Answered

Low resolution on iPad with synchronized pictures in Lightroom - Culling

Forum|Forum|6 months ago
December 30, 2025
3 replies
460 views

I like to cull pictures with my iPad when i'm on the train and so on and I do that with synchronized albums between my Mac and iPad. My problem is that the resolution is low and between similar shots I can't see which one is the sharpest or if there were some slight focus issues.

Is there any possibiilty to higher the resolution in synchronized albums?

Thank you guys very much!

Correct answer Noel Orridge

Hi @Martin35407523ckje! Thank you for trying out the suggestion and sharing the images. I appreciate the effort!

It appears that you may be using Lightroom Classic. Could you please confirm the same?

Lightroom Classic only uploads Smart Previews. It doesn't upload the full-resolution original file to the Cloud. On a high-resolution iPad screen, this will always look soft or pixelated compared to your 1:1 Mac preview. If you are syncing from Lightroom Classic, the "best" thing in the cloud is that Smart Preview. "Store Locally" simply downloads the same low-resolution preview.

Thanks!

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Have a look at the 'PhotoPicker' iPad app. That might give you an alternative method that will work in full resolution. PhotoPicker can work with images on an external drive that is connected to the iPad, and it can also work with Lightroom Classic catalogs. It can even create a Lightroom Classic catalog, that you can then import into your main catalog when you get home. I don't have any experience with the latter, but I have tried it with images on an external drive and that works pretty well.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

M

Martin35407523ckjeAuthor

Thank you very much. That seems like a great app! For me its not what I want/need though 😕😕 I have my files on an external hard drive which is mounted under the desk and connected more or less permanantly to my docking station.

I just want to take my ipad and cull my pictues on the go in public transfer to make use of the otherwise "wasted" time. Fiddling around with my external drive every day and risking dropping it would be worth it in my opinion 😕😕

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

The way I understand it is that you do not have to do that. PhotoPicker can work with catalogs, so if you export the images you want to cull as catalog (but don't include the images themselves, so don't include the 'negatives'), then that should be enough for PhotoPicker. On return home, you import that catalog again. As said, I don't have any experience with that part of PhotoPicker (maybe I misunderstood that part), but you can try it for free.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

The (undocumented) trick to get full resolution raws in the cloud for images synced from Classic is the following. First sync your images from Classic resulting in smart previews in the cloud. Then open the cloud based Lightroom on your PC/Mac and see that the smart previews are there. A way to check is to turn on the info by clicking the small (i) button on the bottom right of the window. At the bottom of the info panel that pops up (sync status) you will see what kind of file is available in the cloud for the selected image. Now what you do is simply drag the full raw files from Finder/explorer onto Cloud-based Lightroom and it will/should upload the images to the cloud and associate the full raw with the already available smart preview. This is not 100% reliable but works correctly normally and should get you full resolution images to edit on your iPad.

Sameer K

Community Manager

Hey, @Martin35407523ckje. Welcome to the Lightroom Community. I'll help you figure this out.

You can force Lightroom to save the highest available quality of the images you've synced to the cloud and plan to cull while on your iPad.

Try this in Lightroom on iOS:

Create a test album in Lightroom and add the images that need culling.
In the Lightroom view, click on the album dropdown menu > Album Name > three dots on the album.
Enable 'Store locally'.

This may take additional storage and download bandwidth. Once culled, you can move these images to their respective albums and gradually free up space.

Let me know how it goes. Thanks!
Sameer K
(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

M

Martin35407523ckjeAuthor

Thank you very much for your quick response!

I tried this but there is still a huge quality difference between 1:1 previews on my Mac and the pictures I can see on my iPad. It seems like Lightroom only syncs the lower resolution smart previews even if there are 1:1 previews available. Did I do something wrong or is it not possible to achieve higher quality on the iPad?

Noel Orridge

Correct answer

Community Manager

Hi @Martin35407523ckje! Thank you for trying out the suggestion and sharing the images. I appreciate the effort!

It appears that you may be using Lightroom Classic. Could you please confirm the same?

Lightroom Classic only uploads Smart Previews. It doesn't upload the full-resolution original file to the Cloud. On a high-resolution iPad screen, this will always look soft or pixelated compared to your 1:1 Mac preview. If you are syncing from Lightroom Classic, the "best" thing in the cloud is that Smart Preview. "Store Locally" simply downloads the same low-resolution preview.

Thanks!

Noel

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.