Add a fully offline Local workflow to Lightroom for iPad, allowing photographers to browse, cull, rate and edit RAW files directly from an external SSD without importing them to Creative Cloud.

I am a professional wildlife photographer and safari guide, and I regularly spend extended periods working in remote parts of Africa where internet access is extremely limited or completely unavailable.

On a typical trip I can generate hundreds of gigabytes of RAW files, and sometimes close to 1 TB. A cloud based workflow is therefore simply not practical. Even when some internet is available, uploading that volume of data from a remote safari camp is impossible.

I would love to replace my laptop with an iPad Pro for much of my field workflow. The iPad is powerful, has an excellent display and would significantly reduce the amount of equipment I need to carry. As a photographer already travelling with multiple camera bodies, large lenses, storage drives and other equipment, removing a laptop from my kit would make a genuine difference.

What prevents me from doing this is Lightroom’s dependence on importing images into its cloud based ecosystem.

I would like Lightroom for iPad to have the same type of Local workflow available in Lightroom desktop.

My ideal workflow is very simple:

Camera cards > external SSD > iPad Pro > Lightroom > Lightroom Classic at home.

I want to connect an external SSD containing my RAW files and browse those files directly in Lightroom without importing, duplicating or uploading them to Creative Cloud.

While travelling, I need to be able to:

• Browse RAW files directly on the external SSD
• Quickly cull images using Pick, Reject and star ratings
• Edit selected RAW files using Lightroom’s normal editing tools
• Keep the original RAW files on the external SSD rather than duplicating them onto the iPad
• Work completely offline
• Store ratings, metadata and edits locally, ideally using XMP or another Lightroom Classic compatible method
• When I return home, connect that same SSD to my Mac, import the trip into Lightroom Classic and retain the ratings, selections and edits I made on the iPad

This is not really a request to put the entire Lightroom Classic application on iPad. It is a request to allow Lightroom for iPad to become a genuine professional field companion to Lightroom Classic.

The iPad Pro hardware is more than capable of being an exceptional field photography device. For photographers working in wildlife, travel, expeditions, sports, events and other high volume environments, however, requiring hundreds of gigabytes of RAW files to enter a cloud based library makes that workflow impractical.

Lightroom already has much of the functionality required. Bringing Local file browsing and editing to iPad, with metadata compatibility with Lightroom Classic, would allow photographers like me to travel lighter, work offline and make productive use of the time we have in the field without changing our primary Lightroom Classic workflow when we return home.