Users wish to collaborate between a Windows 11 workstation and a geographically remote Apple iPad.

Question

I want to collaborate with a geographically distant Lightroom user for purposes of editing hundreds of photos.

The joint equipment and software list is as follows:
Two Adobe Photography subscriptions.
iPad (2TB)
Windows 11 workstation (exceeds Adobe specifications)

I know next to nothing about an iPad. That, however, is the choice of other editor. I have not used the Adobe Lightroom Cloud version. I do use Adobe Lightroom Classic and a little Adobe Photoshop. The other collaborator will be able to learn quickly. I can share files using a USB stick. I would like to be able to share, between the two of us, raw and edited photos on the cloud.
My questions are about how to set up an efficient workflow. Could both users share a common ".lrdata" file? I believe each user would require an Adobe photography subscription. I presume they can be on dissimilar hardware. What Adobe Lightroom versions would be used? Has anyone done this? I would appreciate hearing anyone's experience with a somewhat similar situation. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Jim Wilde · Accepted Answer

I believe that it should be easy to accomplish using the Collaborative Editing function of shared albums. In brief:

1. User 1 (the owner of the images, and presumably the LrC user) sets up a collection containing all the images to be shared with the User 2 (the iPad user).

2. That collection is then synced to the cloud.

3. When the sync upload is complete, User 1 logs into their Adobe account using LrWeb (login at lightroom.adobe.com), selects the collection (now called an album in the cloud) and sets it to be shared using the "Invite Only" option. Enters the email address which User 2 uses for their Adobe account, then sets up the option to give User 2 "Edit" authority, then sends the email invitation.

4. When the invitation email is received and accepted by User 2, they open LrM on their iPad and in the "Shared with You" section they should see the shared album, the contents of which they can now edit.

5. Both users can now edit the same set of images, and will see the results of the other users work. So do make sure you nail down who is going to work on which images (as it's a case of last edit wins). In an ideal world both users would do their editing in one of the Lightroom apps, not LrC, as that way they can save unique versions of their edits which would allow each user to edit the same image from scratch and save their version for later comparison with the other users version....but unfortunately LrC doesn't have access to the versions feature.

Come back if you need further help setting that up, though it's fairly simple.

PS....it can't be done in reverse, i.e. iPad user sets up the album and shares it to the LrC user, because LrC is not able to see "Shared With You" albums. For one user to use LrC they must own and share the collection/album.

Jao vdL · Answer

There is no easy way to do this which is why nobody yet answered this I think. iPads cannot run classic and cannot open lrcat catalogs. The easiest is not consistent with the Adobe license but would have you sync a collection of images from your classic catalog to your cloud account and have the collaborator log on with the same account on the iPad. They would see the images and be able to edit them. Classic only uploads smart previews to the cloud but those are still fully editable. Unfortunately you cannot do this between different cloud accounts sharing just one folder of images. Another option is to use a different cloud service to exchange files like dropbox or similar. You can also use a USB stick to do the same thing. You would export as original from your Classic catalog to the cloud drive to a shared cloud folder creating raw files with sidecar xmp files there and on the other side they would import individual files from dropbox or OneDrive into their Lightroom which gives them the raw and the sidecar edits. This is a one by one process - not entire folders or catalogs/albums. They would then do edits and export again as original from Lightroom to the same cloud drive perhaps in a different "edited" folder from which you then import again. this is EXTREMELY onerous and you are guaranteed to miss stuff. I would strongly advise against it but it can be done.

It would all be much easier if there were computers on both sides instead of a tablet on one side. In that case, you would run Bridge (Bridge is a local browser (instead of catalog based) version of Lightroom Classic that calls camera raw directly for raw files) on both computers or use the cloud version of Lightroom in local files browse mode on both (it's a simplified version of Bridge that way) and use a shared cloud folder such as dropbox or the cloud drive part of creative cloud ignoring the Lightroom cloud completely. Both Bridge and Lightroom in local browser mode save their edits to xmp sidecar files and just access the files locally instead of going through the Lightroom cloud. The secondary cloud service will sync these along with the raw files and you will have the edits on both sides. As long as you avoid editing the exact same photo at exactly the same time this will work. You can't do this with a tablet on one side. It has to be two computers.

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