Workflow for integrating mobile images and DSLR images

[bschindler]

I would like to have a better way of integrating my mobile images with DSLR. I have one big Lightroom catalog for essentially all of my (DSLR) images. I export the ones I like as jpg into a folder which uploads them to google photos, where they are merged with my cell phone images. 

I however would like to have a way to sort and tag my cell phone images using Lightroom similar to how I do it with my DSLR images. So what I would love to have is a workflow like:
mobile camera/DSLR -> Lightroom classic -> some cloud solution (where I can access them using my phone too).

Do you have suggestions on how I could do this in a meaningful way?

[Jim Wilde · Accepted solution]

If you are using Lightroom Classic, that means that you already have the tools available to you in your subscription, i.e. Lightroom Mobile on your phone, and cloud syncing. The basic process is that after installing LrMobile on your phone (login using the same subscription account details that you use on your Classic system), you can set things up so that any new pictures you take are automatically added to the LrMobile app, and from there they automatically upload to your Adobe cloud space. In LrClassic you would need to turn on cloud syncing, and thereafter a copy of all images added to your cloud account are automatically downloaded and added to your Classic catalog. A few things to note:

1. Before turning on sync in LrClassic, open the Preferences>Lightroom Sync tab. There you'll see an option to change the location for Classic to store those downloaded copies from the defaul (which is an obscure location on your system drive) to one of your own choosing. You can also choose to have Classic store them into one of the standard Lightroom date-based folder schemes.

2. On the phone you can continue to use the native phone camera, or you can use the camera app within the LrMobile app (or you can use both). All pictures taken with the LrMobile camera are automatically added to the app and synced to the cloud, and there's an app setting which allows any new photos taken with the native camera to also be automatically added to LrMobile. Existing photos on the phone can be manually imported to the LrMobile app.

3. Assuming you have the standard Photography Plan subscriptions, you'll only have 20GB of cloud space, so you'll likely need to develop a workflow that allows you to stay within that 20GB limit (or pay to upgrade to 1TB). Many users happily operate within the 20GB allowance, and the trick is to wait for the new photos to sync down into Classic and then to "unsync" them. That deletes the photos from the cloud, but retains them in Classic (you can "unsync" them in Classic simply by removing them from the All Synced Photographs special collection which appears in the Catalog Panel in Classic when you enable syncing). One unsynced, and thus deleted from the cloud, you can then sync them again but this time from Classic (add them back to that special collection or add them to a synced collection), whereupon Classic uploads a smart preview of the image to the cloud. From the cloud, the smart previews are then available on your phone and any other mobile devices using LrMobile (there's also a desktop app and a Web browser app that could also be used). Although only 2560px on the long edge, they are generally suitable for viewing and light editing, and the good thing is that smart previews do not count against that 20GB allowance....so you can sync your entire Classic library to the cloud without taking up any of that 20GB allowance. Once in the cloud, they of course are then available on your phone etc.

[@MNiessenPhoto]

That's what I do and it works perfectly.

Pictures from my phone sync in the same folders as my DSLR pictures, so everything is in one place and I can easily filter by camera if needed. I've worked this way for years without any problem.

It's always a good idea to keep your DSLR clock on time (including daylight savings setting), but especially in this case, to make sure that pictures are displayed chronologically even when you alternate between cameras/phone to take pictures.

Hope that helps,

Michael

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Michael Niessen - Photographer, photo-editor, educator ([moderator deleted the URL from the signature. Kindly note that URLs in the signature may be considered as spam])

[bschindler]

Thank you very much for this. This is a very nice way to keep photos organized. Are you also aware of a good way of exporting images to a service like icloud photos or google photos which keeps the tag structure (or at least creates an album per collection or so)? I find the mobile lightroom app good, but it feels like for browsing and looking at images, it is clearly shadowed by icloud photos/google photos... 

[Jim Wilde]

I stopped exporting images for sharing online as soon as the Lightroom album-sharing was made available. You can create and share albums online using any of the Lightroom apps (though I usually prefer the LrWeb app), and the great thing about that is that you don't have to export anything, the user will see a real-time preview of your images and that means that they will also see any subsequent edits you might make to the album contents....you need to do nothing, the most the user would have to do is refresh their browser window. It may not have all the bells and whistles that Apple or Google Photos might have, but it's far more convenient to use.

There's also the Adobe Portfolio app which is part of your subscription, which as the name implies allows you to easily set up your own portfolio web-site. This is also worth a look.