Sony ARW files on iPhone or iPad - any suggestions as pulling my hair out

Question

I've used Sony's Imaging Edge app and the Transfer & Tagging app, along with FTP'ing files over to my phone and iPad and having absolutely NO LUKC!!! Am I missing something?

I've moved from Panasonic lumix to Sony and can't figure out how to transfer original (full size) raw (compressed) images onto my iPhone or iPad where I can "preview" and then import them to Lightroom for editing... the previews in photos are blank but can see the file size is big so suggests it's all there, but when sending to Lightroom or trying to import it to Lightroom on both iPhone and iPad it's a no go!

I don't want to transfer them as jpeg, as work with raw files and I'd rather transfer to preview on iPhone, like I did with Panasonic on there imaging app. Hence transferring original files (bigger files).

I hope someone can give me a solution before I list all my gear on eBay... 5 hours so far on google and YouTube 😔😥😭

Jao vdL · Answer

Your best bet getting your raw into your phone's Lightroom is to directly connect to your camera or a card reader using USB. If your iPad has USB-c it is trivial and works really well. Just hook a USB-c cable up to a card reader or the camera and your files will import straight into Lightroom when you have Lightroom open. Works great. If you are using your iPhone you probably need a lightning to USB cable or a lightning card reader. Both work fine. I would never use a camera manufacturer app. They are all terribly badly written. No exceptions. It's hard to put into words how bad camera manufacturers are at writing apps.

If you really insist on using the camera manufacturer's app (again regardless of the brand, probably not a good idea), see if you can write the raw files into the files app instead. Usually you have to scroll down a bit in the share sheet to find the files option. You should be able to import into Lightroom from there. Sending to Lightroom from the share sheet likely makes it render a jpeg instead. It is possible that the camera manufacturer's app will simply refuse to save raw files anywhere though. I managed to use the above trick with Nikon's app before I realized that using a USB card reader is 100x faster and you can import straight into Lightroom and you don't have to use the manufacturer's c*appy software.

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