's for LR? Uncheck the LR sharpening and NR boxes for sure. Then see what settings you like. Frankly, set right (obviously the render you find right) I believe it outshines C1. Plus LR is easier to use and has superb DAM.

My understanding is that LightRoom has native support for DNG conversion

I can see one benefit of DNG. The edits are stored in the file header, no need for a sidecar

 

[robgendreau]

I use non Classic some as the original source of images when working from camera to iPP. It works fine, and I like the storage. But I use Classic far more often and ultimately have everything stored locally. Non classic still doesn't have lots of the features of Classic as well, and I couldn't get by without those.

iCloud is an option, but not sure how robust it is. I've had issues with non photo storage there, so rather reluctant. And at least Adobe has a downloader for the images it stores online; not sure Apple has that.

I hate to say this, but I might distribute my online presence over more than one service. Sure, the services do backups of their own, but that doesn't mean they can't bork your stuff. I backup to the cloud, but that's rather different than what Adobe and Apple do.