Opening and editing iPhone 13 raw photos in Lightroom classic

[SandraFrance]

I have been playing with my new Iphone 13 Pro, taking photos in Raw and in normal photo mode - wanted to open them in Lightroom Classic version 11.1 on my iMac, running Catalina 10.15.7 in order to compare them.   

If I try and find my 'Photos' (ie the iphone photos in Lightroom to open a photo) this folder does refuses to appear in the import list in order to IMPORT selected photos into Lightroom.   What I can do, however, is to open 'Photos' on my iMac, which is of course synced to my iPhone, and right click on an individual photo and select 'edit in Lightrom Classic'.    It opens without any problems, but it bring in a JPEG image, which sort of defeats the object of the exercise!

I have checked, and in the security settings, on privacy, I have allowed Lightroom Classic to access Photos.

Your help would be much appreciated so I can enjoy my new toy to the full!    Thank you.

[Jao vdL]

The trick to getting iPhone images into Lightroom Classic is to install Lightroom the app on your iPhone and log on to your creative cloud account in the Lightroom app. There you can shoot directly in Lightroom and have the images appear in Lightroom Classic automatically (make sure you have sync turned on). You can also shoot dng files that way inside the camera app in Lightroom which offers more editing lattitude than HEIC files and is absolutely awesome. You can also import images from the camera roll in the lightroom app and they will be synced to Lightroom Classic. If your creative cloud storage is filling up this way, simply remove images from the sync in Lightroom Classic and they will be removed from the cloud but will remain in Lightroom Classic.

[SandraFrance]

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply.    The truth is that I traded in my iPhone 11 Pro to be able to take raw photos easily on the 13 Pro.   I had been getting excellent photos with the 11 just in normal apple mode, not using any external apps.   To use an app as your means of taking photos all takes time and sometimes you don't capture 'the moment' as life has moved on by the time you get yourself setup in the app and finally press the shutter.

What I am looking for is a direct means of getting ProRaw into Lightroom Classic in one easy move.    If it does not exist, it should do!!!   I can't be the only one looking for this simplicity. 

[SandraFrance · Accepted solution]

I tracked down a solution - from an earlier posting in August 2020 - so let me copy it here as others may find it useful.   When I used AirDrop, it appeared in my iMac as a DNG file.   That will work for me, so extremely happy now.

In photos, bulk select as many photos as you'd like — e.g. Recents. Squeeze the pix till you have rows of 3 — at the top right of the iPhone screen it should say Select. Swipe across the pix you want to import into LRC. At the bottom left, there'll be an AirDrop symbol; touch it and it will show your Mac and boom, your photos will be in your Downloads folder ...

From which LRC will happily move them to your Mac's Lightroom folder. (mine is on a separate drive for Movies & Photos)

[Javivi]

Yo estoy ejecutando MAC OS Big Sur y no tengo ningún problema para descargar las fotos hechas con mi iPhone 13 directamente en LR. Tan sólo he observado que el teléfono debe estar desbloqueaedo para que LR lo reconozca desde el cuadro de diálogo "Importar".

Espero que estas indicaciones te sean útiles.

Saludos.

[SandraFrance]

Thank you.

I have found that using AirDrop to send the photos from my iPhone 13 to my iMac, then importing into LRC works well.

Only remaining problem, that I need to investigate, is that I seem to loose the Metadata, which is a pity.

Kindest regards,
Sandra