Schools using Adobe Photoshop with OneDrive - How does it work for you?

[Daaood]

I'm exploring options for integrating Adobe Photoshop more seamlessly into our school's workflow, particularly with our existing Microsoft OneDrive setup. We're looking to understand how other schools are managing this combination and what their experiences have been like.

Specifically, I'm curious about:

• How do your students access Photoshop and save their work to OneDrive? Do they work directly on files stored in OneDrive, or do they save locally and then upload?

• What are the common challenges you've faced? (e.g., file size, sync issues, bandwidth, compatibility, saving errors)

• What solutions or best practices have you found to overcome these challenges? (e.g., specific settings, teaching strategies, network considerations)

• How does collaboration work with Photoshop files on OneDrive? Do students frequently collaborate on the same file, and if so, how do you manage version control?

We're hoping to gather some real-world insights to help us make informed decisions and improve our students' experience with these powerful tools. Any advice, tips, or experiences you can share would be greatly appreciated!

[Frodo_Baggins]

We have policies in Intune to silently sign the users into OneDrive map a student sharepoint site for students to save their work to (students use the same machines to avoid having to wait for SharePoint to download files every lesson)

[psydii]

No roaming or mandatory profiles, no AppData redirection.

OD Client running and syncing their OD by default.

Folder redirection for Documents etc into folders in the OD folder.

***For courses that are not producing "Office Based" documents as their 'physical' output, students then sync their "Working Files" folder  (from the Class Teams/SharePoint) and work in that.

For all other courses, either work in the Assignments App, or save work into Documents

 

We have seating plans so they always use the same computer/laptop in each class (where possible)

 

We have two classes of device. Traditional GPO managed Desktop/Laptops configured as above and Intune Managed shared devices. Intune managed shared devices do not support OneDrive client by default and we treat them as "web only" devices - so no desktop apps and certainly no Photoshop etc.

 

Traditional GPO managed Desktop/Laptop devices need at least 512GB storage to not be a pain to manage if photoshop is in play. With some scripts aggressively purging of cached profiles devices with 256GB can be made to work.  If you can use MDM configuration, deploying parts of the shared device configuration profile via a script (to automatically aggressively delete old profiles, and dehydrate files)  256GB is quite manageable. 

 

Key to making it work though is the seating plan - the student only needs to set up the sync once per course (or devices set). If they move computers every lesson then things quickly become unworkable. This constraint works fine for us.

Edited July 8, 2025 by psydii