Make a local backup of my photos

Forum|Forum|5 months ago
January 20, 2026
1 reply
79 views

How can I copy all photos that I stored in Adobe cloud using Lightroom mobile to my iPad, while keeping the original format (raw in most cases) and the original date and time, without having Lightroom Classic nor a PC?

iPadOS

A

Aleke

Community Manager

Hi @Rien31378347r7qf, welcome to the community. If you are only using an iPad and do not have access to a desktop or laptop, you can open the All Photos view in Lightroom on your iPad to select everything. Long press any photo, tap Select, then choose the photos you want or use the three dots menu to select all. After that, tap the Share icon and choose Export as Original. This will save the full RAW files along with all their metadata, including the original date and time.
If your library is large, it may work better to export in smaller batches since iPadOS can sometimes struggle with very big exports.
Thanks so much.
Alek

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R

Rien_deAuthor

Participant

Thank you very much @Aleke. I tried out your instructions with one file. I miss the last choice I have to make after I choose export as original in your instructions. When I choose 'save as a photo', I can't find it. When I choose 'save in files' the date and time are from this moment. So could you please tell me what choice I have to make here?

Jim Wilde

Community Expert

After selecting the photos, tap on the share icon at the bottom of the screen, then tap on "Export As...." on the next screen, then on the next screen in the File Type box you can select the "Original" option. After all the images have been prepared for export you'll then see the share sheet with all the possible destinations listed, including "Save to Files".

However, unless things have changed recently, exporting Raw files as "Original" does not export the associated metadata, i.e. it does not create the expected XMP sidecar files. To save metadata during the export, you need to save raw files as DNG, not Original, and the metadata is included in the DNG header. So best to test on a couple of images first.

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