Does anyone Use an iPad Pro With Lightroom While Traveling

[aubreym29054076]

I am considering buying an iPad Pro to use on a trip to Africa instead of my MacBook Pro to save weight.

My plan is to buy an adapter with a card reader and a port for power and at least one USB c to connect to an external drive.

I won't have internet access in most camps. I don't plan to do heavy editing, but want to review images and discard out of focus or other bad images. I'll probably get an Apple pen as well.

My questions include:

Has anyone done this

what was your setup

can I use Lightroom Mobile to upload the images or do I need a full version of Lightroom, I use LRC (not cloud based)

how will I synch up to my laptop once at home and transfer images within Lightroom 

any comments or suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,

David

[Jim Wilde · Accepted solution]

Many people are already doing what you're thinking of doing. If you are planning on importing the images into LrMobile on the iPad, and you'll not be able to upload them to the Adobe cloud, make sure you buy an iPad that has sufficient internal storage to hold all the inages you anticipate taking in the trip. Yes, an external drive for backup is also needed, and some users will take enough camera cards so that they don't have to be reused on the trip (so giving you another backup).

Culling to delete the unwanted images before starting the automatic upload to the cloud is a good idea (in fact, if you happen to have a connection when you import another large batch, you might want to temporarily pause syncing until you've culled).

When you get back home, images will obviously resume uploading from the iPad to the cloud. You do not need to install the Lightroom desktop app (even though it's included in your subscription), but to get the images into LrC you need to enable syncing  in LrC (if you haven't already done that) and that will ensure that ALL images in your cloud account  will automatically download into the Classic catalog (a full copy of the complete original is downloaded). Be aware, however, that may also include any images previously imported into any of the Lightroom apps but not yet synced down into Classic.

Before enabling sync in LrC you should visit the LrC Preferences>Lightroom Sync tab....there you will find the option to choose a different location for the downloaded images (the default is an obscure folder in an obscure location on your system drive), which you should consider changing. Additionally, you can also choose to have them downloaded into one of the standard date-based folder structures (rather that into a single folder). My own LrC folder structure is date-based, so I have the location for sync downloads set to my single parent folder, and have the same date structure selected, so all images synced from Lightroom always end up in my one folder structure.

[kichigai]

I am in a similar situation to David in that my wife and I travel frequently and like David I have just bought the new iPad Pro 12.9" to save carrying my 4lb+ MacBook Pro. The problem when traveling is that there is often very slow or data limited WiFi making the use of Adobe Cloud totally impractical if not impossible. So I have a series of questions about best work flow on the road and when I return home and want to transfer all my pictures to NAS drive and incorporate all the new pictures into my catalog in LRC.

1. I purchased a dongle for the iPad that allows me to transfer pictures from my camera to a 2Tb SSD drive but I can't figure out how to use this drive with LR (mobile). So can someone tell me if there is a function that allows me to work on my pictures within LR but store them back to the external drive.
2. Assuming that it is not possible to store edited pictures along with the side car file back to the SSD is there a mechanism for moving edited pictures with the ra file and the side car holding the edits from LR (mobile) to LRC without having to use the Cloud - I don't want JPEGs since additional editing options are much more limited.
3. My final question is sort of related to this but in LRC I seem to have two different locations each containing some of my Adobe Clound associated pictures and I am not sure how to have them all in one consitent place and then how to methodically transfer these pictures from the Cloud to my main catalog AND then remove them from the Cloud account.

All assistance in finding the best work flow would be appreciated - I have really only just started LR mobile but have worked quite a bit in LRC although not at a very sophisticated level and have little experience with Adobe Cloud.

Thank you

Simon

[Jim Wilde]

1. I purchased a dongle for the iPad that allows me to transfer pictures from my camera to a 2Tb SSD drive but I can't figure out how to use this drive with LR (mobile). So can someone tell me if there is a function that allows me to work on my pictures within LR but store them back to the external drive.
2. Assuming that it is not possible to store edited pictures along with the side car file back to the SSD is there a mechanism for moving edited pictures with the ra file and the side car holding the edits from LR (mobile) to LRC without having to use the Cloud - I don't want JPEGs since additional editing options are much more limited.

No, it's not possible for LrMobile to reference images that are stored outside the app space, e.g. on your external drive. They have to be imported directly into the app before you can start to edit them. If you don't want them uploaded to the cloud (in which case, make sure syncing is paused), import those that you want to process on your travel and when done you could use the "Export as..." option to export them back to Files using the DNG option (LrMobile does not support the creation of an XMP sidecar file if you export as "Original" raw). The DNGs are still raw data, but the XMP data is stored in the DNG header, and will be read and applied when you subsequently import those files into LrC when back home. You can also reset the file back to the original unedited state if you wish.

So, if you don't want to sync to the cloud while travelling, that's probably the best option if you want to do some work on some of the files. Don't forget to delete the files from LrMobile when you have finally imported them into LrC when back home.

1. My final question is sort of related to this but in LRC I seem to have two different locations each containing some of my Adobe Clound associated pictures and I am not sure how to have them all in one consitent place and then how to methodically transfer these pictures from the Cloud to my main catalog AND then remove them from the Cloud account.

I did cover this last question in my earlier post. Basically use the LrC Preferences>Lightroom Sync tab to set your preferred destination for downloaded synced images, and optionally also set one of the standard Lightroom date-based sub-folder structures. When you set a new destination foilder, LrC should ask you if you wish the existing downloaded synced images (not any synced images that you may have upoloaded as smart previews to the cloud) to be moved from the current default location to the new location. It would seem logical to do that, but note that all the moved images will be stored in that single destination folder, i.e. the dated sub-folder structure is ignored for current images, but should work correctly for future downloads.

Once safely downloaded, select them all then click on the All Synced Photographs special collection in the Catalog panel, then right-click on any one of the still-selected images and choose "Remove from All Synced Photographs". That will "unsync" those images (they remain in the catalog in their existing folder), which causes them to be deleted from the cloud, thus freeing up the space again. Once deleted, you can of course re-sync them from Classic if you wish, which will upload smart previews of the images, which do not count against your cloud space allowance.