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.

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ChicoDug

Participating Frequently

Thanks great post and good discussion. I decided a few weeks ago to attempt a pure iPad Pro/LRM approach for a trip to Europe. I wrote up my detailed experience at this location: http://elmundochico.com/?p=2367

bottom line, my experiences were similar, but I found some serious shortcomings in the file management area...lost files (failing to load), and slow/difficult transfer back to the desktop. I'm sure Adobe will end up fixing some of these things, but right now they represent a real limitation.

A

AlainD2

Participating Frequently

Hi Chuck. Doing exactly the same - went on vacation with iPad only and posting daily top pics on FB. Experience is great and I'm just discovering the other apps such as Photoshop Fix.

Your experience makes me a bit wary though and I hope I won't have to resort to reimporting from scratch when I get home next week! I'm at 408 pics so far.

Nice web site!

S

scotth51774914Author

Known Participant

Hi Chuck

Thanks for sharing your experience with LR Mobile. Have you figured out a way to prevent LR Mobile from generating Smart Previews of RAW files which have been directly imported to the iPad? I find these too low resolution for detailed editing; the low quality of the preview is glaringly obvious on such a high resolution display. I appreciate that once you delete them from your Camera Roll you are having to rely on Smart Previews pulled from CC, but until then surely you should be looking at the original file? I found that enabling Offline Editing for the collection didn't make any difference.

I have also found that uploading the RAW images to Creative Cloud to be the single biggest issue in terms of a viable workflow. I think it would be ok for a handful of images, but not from a long day shooting, especially not a holiday album. Despite my download speed on my fibre optic connection being 52mbps, I only get around 3.2mbps uploads, which isn't good when you have have about 200 RAW files to sync. I certainly wouldn't bother trying on a 3G connection or dodgy WiFi hotspot if I had a whole bunch of images to sync. I agree that the culling should be done in Apple Photos before import.

I have tried sharing to Facebook from LR Mobile but forget it because it adds too much compression, much like the Facebook app for iOS. Here's a tip: instead, export the image to your Camera Roll and share the photo via the Facebook website on Safari. I do the same on my iPhone although it uses the mobile optimised site. The quality is much better than doing in-app sharing. I also heard it's better to resize photos to 2048 long edge before sharing to Facebook and there is a third party app that will do this, although I'm not convinced it's necessary.

I agree that all we need now is HDR Merge and Panorama, however there are third party apps that do this now. Has anyone tried them and had any success?

Hope this helps.

A

AlainD2

Participating Frequently

Scott,

Great post. I started doing essentially the same a couple of days ago as we are on vacation (Canon 7D shooting RAW, SD to lightning adaptor).

Additionally, I shoot some pictures with my iPhone (mainly pano) so I have a couple of extra steps in my workflow:

1. Shoot during the day with both DSLR and iPhone (after ensuring the date and time - including time zone) are perfectly synced

2. At the end of the day, create a collection on LRM on the iPhone, and import all pictures from the camera roll. Wait for syncing completion.

3. Import RAWs from the SD card in the Photos app on the iPad as you describe (I do not delete the originals for now - might start doing that when I'm more confident with the process)

4. Launch LRM on iPad. Wait for the collection created on the iPhone to appear. Mark it for "Offline editing". Wait for pics to sync.

5. Add imported RAWs to the collection.

Other steps identical to yours

A decent Internet connection is necessary for iPhone pictures to sync up with Creative Cloud (and down to the iPad) but these are usually not too big. A *good* internet connection is required for the RAWs to sync too (50 MB each).

I have 2 questions:

Can you explain why you sync your pictures with iCloud?

When zooming in on RAW pictures in LRM, I see artifacts that suggest it's a smart preview or a compressed jpg, not the original RAW. Do you get the same? I'll compare with the desktop LR once I'm back home.

Alain

S

scotth51774914Author

Known Participant

Hi Alain,

The biggest problem I have found is the upload speed to CC servers for RAW files. I imported 200 files and it was taking on average 1:45mins per 20mb photo. Unfortunately my upload speed is only 3.38mbps compared to 52.52mbps for download. This is a big drawback as it means I need to leave the iPad on (without it going into lock mode) for hours.

I have also noticed that LR Mobile displays a low resolution preview of the RAW file – perhaps the JPEG? I have checked on LR Desktop and I can see that the original RAW file has synced to the desktop.

I have iCloud Photo Library enabled on my iOS devices so every photo in my camera roll is backed up to iCloud automatically and it also syncs photos across my devices.

What does enabling offline editing do when the source file is already on the device?

A

AlainD2

Participating Frequently

Ok, I use Dropbox for backup and syncing across devices. I toyed a bit with iCloud but found it too complicated for the benefits. I also have a Flickr account, which I use as Apple TV screen saver (it was one of my use cases for iCloud).

The offline editing, as I understand it, forces a download of the full resolution image onto the device. I use it to ensure that I see (and can edit and publish) pictures from both the DSLR and the iPhone on the iPad.

This workflow is very much a vacation one (publishing reasonably good pictures while I'm away from my home computer).

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