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Inspiring
May 11, 2018
Open for Voting

P: Lightroom Desktop: Add Tethering

  • May 11, 2018
  • 20 replies
  • 1091 views

Add tethered support to the Lightroom Desktop product

20 replies

Participating Frequently
March 1, 2026

It’s quite insane that both:

  1. Lightroom CC can’t do tethered capture
  2. Lightroom Classic can’t upload full quality originals to the Cloud

This means, still, to this day, in 2026, for me to get both (1) tethered shooting and (2) full RAWs synced to the Cloud, I need to either:

  1. Install both Lightroom CC and Classic on my laptop, so I can do a tethered shooting session in Classic, then drag and drop the photos from Finder into Lightroom CC, for it to do the full RAW sync to the Cloud. This method doubles the amount of storage space my library consumes on my 1 TB laptop, so it has a hard upper limit, and Adobe explicitly recommends against installing both, synced to the Cloud, without any clarification on why they recommend against this.
  2. For all other photos taken outside of tethered capture sessions, use my iPhone or iPad as an ingestion machine, to import the photos from my SD card, wait for them to upload to the Cloud, and open Lightroom Classic on my laptop, and wait for them to download back down from the Cloud, so I can edit them in Classic. I’ve got a 5 Gbps internet connection in my studio (up and down), and a 10 Gbps LAN, but Adobe’s Cloud service uploads and downloads photos at a stupidly slow rate, so this takes forever.

Adobe says they maintain two separate versions of Lightroom, because they’re targeted at two separate audiences of photographers… It’s insane to think there’s no one caught in the middle, of needing the pro-oriented features of Classic, and full RAW syncs to other devices.

 

Dear Adobe, if you felt any significant competition, you’d have this fixed already. Please fix, before I have to move to Capture One.

I’ve commented the same on the feature request to sync full RAWs from Lightroom Classic to the Cloud, here

Participant
December 6, 2024

I teach the Adobe CC apps to high school students. These students take all school portraits. I'd love to be able to work together to edit these portraits. As it is, we have to use Lightroom Classic because we shoot using tethered capture. I know there are workarounds to share photos from LR Classic to LR Cloud, but I'd really like it if the cloud version had tethered capture built in. 

Participant
March 27, 2023

I'm so frustrated. I hate lightroom Classic. the UI is crap, its slow and its way more complicated than Lightroom.

 

why can't I just have tethering in lightroom so I don't have to waste time transferring SD cards back and forth every damn shoot.

 

I'm so close to just completely abandoning Adobe at this point.

 

if capture one didn't have such a garbage and overly complex UI, id already be over there.

 

I just can't anymore with this crap.

 

its insane how much better, faster, easier and nicer looking the iPad app is. windows desktop lightroom looks and feels 15 years old at this point.

 

damn, just add tethering already what is taking so damn long?????????

 

 

Participant
August 27, 2022

Can we please get the ability to shoot tethered on lightroom cc, Adobe is giving us a huge push on cc rather than classic, but the huge feature that i use from classic is tethered shooting, im curently having to use classic to do the shoot then i import the images into cc and thats just so cumbersom. Please listen adobe!

Participant
November 4, 2021

Add Tethered Shooting to Lightroom CC

Inspiring
May 13, 2021

[En]

I am currently using Lightroom CC on my smartphone (Android), iPad and PC. (We don't use Clasik.))
Photos are well linked and good in Wi-Fi.
But even though it's still an app for photos, I don't know if it still doesn't support tethering.
(Tethering: The ability to connect the camera directly to the light room to receive files and speed preview reviews with clients)
I want to support the connection with the camera quickly.
Especially for cameras, it's been a long time since we used USB-C type.
It also supports Wi-Fi 5Gz, which is starting to speed up.
I think more users will be using Lightroom CC if this tethering is fully supported.

[KR]

나는 스마트폰(안드로이드), 아이패드, PC에서 현재 라이트룸 CC를 사용중이다. (클레식은 쓰지 않는다.)
서로 Wi-Fi 안에서 사진들이 연동도 잘되고 좋다.
그런데 아직까지 사진을 위한 앱이라고 하면서도, 테더링에 대한 지원을 아직까지도 지원을 안하는지 모르겠다.
(테더링 : 카메라와 라이트룸을 직접 연결해서 파일을 받고, 클라이언트와 미리보기 리뷰를 빠르게 진행 할 수 있는 기능)
나는 빨리 사진기와 연결을 빨리 지원했으면 좋겠다.
특히나 이제 사진기들은 USB-C타입도 사용 한 지 시간이 많이 지났고,
Wi-Fi 5Gz도 지원하여 속도도 빨라지기 시작했다.
이 테더링이 완벽하게 지원이 된다면 더 많은 사용자들이 라이트룸 CC를 사용하게 될 것이라고 생각한다.

Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
May 5, 2021

This thread is being merged into an existing authoritative thread for better tracking and response. Please review the official answer (if any) in the second post on the thread for more information. 

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
Rob_Cullen
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 5, 2021

No. The Cloud-based versions of Lightroom do not have the tethering feature.

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.1.1, Photoshop 27.3.1, ACR 18.1.1, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.2 .
Inspiring
May 4, 2021

I need access to the Tethering feature, which is in Lightroom Classic, can I do this through Lightroom ?

Inspiring
March 23, 2021

Why is tethering with Lightroom CC not possible?  I am an Adobe guy but Capture One makes the process pretty easy.