Lightroom 5.4 to Lightroom Mobile sync is soooo slow - why no local sync?

‌I thought i saw the slowness issue for a few days, but now it seems to have resolved.  I'm not sure if it was changing wifi to different access point, or freeing some memory on ipad ( I found that i had to delete my text messages to free up about 3 gig memory used by photos, maybe thats ios undocumented feature), i also had re-install LR mobile a couple times.

I managed to get 526 photos onto my iPad in around 2-3 hours. I am not really bothered by this because I am not a professional and does not have strict deadlines to meet. What bothers me really is when the photos fully synced onto my iPad, it took a good 2-4 seconds for an image to load. I can successfully slide through 3-4 images that are sharp sometimes, then the next image will have the spinning wheel which takes another 2-5 secs before it gets sharp. This is a pain when I am trying to share the images with my friends and relatives.

And also I noticed that it's using internet connection too when I am viewing the images. I tried turning off data and wifi and it won't load. I thought the images are already synced into my iPad? The whole reviewing process should be fast and smooth like when I am viewing my camera roll on my iPad. Or am I missing something? Someone please enlighten me.

Hi,

I have a problem with slow syncing (uploading to the cloud). I installed 5.4 yesterday (iMac 2010 OS X 10.9.2, 2.93 GHz Intel i7, 4GB RAM) and created a new catalogue of 1400 images. Installed lightroom mobile on my iPad mini and tried to sync.

This morning, it is still "Syncing 958 photos". This is outrageously slow. I just ran speedtest.net: 0.8Mbps–1Mbps upload speed and 29Mbps download speed on my end. Not the greatest speed but globally probably above average which makes the service flawed. So, after nearly 10 hours I have uploaded about 400 images. That is disappointing.

That makes the service extremely poor for using Lightroom Mobile as an approval/rejecting and light editing part of your routine workflow before doing more involved editing on desktop, for which it otherwise seems fairly well suited. I agree with a few comments here that the workflow is in reverse, I would like to upload via USB/SD card reader to a device and then sync to desktop, so I can do more involved and detailed editing on Lightroom desktop as the last stop in the workflow.

I will test the flow again in a week to see if the bottleneck on the upload speed changes. I am using trial. There is potential but I don't see sense in paying a monthly subscription when I have lightroom desktop already which works great.

I hope that helps for improvement considerations from Adobe, and I like to see Adobe experimenting with new ideas like this one. Good work.

Will

I was excited to hear about Lightroom Mobile. :-)

I had 2 scenarios where I thought that this would be a great addon to my workflow.

a). I shoot large events where I could shoot anywhere from 500 - 4000 images. Intially my illusion was that I could backup my cards at the end of the event, import into Lightroom and sync to my iPad. I could even make a quick selection while at the event and show the client a quick slideshow on my iPad. The main selection would have been while travelling, I could pick and reject, do the sorting and when I got home I could sync back to my desktop and process the selection.

b). At a photoshoot, it was my illision that I'd be able to thether my camera to my laptop with my CamRanger, auto import into Lightroom and sync to the Ipad. With this feature I could litteraly give the client the iPad, they could sit at a distance in comfort and could select and reject as I shoot without the need for them to sit at my computer.

Sadly, it is not to be! The use of the cloud here is the showstopper for me. Yes I have a great internet connection (100MB) for the cloud roundtrip, but this is not how I was expecting it to work.

I was expecting it to work locally, either plugged in or over my local network wifi.

I experimented with 20 RW images and created Smart Previews and it just took way to long. The kind of long thats just frustrating, the kind where you'd throw your iPad against the wall (only joking). Even just editing the name of the collection on the iPad took way to long to sync back.

I can understand the need to logon for subscription authentication, but the cloud hosting is going to kill the use of this product.

So after a brief engagement with a great idea, I am sadly dismissing this product straight away. :-(

The answer to all your problems is to use Photosmith instead.  Rather than cloud, it uses WiFi to sync and has many more features than does the LR app.  You can keynote, rate, flag, caption, create collections, and sync both ways.

I think that for most people the bottleneck manifests itself in two ways.

1. The creation of Smart previews, this is very slow unless you have a really fast machine, this takes up most of the time. I don't believe that most people have these made during import so they need to be created before uploading. This is a huge bottleneck and can only be resolved by turning on the generation of smart previews during import. Or by buying yourself a ridiculously fast machine . But I also feel that there is a lot of room for performance improvement when it comes down to generating smart and normal previews in LR. The same goes for exporting. I know that the LR team doesn't really want to use the graphics card but maybe it's time to start thinking about it. I could offer huge performance gains.

2. The upload speed. The speed at which LR uploads is not really an issue (it seems to max out my upload speed, but I need to measure it to be 100% sure). The issue is that, even though smart previews are small, they are still too large for most home broadband connections to upload effectively. A lot of people have really fast download speeds but ISPs limit upload speeds. And this is an issue that won't be resolved quickly, and has nothing to do with LR or Creative Cloud.

Solution: As most of us probably have our computer and iPad on the same wifi network it would be nice if there was an option to use wifi sync. I understand that creative cloud servers are being used to resolve sync issues. So why not have the option to upload a small file to the creative cloud that contains all the metadata about the current running sync and move the smart previews over local wifi or LAN. And optionally you could, after that sync is complete also start to upload the smart previews to CC (or simultaneously) from either the iPad or the desktop LR application (or both simultaneously).

Unfortunately I also realise that local sync has it's own issues. You would have to copy all your smart previews to your iPad instead of just downloading them "on demand" just like it is now. Which can be an issue on devices like the iPad, where space is limited.

That's why I suggest doing a double upload. First a quick upload, over wifi, to your mobile device. And then a slower upload to the cloud. That way, when LR mobile sees that some collection is also available on CC it would give you to option to delete the local files on your iPad. But until all the smart previews are on CC, LRM won't give you the option to delete the local smart previews, because they would be effectively gone with no way to access them again.

I, again unfortunately, realise that this solution could be confusing to some people. So I don't know if it's a good idea to implement such a thing.

This thread is frustrating!

Lightroom is absolutely fabulous and the mobile tool had promise, but with no direct sync from PC to the iPad, it makes it a toy for iPhone pics at best. As a number of guys had mentioned above, the best use of a companion tool like this is the ability to sort, pick and keyword your images for further development on the PC/MAC, but the speed at which the cloud sync happens makes it completely impractical anyone else in the world other than those in Silicon Valley I presume and even then, it seems to take its time.

For those of you looking for a tool that is a real work companion, try PhotoPhile which has all the "Selection" capabilities with bi-directional sync but has no editing, which is fine!

Adobe, we understand the vision and the drive to get everyone into your cloud, but please think of the practicality for a serious user.

Right, the idea you'd sync these huge raw files, just to view them on a non color managed device, to sit at the pool 'editing', then have to sycn back to the desktop, makes this a solution in search of a problem. So if I understand the 'workflow':

Take camera card to desktop or laptop.

Copy images there then wait to sync to iPad.

Do less work at a slower pace and without proper preview color on a device that's not really designed for this task.

Sync back to desktop or laptop. To edit by the pool? I'll just take the laptop.

What am I missing here? Even if the sync was super fast?

I was so hopeful for Lightroom mobile.  So far, though, I'm not very enthused with this product.  What I was hoping was to be able to view all the photos in my catalog on my iPad.  I use LR as a casual photographer, not as a professional.  I have ~50K photos in the catalog.

The first thing that struck me was that I had to have photos in a collection.  That's a bit of a pain - I don't tend to use collections too much.  I do use a lot of smart collections, but even those are supported for syncing it seems.

Secondly - the price.  It is pretty expensive for what it is.  I'm looking at it from the perspective that I own LR, and I just want LR on my iPad.  I guess I can adjust my thinking a bit since I think the price includes the price of future LR upgrades?

Lastly - yes it is so slow.  I took an old collection and synced it.  It had 2000 photos from one of my vacations, and it was very very slow to get them on the iPad.

So for me, I don't think I'll be signing up past the trial.  The price, only working with collections, and the speed are pretty big issues for me.

@x2mt: I totally agree with your point. I started testing the Adobe Lightroom Mobile and Adobe Lightroom 5.4. It took for ever to sync 2 raw images(smart previews). I also second that I want to upload my images to the cloud. Adobe can charge me for the app if needed, Adobe can verify my license but I dont expect them to force me to upload my private pictures on to their cloud. Moreover forcing me to purchase the annual plan of Photoshop cc plus lightroom(the cheapest) when I already have bought a full license of Lightroom 5 (I dont use Photoshop cc) is a no go. I hope Adobe changes the policy soon.