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Participant
August 27, 2021
Question

2-way sync between Lightroom mobile and Camera Roll on iOS

  • August 27, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 1773 views

Hi!

 

Here's a workflow that works on Google Photos but doesn't seem to work on Lighroom.

1) I take a picture using the iOS camera app. The picture lands in my Camera Roll

2) I open Lightroom Cc on my iPhone. The picture is then added to Lighroom

3) I make some edits to the picture in Lightroom Cc

4) The edited picture is only available within Lightroom Cc, and if I want to have this edited version in my Camera Roll, I need to export it and manually add it to camera roll, which is tedious.

 

Google Photos for example, or Pixelmator on my iPad do not work the same way. They both take as a starting point a merge of the cloud version of their library PLUS my camera roll as is. If a picture comes from the camera roll and I edit it in the 3rd party app (Google or Pixelmator), then there's a prompt "do you allow APP_NAME to modifiy the picture in camera roll", and then everything remains in sync with my camera roll. Well, I do understand that Lightroom and Adobe Cloud are less deeply integrated.

 

Finally, here's my question: is there an easy way to sync my edits made in Lightroom back to my iOS  camera roll, without having to go through a full "export" then "save to camera roll" process?

 

Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 27, 2021

Lightroom is a non-destructive editor. That means that it does not alter the pixels of the original image, but stores the edits in a catalog. Only when you need the image for something, you export it and then the edits are applied to the exported copy. That explains why your suggested workflow is simply not possible. I assume that the reason why Google or Pixelmator can do this is because they do alter the pixels. They are not non-destructive.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
Participant
August 28, 2021
Thanks for your message which makes sense.
That being said, both Google and Pixelmator are also non destructive, they
simply store on their end the original version of the picture so that they
can revert at any time... So I'm not sure why LR couldn't do the same to be
honest.
Thanks
JohanElzenga
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 28, 2021

@cédricr49343990 wrote:
Thanks for your message which makes sense.
That being said, both Google and Pixelmator are also non destructive, they
simply store on their end the original version of the picture so that they
can revert at any time... So I'm not sure why LR couldn't do the same to be
honest.
Thanks


That is not non-destructive editing. That is making a copy so the original is not edited at all. It is what Lightroom does when you export an image.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
nikunj.m
Community Manager
Community Manager
August 27, 2021

Hi,

 

Thanks for reaching out & for your question! Lightroom mobile does not work this way. It maintains it's own image Library separately from the camera roll of the device & does not sync back to it. Currently, the only way to have the edited version of the image in the Camera Roll is to export the image & have a copy of it in the camera roll.

 

Regards,

Nikunj

Participant
August 28, 2021
Got it - thanks