P: Photoshop/Lightroom Mobile: Edit in interoperability for iPad

[thomasnash]

Brand new Photoshop for iPad is a great advance. Within Lightroom on the iPad I immediately looked for a way to directly export to PS, as one can do on the desktop with an "edit in" command. After the PS edit is complete and saved, the file instantly becomes a part of the LR library. This seems to be an obviously missing feature in iOS. Did I miss it, or is this a planned upgrade feature?

[thomasnash]

Again not exactly intuitive. Go into PS (latest version) on your desktop. You should find the photo you saved in PS for iPad in Cloud documents. You can then open it and "save as" to somewhere you choose on your desktop (might have to duplicate so a version stays in Cloud docs). Then import in to LR Classic. You can reverse the process to get back to PS for iPad. 

Maybe someday there will be real integration of files for all LR and PS products...

[jeannem2590496]

Thanks so much again - convoluted but it did work!!

[1FIST]

People are commenting that this works now, but it does not. All Lightroom Mobile does is export a compressed jpeg for Photoshop Mobile. There is still no way to stay raw and go back and forth between Lightroom and Photoshop like on desktop. Without this seamless raw workflow there is no advantage to using Photoshop Mobile over Affinity Photo, which is still much more feature rich.

[kireto_a]

 You need to check if you have the "original" file on the iPad and download it if it is in the cloud. This will not work if you imported raw files in lightroom classic and shared as collection - iPad's lightroom will only see a smart preview. I'm not aware of a way to push up in the cloud original raw file if it was imported in lightroom classic.

In any way when doing "share to" or "edit in" from lightroom you need to first tap on the small icon on the right in the menu and configure how to "export" - there you can chose tiff, 16 bit and color space. Please note that every expost method has its own settings. Then you select photoshop and it will import the file and store it to its own cloud. Once ready you can share from photoshop to lightroom in the same way.

[mikebrodt]

This isn’t a true round trip, just a workaround. It creates a TIFF file that is then imported into Photoshop and converted to a PSDC file. Once you finish editing, you have to export it back out as a TIFF or JPEG and import it back into Lightroom. Now you have a PSDC file AND a TIFF, taking up more online storage.

Ideally, the import conversion should be automatic, the file should be auto-synced back to Lightroom, and Lightroom has full support for PSDC files.

[kireto_a]

Agree, this is ideal but it might not be doable on iPadOs at the moment, thus not in the adobe's realm. Now what we have is good enough to start working with photoshop on ipad and it would way better to get some more filters, curves and blend if.

[GloMacD]

I’m sorry, but this is Adobe we’re talking about, not some small coder working out a new app. What Adobe has given us both with Lightroom Mobile and Photoshop for iPad are inferior products (as were the original iterations of the 3 flavors of photoshop mobile). This is nonsense. Affinity managed to give us robust full-featured apps with all the bells and whistles. There is a “small coder” out there with an app called Art Studio which is surprisingly like Photoshop, has 10 times more features than Adobe’s Photoshop, and works great. It just amazes me that Adobe has dropped the ball so badly with two of their flagship apps. Lightroom mobile, while good in its own right, is severely handicapped by the round trip issue and the fact that it ONLY uses one catalog. And Photoshop, after all the hype about the iPad version, has only about 10% of the features it should have. My only guess is Adobe doesn’t want you to use the iPad because then they can’t extort the subscription money from you like they do on the desktop. I have had projects which I tried to do in PSD for iPad and given up and used Art Studio because it has the features. I still need to use Adobe products for my work, but the way they are going, we will have VERY viable alternatives very soon. It’s really a shame because photoshop is an amazing program, but Adobe has gotten too big for anyone’s good.

[GloMacD]

Exactly, convoluted. That’s not the way things should work. You shouldn’t need a workaround for a basic task.

[1FIST]

You are correct using the ‘export as’ and selecting 16bit tiff is much better than using the ‘share to’ and getting a compressed jpeg. But until adobe increases the functionality of Photoshop on the ipad and/or has a seamlessly synced roundtrip like on the desktop, there’s still no advantages (only disadvantages) in choosing to export the tiff to Photoshop instead of Affinity Photo.

[1FIST]

I figured out using the ‘export as’ to get the option for a 16bit tiff instead of the ‘share to’ which defaults to jpeg. This is much better, but like you said it is not a true, synced roundtrip and without that, and with the current nerfed state of Photoshop on the iPad, there’s no real reason not to export the tiff to Affinity Photo instead.

[1FIST]

It is frustrating that Adobe released Photoshop on the iPad without raw support and Lightroom roundtrip. I understand it wouldn’t be full featured at launch, but those are basic workflow musts. I’ve been using Lightroom and then Affinity Photo for my iPad workflow currently. I haven’t tried Art Studio yet. I don’t think the subscription revenue can explain Adobe’s iOS apps’ lack of functionality though, they get the same monthly amount wherever you use their apps.

[GloMacD]

Very true. Nothing really excuses the lack of real photoshop for iPad from the very beginning. 3 basically useless apps are a ridiculous offering from a company with the enormous resources Adobe has. They seem to keep adding more and more software that not all that many people need or want, rather than offer real working apps for the iPad, which is really more and more becoming a real tool. I do both photo retouching and graphic design, and I've been doing a lot of my graphic design on Affinity Designer lately, because I can do it on the desktop OR the iPad, and there are no compromises in either platform. And it WORKS! Affinity Photo is a great program, I'm just not wild about how it handles masks. Perhaps I simply haven't played with it enough, guess I should. I find Art Studio quite workable for a lot of basic functions, and have used it for some images in my graphic design work. And both of those programs are purchases, I own them, forever! 
Meanwhile, my subscription based Photoshop (desktop) suddenly (and for the last few months) continually crashes when saving to an external drive. Something I've done for years. And I've seen others complain about the same issue, yet Adobe is doing nothing about it. The latest update did nothing to fix that.

[ecycled]

This has been asked for/suggested before yet I want to emphasize the importance/need for the ability to export to Photoshop from Lightroom and back in iOS environment. Needed this yesterday. Please Adobe team. Get on this. 

[hesspoint]

This weekend I have looked closer at PS for iPad and I looking for how to edit Lightroom photos in PS on the iPad. I was looking for a long time because it did not even occur to me that such an essential feature could be missing. For me PS is pretty much useless until this is implemented. This must be prio 1 everything else is just bonus.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Roundtripping now! Yes!

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

This functionality was added in the June 2020 releases. Please see: https://theblog.adobe.com/june-photography-releases/