Since Adobe released Lightroom Mobile 2.4, which includes support for editing RAW files, I have been experimenting with using my iPad Pro as part of my photography workflow as I wanted to find a way to use the iPad as a desktop replacement for when I'm away from home. I wanted to share with you my experience, which has been mostly successful so far.The workflow allows me to use my iPad Pro to make edits of RAW images (.cr2) captured with my digital camera for editing and sharing directly from the iPad, or for editing on Lightroom Desktop on the PC when I'm back home.Firstly, for this test the following was used:iPad Pro 9.7" running iOS10 Beta 3, iCloud Photo Library enabledLightroom Mobile 2.4 with Creative Cloud subscriptionLightroom CC 15.6.1 on Windows 10 PC.Lightning to SD Card reader (2016 version)SanDisk Extreme SDHC-I SD CardiCloud account with 50Gb storage plan50Mb fibre broadband connection For the test I had taken 216 photos using my Canon G7X in RAW and JPEG mode. I then realised that I had to delete the JPEG copies as the iPad will only read the JPEGs where there is a RAW and JPEG under the same file name.The workflow is as follows: Insert SD card into Lightning to SD Card reader and insert to iPad.The iPad will bring up the Import dialog and the thumbnails of your RAW images will start to load. Choose Select All and Import Photos (you do not have to wait for the thumbnails to load). It took 2 mins 45 secs to download 213 RAW files to the iPad, which are about 19Mb each; this is about 1.3 seconds per photo. Provided you are connected to WiFi and have enough iCloud storage space, the original RAW images will start to be backed up to iCloud instantly - you can check this by going to www.icloud.com.From the Photos app, select Albums > Last Import > Select > Select All > Add To > New Album (name new album).With the photos now in an album, you can go through and cull the images that you don't want (note: deleting them only sends them to the Recently Deleted folder, which permanently deletes the photos after 30 days).Open Lightroom Mobile. Either import the images into Lightroom by creating a new Collection: Add Photos (my preferred method), or by choosing Camera Roll > (drop down) > Select Album (choose album or open Recently Deleted).You will notice a small RAW symbol in the middle of the thumbnails indicating that they are RAW files. Click ... > Select All > Add Photos.The images will be added to Lightroom Mobile and you can start to make edits on the iPad. The original RAW images (not Smart Previews) are then synced to Lightroom Desktop via Creative Cloud and will appear in your organised folders as if you have imported them directly to the PC. (It is important to note that the original RAW file will now be backed up on your PC in the same folder organisational structure as you would expect if you were to import directly to Lightroom Desktop). Any edits you have made on LR Mobile will be synced over to LR Desktop.Once the photos have synced to Creative Cloud severs, you can then delete them from your iPad's Camera Roll to free up storage space (or, if you have enough iCloud Storage, you can free up storage by letting iCloud automatically manage your device storage so you never run out of space).Overall I found the process to be very straightforward and the new iPad has more than enough processing power to be able to handle RAW image editing. It also has a very nice high resolution screen. In fact, during operation it feels significantly faster than my HP laptop running Windows 10. Also, unlike the desktop version, LR Mobile makes full use of screen real estate on the iPad in editing mode, which makes it easier to use than running the full Lightroom on smaller laptops.The main limitation for me is that I still need to switch to LR Desktop to do some advanced editing such as HDR merge and panorama, but because LR Mobile syncs across the original RAW images over the Cloud, the transition between the mobile and desktop applications is seamless.I hope that some people will find this useful. It's great to finally have almost full desktop capability on the iPad and I think it's going to really transform my photography workflow.

Known Participant

Question

A RAW workflow on the iPad - my initial impressions

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
August 5, 2016
12 replies
47124 views

Since Adobe released Lightroom Mobile 2.4, which includes support for editing RAW files, I have been experimenting with using my iPad Pro as part of my photography workflow as I wanted to find a way to use the iPad as a desktop replacement for when I'm away from home. I wanted to share with you my experience, which has been mostly successful so far.

The workflow allows me to use my iPad Pro to make edits of RAW images (.cr2) captured with my digital camera for editing and sharing directly from the iPad, or for editing on Lightroom Desktop on the PC when I'm back home.

Firstly, for this test the following was used:

iPad Pro 9.7" running iOS10 Beta 3, iCloud Photo Library enabled
Lightroom Mobile 2.4 with Creative Cloud subscription
Lightroom CC 15.6.1 on Windows 10 PC.
Lightning to SD Card reader (2016 version)
SanDisk Extreme SDHC-I SD Card
iCloud account with 50Gb storage plan
50Mb fibre broadband connection

For the test I had taken 216 photos using my Canon G7X in RAW and JPEG mode. I then realised that I had to delete the JPEG copies as the iPad will only read the JPEGs where there is a RAW and JPEG under the same file name.The workflow is as follows:

Insert SD card into Lightning to SD Card reader and insert to iPad.
The iPad will bring up the Import dialog and the thumbnails of your RAW images will start to load. Choose Select All and Import Photos (you do not have to wait for the thumbnails to load). It took 2 mins 45 secs to download 213 RAW files to the iPad, which are about 19Mb each; this is about 1.3 seconds per photo. Provided you are connected to WiFi and have enough iCloud storage space, the original RAW images will start to be backed up to iCloud instantly - you can check this by going to www.icloud.com.
From the Photos app, select Albums > Last Import > Select > Select All > Add To > New Album (name new album).
With the photos now in an album, you can go through and cull the images that you don't want (note: deleting them only sends them to the Recently Deleted folder, which permanently deletes the photos after 30 days).
Open Lightroom Mobile. Either import the images into Lightroom by creating a new Collection: Add Photos (my preferred method), or by choosing Camera Roll > (drop down) > Select Album (choose album or open Recently Deleted).
You will notice a small RAW symbol in the middle of the thumbnails indicating that they are RAW files. Click ... > Select All > Add Photos.
The images will be added to Lightroom Mobile and you can start to make edits on the iPad. The original RAW images (not Smart Previews) are then synced to Lightroom Desktop via Creative Cloud and will appear in your organised folders as if you have imported them directly to the PC. (It is important to note that the original RAW file will now be backed up on your PC in the same folder organisational structure as you would expect if you were to import directly to Lightroom Desktop). Any edits you have made on LR Mobile will be synced over to LR Desktop.
Once the photos have synced to Creative Cloud severs, you can then delete them from your iPad's Camera Roll to free up storage space (or, if you have enough iCloud Storage, you can free up storage by letting iCloud automatically manage your device storage so you never run out of space).

Overall I found the process to be very straightforward and the new iPad has more than enough processing power to be able to handle RAW image editing. It also has a very nice high resolution screen. In fact, during operation it feels significantly faster than my HP laptop running Windows 10. Also, unlike the desktop version, LR Mobile makes full use of screen real estate on the iPad in editing mode, which makes it easier to use than running the full Lightroom on smaller laptops.

The main limitation for me is that I still need to switch to LR Desktop to do some advanced editing such as HDR merge and panorama, but because LR Mobile syncs across the original RAW images over the Cloud, the transition between the mobile and desktop applications is seamless.

I hope that some people will find this useful. It's great to finally have almost full desktop capability on the iPad and I think it's going to really transform my photography workflow.

This topic has been closed for replies.

mikebrodt

Inspiring

No, you would want to use either the SD Card Reader or the Camera Connector. If you are looking to use WiFi to transfer, usually the camera can generate it's own local WiFi network. But for the iPad, I don't bother. It eats up battery power. If you don't have an internet connection at time of upload, the full files are copied locally to the iPad until you get a connection that it can use.

This is another good reason to use an external drive as well. You'll automatically get a second backup built-in to the upload process until you get back to an area that has coverage.

R

regann66573138

Participant

Hello!

Question, do you need a WIFI connection to transfer the photos from your SD to the iPad? If you are in the backcountry with no WIFI signal like I will be, I want to know that I can still back them up to the iPad and then upload to iCloud and LR when I get a WIFI/Cell signal again.

Thanks

mikebrodt

Inspiring

I have an alternative workflow that seems to work well. It does involve an additional purchase, but it solves a number of issues. LaCie and Western Digital both make portable harddrives that have WiFi or USBthat can connect to your iPad. The beauty of this system is that you can take an SD card from your camera, automat copy it to the drive, and then do a direct import into Lightroom over WiFi or USB. In the case of the LaCie, no Internet is required. The Western Digital one may require an upload to Creative Cloud.

Either way, this solution means that you don’t have to deal with the ridiculously slow SD card reader, you don’t have to import twice (first to the Photos app, then Lightroom), and you get a built-in portable backup of all of your photos, which Lightroom can‘t do natively.

My my personal recommendation is for the LaCie DJI CoPilot. The only down side to it is that it is a hard drive, not an SSD.

C

Cronin.sfc

Participating Frequently

Hi Scott,

Great post, plenty of food for thought for a newcomer to Lightroom. I have just been having a go at some imports via the camera card adapter with my iPad Air 2, it will be interesting to see any differences to your experience (and others, once I’ve had a chance to read all the replies).

initial observations from my experience are that the raw files seem to be uploading even though I also had RAW and JPEG of each image (no need to delete the JPEG). It seems initially a JPEG appeared in the cloud (giving the impression that the iPad had only imported the JPEG) but it seems the RAWS follow behind at a slower pace. Observing the upload from Lightroom Classic CC, all the files eventually appeared listed as RAW with JPEG sidecar image.

Cheers,

Steve

GregzLab

Participant

Same problems with the slow upload to CC

I hope Adobe will allow to sync only a smart preview to cloud (like desktop version) and the xmp to the desktop.

It will be much easier, going back home, to transfer RAW files to desktop by copying them to any folder / or the Mobile sync folder and then tell Desktop LR that files have moved.

In general, i miss :

- keywords management

- sharpening tools

- presets sync

- the adjustement brush (also in radial and linear filters)

- watermark sync for mobile export

CromCrom

Participating Frequently

Great post, thank you Scott.

i have been trialling the same thing:

1) import to photos on ipad

2) initial look through and edit

3) import to autosynched lightroom iOS collection which in turn auto syncs to desktop

my problems are so far:

1) as other have noted, terrible resolution images in Lightroom iOS making editing a waste of time and reduces LR iOS to a great photos rating app

2) as others have noted, nightmare syncing times...4 days and counting for 200 test raw images?!

3) difficult to manage import process on LR desktop. I hold my master images on a NAS and the mac disconnects from the network folder frequen which in turn means that LR errors. I'm currently trying amphetamine (like caffeine) to solve the network disconnects but the problem is actually syncing between the iPad and CCloud...tests still in progress

i am also trying to work out how to apply presets to the files that are auto-sync'd. I have a renaming and folder structure that gets applied for imports from directly attached cameras - so far this doesn't appear to happen with syncing.

also, I appear to be unable to apply import development presets too...again testing at the moment.

i am considering giving up on Adobe sync and using something like the great PhotoSync app. I havent tried it yet but I'm guessing my workflow would then become something like:

camera > iPad photos > photosync to Nas box > import to Lightroom desktop > sync to LR iOS.

doing that would mean that I'd do initial vetting on photos in the same way but i'd lose the flag up/down in LR iOS. It would overcome the network'd nas disconnecting though.

i'll update as the experiment continues but I'd be interested if anyone has feedback on what I'm doing.

cheers,

crom

S

scotth51774914Author

Known Participant

I agree with you Crom.

The main issues seem to be:

- Painfully slow upload to CC

- Working on low-res JPEG previews

- Lack of general sharpening tool

For those reasons I tend to only use the iPad if I am away from the PC and feel the need to share an image quickly. It would also be handy to use on holiday for when I had some downtime in the evenings and wanted to go through my images from the day.

F

FrankWPhoto

Known Participant

I have two questions regarding a RAW and JPEG workflow, if anybody could help.

Usually, my workflow in the field involves getting in-camera selected M size jpegs onto iPad (via wifi card or wifi adapter) from an assignment, editing these in LR mobile and sending them via ftp (which currently requires an additional step since LRM has no builtin FTP or captioning capability, come on...). So when I later get back to my computer, I would love to just sync the edits (and cull) from the CC edited jpegs to the original RAW files imported from the primary (CF) card. Is there a way of doing that?

Second thing is, can I import RAW files into LRM in another way than just using the very clunky iOS import interface? I am thinking about Shuttersnitch, eye-fi/wft-x and sending just protected (tagged) files directly from the camera. Would these stay raw or does iOS convert them when saving into camera roll?

Thanks

O

Offbeat Bryce Productions

Inspiring

I personally use iCloud Photo Library only for photos i really want to keep easily organized for quick viewing. Also video as I've discovered Lightroom mobile is super slow at syncing video especially 4k taken on my 6s. I then use Lightroom for the rest. Once I take a photo, either inside the Lightroom mobile app or camera plus app depending on the type of image I'm capturing I then go into Lightroom and sync only the photos I want to use to edit. Then I edit them on my mobile or computer and then export a copy to iCloud Photo Library.

phototocanvaspdx

Known Participant

Thanks all soooo much. I've been waiting for this. I'm getting ready to purchase a 12" MacBook or a 9.7 iPad Pro (currently on a mini 4), and I really want to get this figured out. There's A few things I'm still confused about.

1. If I have "download full resolution" turned off, does that do anything for me if I'm importing the files directly from an sd card? I'm wondering if that means the full raw files go to creative cloud, leaving just smart previews on my iPad, allowing more space. If this is the case I wouldn't be as worried about getting the 256gb version.

2. I'm very confused about the need to delete the images from camera roll after importing them to LR. I just want to make sure I'm not storing two full size raw copies of every image. I get why you would delete them, but am confused if it is necessary.

3. I also use LR mobile on my iPhone but definitely don't want all of my raw files I import to my iPad to download to my phone. I'm assuming to prevent this, I have "download full res" turned off on my iPhone. But in that case will the full res jpegs I add to the collection that were taken with my phone still transfer full res files to my desktop?

It seems like Adobe could solve a lot of problems with two additions here. Adding the direct import, and also a way to make it so I can import to iPad, make adjustments, then when I get home plug the iPad into my computer to transfer the files, just syncing the edits via the internet.

Any help you guys can provide regarding the best way to optimize the full res confusion would be great. Thanks!

99jon

Genius

A helpful discussion Scott.

Looks like Adobe is making good progress and this is an area that should continue to evolve. At present I’m still carrying around my MacBook Pro for editing on the road although I could see an iPad use for smaller raw shoots.

At present the drawback is not being able to bypass the Photos App on iOS. I’m assuming file duplication (and storage space) occurs by importing into LR Mobile although the images could subsequently be deleted from Photos once inside LRM and syncd to desktop.

Maybe Apple will permit direct import into third party apps at some point in the future.

S

scotth51774914Author

Known Participant

Hi Jon,

I don't think duplication occurs when you import photos into Lightroom Mobile as it works like a database, just like the desktop version, and the pictures never leave the Camera Roll until syncing with CC is complete. At that point you can work off the Smart Previews pulled from the Cloud. At least I think that's how it works. Essentially all the mobile app lacks is a direct import function, but the images would still be saved into the Camera Roll, like the pictures are saved onto the C:\ drive on the PC when working on the desktop.

99jon

Genius

OK thanks Scott. I always felt Apple hid masters somewhere in a package contents file, but maybe using camera roll is the trick. I will keep following Adobe’s future developments. There is a new app for Lightroom Apple TV.

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