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Photo Guy BC
Photo Guy BC
Participant
April 17, 2016
Question

Lightroom integration with iCloud to export / import photos

  • April 17, 2016
  • 3 replies
  • 54371 views

I'm currently using Apple Aperture and considering changing to Photoshop Lightroom but have a question about importing and exporting photos from iCloud. There's been a few similar questions posted but so far no answers.

Here's what I really want to accomplish (which are all supported in Aperture):

1. If I take photos with my iPhone or iPad they are configured to automatically upload the photo to iCloud. This means that when I startup Aperture the next time it automatically downloads all photos taken on either of these iOS devices into the Aperture library.

2. Aperture also allows me to select photos in the library (which I may have edited or touched up) and "share" them to iCloud similar to how I can share photos to Facebook or other online services. One major benefit of this is that I can view my photos from iCloud on my TV with my Apple TV.

Based on on these two use case scenarios can someone who's familiar with PLR give some advice as to how these would be solved?

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    J
    Community Expert
    Jao vdLCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    September 24, 2016

    Lightroom mobile does an awful lot of what you want to do. It is very easy to get stuff on the cloud with it and you can edit images on your iOS or android devices. There is a great appleTV app for it that allows you to run slideshows and such from your collections etc. only disadvantage of Lightroom mobile is that contrary to apple's solution, it will only sync to a single desktop Lightroom account and that you need a creative cloud account. Apple's solution breaks down really quickly though because of limited cloud space. What's really great is that LR/mobile will now allow you to shoot raw files on some recent phones. They sync directly to your desktop.

    Lightroom works really well with SmugMug using the standard publish plugin that smugmug makes available. I use it to publish my entire smugmug site. Smugmug is working on an appleTV app so you would be able to directly access your smugmug galleries similar to how you can access galleries on iCloud on your appleTV now.

    D
    donrleonard
    Participant
    September 24, 2016

    What about running lightroom desktop on multiple machines (i.e. a macbook and a desktop)? Any experience syncing over iCloud drive?

    J
    Community Expert
    Jao vdLCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    September 24, 2016

    There are a few people doing this over dropbox. My guess is that it would be the same for iCloud. caveats clearly apply in that you have to be very diligent in closing Lightroom on one computer and allowing time for syncing before you open the catalog on the other machine. There is a significant potential for corruption. I'd also be worried about bandwidth limitations. My own catalog file is GB's large. My previews take 50Gb or so. Many broadband providers have data limits that you can easily run into if you're constantly syncing GBs of files.

    The very best solution to this is still a small portable SSD drive with catalog and images on it. These are credit card size nowadays and plug into a USB3/firewire/USB-c port and give you very fast performance. This works perfectly and without any concerns over bandwidth, catalog corruption, etc.You can do the same thing with a big thumb drive which would be even smaller.

      R
      robgendreau
      Inspiring
      April 17, 2016

      Lr is a solution oriented more toward regular cameras rather than an add-on to an iPad or iPhone camera. Perhaps Apple's Photos would be more useful to you since it would do what you seek to accomplish.

      Apple's iCloud and/or iCloud Photo Library is pretty much limited to Apple's own applications.

      Lr can import photos from an iPad or iPhone attached to one's laptop or desktop. And can publish to most online services as well. And Lr can send photos to an iPad or iPhone via Lr Mobile as well, but it's designed to go in that direction: from Mac OS TO iOS.

      Photo Guy BC
      Photo Guy BCAuthor
      Participant
      April 17, 2016

      I probably gave the wrong impression of the typical types of photos that I manage in my collection. The vast majority of my photos are taken with a DSLR which I import directly from the camera's memory cards. Only a small fraction get taken with the iPhone.

      Technically the Photos app on my Mac would address the synchronization issue but it would be a huge step down from Aperture so it's not an option. Right now I only see Lightroom as the best option for the day that I move away from Aperture.

      R
      robgendreau
      Inspiring
      April 17, 2016

      Sorry; misunderstood.

      On FB, you wouldn't be able to copy a random FB photo into Lr without first downloading to somewhere local and then importing (not very hard to do BTW).

      But it they are YOUR FB photos, as in you posted them, presumably you have the originals already. Lr has a built in publishing service to send stuff to FB. And Jeffrey Friedl has an even better publishing service plugin. But there isn't a corresponding automatic action going in the opposite direction (nor was there one in other applications like Photos or Aperture).

      FB is also different than say Flickr or Smugmug and most other sites in that you can't update photos. If I publish to Flickr Lr keeps track of that photo, so if I tag a face or crop it then a simple republish command sends those changes on to Flickr. But again that's publishing, not synching per se; I wouldn't edit the photo in Flickr and have those changes sent back to Lr.

      Lr, like most DAMs, even Aperture, presumes local storage. Your big DSLR RAWs and whatnot are there, and you publish edited versions to disks, online services, printers, etc. Or send them via synching and Lr Mobile to iOS for viewing and light editing. But it doesn't work off cloud storage directly.

      Note that I said Lr can publish to disk too. I publish to a NAS that also connects with my HDTV so I can view images there. I also publish to a set of folders that Photos references. I don't ever do much with them, if anything, in Photos, but Photos then syncs those JPEGs. I also use Mylio to directly sync images to mobile devices, and Mylio interacts directly with Lr, so if I change an image to BW on my iPad that will synch to the image on my Mac in Mylio and then in Lr as well.

      In short, if you intend to use cloud storage as the primary place for photos organized by Lr, fergeddaboutit. But if you want to publish to online sources, it works fine.

      Maybe if we knew more about the anticipated workflow; this probably sounds more complex than it really is.

      dj_paige
      dj_paige
      Legend
      April 17, 2016

      In general, there is no integration between iCloud and Lightroom.

      To Import photos into Lightroom, they cannot be in "the cloud". They must exist on a local disk (internal or external), camera card, USB thumb drive, or network drive.

      To export photos to iCloud, see

      http://www.barnabyrobson.org/2012/08/26/tutorial-export-from-lightroom-to-icloud-photo-stream/

      Photo Guy BC
      Photo Guy BCAuthor
      Participant
      April 17, 2016

      So can you only publish to online services? For example are you you saying that you wouldn't be able to copy a photo from your Facebook photos directly back into Lightroom?

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