You are right, the situation with the iPad has changed in the last couple of years, and for the better. But those improvements are limited by how most iOS photo apps — including Lightroom — are implemented. There are a lot of subtle details to the workflow, so one-line answers aren’t always possible.
KeithlyPhotography wrote:
A: Is it possible yet to keep the photos and the catalog on an external drive? I know it wasn't a year or two ago.
Catalog on external iPad volume:
The first and most important distinction to understand is: There is not and never has been a version of Lightroom Classic for any mobile platform. “Lightroom” (not Classic) on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and web browsers, is its own system, fully integrated and synced across all platforms, that is separate from Lightroom Classic. With Lightroom (not Classic), primary storage and organization are on the Lightroom Photos cloud server — there is no local catalog. The Lightroom app on any device syncs all photo/video organization with the Lightroom Photos cloud server, so that the organization can be the same on all synced devices.
Lightroom Classic can sync photos with the same Lightroom Photos cloud server, but it uploads only Smart Previews for locally stored files. Because Lightroom Classic primary storage is local, any original photos imported through Lightroom (not Classic), including Lightroom on iPad, will sync down to Lightroom Classic local storage.
iOS support for external iPad volume:
Yes, as of iOS 13 you can store photos and other files on an external volume connected to an iPad, and all up-to-date iOS apps can open and save to an external iOS volume. You use the Files app in iOS (basically a desktop file manager with folders, volumes, etc). It works great. You can even use the Files app to copy photos directly from a card reader or camera to an external volume, completely bypassing iPad internal storage.
But…and this is such a big “but” that for many, it’s a deal breaker…
Many iOS photo apps will not edit directly from an external volume, including Lightroom and Apple Photos. Instead they tend to import any photo/video into their own private storage which is on the iPad itself, and they edit from there. If the app is cloud-based like Lightroom, iPad local storage is only a temporary holding area until the files can be uploaded to the primary storage on the cloud.
So, you can easily have iPad Lightroom import 500 files from an external iPad volume, and you can easily have Lightroom export 500 edited versions out to an external iPad volume, but importing them will always copy them to Lightroom private storage on the iPad itself, and Lightroom will also attempt to upload all 500 to the cloud if connected to the Internet. So you still have to buy an iPad with enough internal space to cache the number of not-yet-uploaded images you want to edit. And edits won’t affect the originals out on the external drive, because you can’t prevent the Lightroom one-way trip from external to internal to cloud.
In other words, Lightroom on mobile devices does not support a fully local open/edit/export workflow in the same way that Lightroom Classic does.
KeithlyPhotography wrote:
B: If not, how simple is it to copy the catalog, raw files, and PSD files from the iPad to an external drive, and then import them to my Desktop PC?
As said above, with Lightroom (not Classic), there is no catalog to copy.
It’s possible to transfer the photos. Your options are:
- Leave the photos in Lightroom. They will sync up to the Lightroom Photos cloud server, and when you open a Lightroom Classic catalog on your PC that is synced to Lightroom Photos, Lightroom Classic will pull down all those files and their Lightroom iPad edits (except for some types of metadata).
- Plug the external volume into the PC and copy the files that way.
- Turn on SMB file sharing on the PC, then on the iPad in the Files app, use Connect to Server to mount your PC as a network volume. Then, still in the Files app, drag and drop the files from the folder on the iOS volume (internal or external) to a folder on the PC.
Note that only the first option will transfer Lightroom edits. The last two transfer only the files without Lightroom edits, and you have to import them into the catalog on the desktop side. For raw files, the last two options can include Lightroom edits if you export the raw images from iPad Lightroom as DNG.
KeithlyPhotography wrote:
C: Would there be any compatibility issues between the iOS Lightroom Catalog and the PC Lightroom catalog?
Because we’ve established that there is no Lightroom Classic type of catalog to copy, that won’t be the question to ask. The answer is that Develop edits and some metadata are fully transferable between Lightroom and Lightroom Classic…but only if Lightroom cloud sync is used.
In short, iOS support of external volumes is not the limiting factor here, it is that most iOS photo apps sync to the cloud for cross-device convenience, so they don’t have mature local workflows. It is not clear how fast that might change, if ever.
My opinion is that an iPad can be practical in the field when only a few files are involved, or if high speed upload/download is often available. If not, the complications of trying to manage without fast cloud sync makes it tough…I still prefer bringing my 3 lb. laptop whenever possible. And a lot of 3 lb laptops now cost less than an iPad Pro properly specced for photo editing, so if I get another iPad, I’m stepping down to the very capable iPad Air.
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