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A RAW workflow on the iPad - my initial impressions

Explorer ,
Aug 05, 2016 Aug 05, 2016

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Since Adobe released Lightroom Mobile 2.4, which includes support for editing RAW files, I have been experimenting with using my iPad Pro as part of my photography workflow as I wanted to find a way to use the iPad as a desktop replacement for when I'm away from home. I wanted to share with you my experience, which has been mostly successful so far.

The workflow allows me to use my iPad Pro to make edits of RAW images (.cr2) captured with my digital camera for editing and sharing directly from the iPad, or for editing on Lightroom Desktop on the PC when I'm back home.

Firstly, for this test the following was used:

  • iPad Pro 9.7" running iOS10 Beta 3, iCloud Photo Library enabled
  • Lightroom Mobile 2.4 with Creative Cloud subscription
  • Lightroom CC 15.6.1 on Windows 10 PC.
  • Lightning to SD Card reader (2016 version)
  • SanDisk Extreme SDHC-I SD Card
  • iCloud account with 50Gb storage plan
  • 50Mb fibre broadband connection

For the test I had taken 216 photos using my Canon G7X in RAW and JPEG mode. I then realised that I had to delete the JPEG copies as the iPad will only read the JPEGs where there is a RAW and JPEG under the same file name.The workflow is as follows:

  1. Insert SD card into Lightning to SD Card reader and insert to iPad.
  2. The iPad will bring up the Import dialog and the thumbnails of your RAW images will start to load. Choose Select All and Import Photos (you do not have to wait for the thumbnails to load). It took 2 mins 45 secs to download 213 RAW files to the iPad, which are about 19Mb each; this is about 1.3 seconds per photo. Provided you are connected to WiFi and have enough iCloud storage space, the original RAW images will start to be backed up to iCloud instantly - you can check this by going to www.icloud.com.
  3. From the Photos app, select Albums > Last Import > Select > Select All > Add To > New Album (name new album).
  4. With the photos now in an album, you can go through and cull the images that you don't want (note: deleting them only sends them to the Recently Deleted folder, which permanently deletes the photos after 30 days).
  5. Open Lightroom Mobile. Either import the images into Lightroom by creating a new Collection: Add Photos (my preferred method), or by choosing Camera Roll > (drop down) > Select Album (choose album or open Recently Deleted).
  6. You will notice a small RAW symbol in the middle of the thumbnails indicating that they are RAW files. Click ... > Select All > Add Photos.
  7. The images will be added to Lightroom Mobile and you can start to make edits on the iPad. The original RAW images (not Smart Previews) are then synced to Lightroom Desktop via Creative Cloud and will appear in your organised folders as if you have imported them directly to the PC. (It is important to note that the original RAW file will now be backed up on your PC in the same folder organisational structure as you would expect if you were to import directly to Lightroom Desktop). Any edits you have made on LR Mobile will be synced over to LR Desktop.
  8. Once the photos have synced to Creative Cloud severs, you can then delete them from your iPad's Camera Roll to free up storage space (or, if you have enough iCloud Storage, you can free up storage by letting iCloud automatically manage your device storage so you never run out of space).

Overall I found the process to be very straightforward and the new iPad has more than enough processing power to be able to handle RAW image editing. It also has a very nice high resolution screen. In fact, during operation it feels significantly faster than my HP laptop running Windows 10. Also, unlike the desktop version, LR Mobile makes full use of screen real estate on the iPad in editing mode, which makes it easier to use than running the full Lightroom on smaller laptops.

The main limitation for me is that I still need to switch to LR Desktop to do some advanced editing such as HDR merge and panorama, but because LR Mobile syncs across the original RAW images over the Cloud, the transition between the mobile and desktop applications is seamless.

I hope that some people will find this useful. It's great to finally have almost full desktop capability on the iPad and I think it's going to really transform my photography workflow.

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New Here ,
Feb 08, 2017 Feb 08, 2017

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Same problems with the slow upload to CC

I hope Adobe will allow to sync only a smart preview to cloud (like desktop version) and the xmp to the desktop.

It will be much easier, going back home, to transfer RAW files to desktop by copying them to any folder / or the Mobile sync folder and then tell Desktop LR that files have moved.

In general, i miss :

- keywords management

- sharpening tools

- presets sync

- the adjustement brush (also in radial and linear filters)

- watermark sync for mobile export

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 19, 2017 Dec 19, 2017

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Hi Scott,

Great post, plenty of food for thought for a newcomer to Lightroom. I have just been having a go at some imports via the camera card adapter with my iPad Air 2, it will be interesting to see any differences to your experience (and others, once I’ve had a chance to read all the replies).

initial observations from my experience are that the raw files seem to be uploading even though I also had RAW and JPEG of each image (no need to delete the JPEG). It seems initially a JPEG appeared in the cloud (giving the impression that the iPad had only imported the JPEG) but it seems the RAWS follow behind at a slower pace. Observing the upload from Lightroom Classic CC, all the files eventually appeared listed as RAW with JPEG sidecar image.

Cheers,

Steve

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Participant ,
Jun 24, 2018 Jun 24, 2018

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I have an alternative workflow that seems to work well. It does involve an additional purchase, but it solves a number of issues. LaCie and Western Digital both make portable harddrives that have WiFi or USBthat can connect to your iPad. The beauty of this system is that you can take an SD card from your camera, automat copy it to the drive, and then do a direct import into Lightroom over WiFi or USB. In the case of the LaCie, no Internet is required. The Western Digital one may require an upload to Creative Cloud.

Either way, this solution means that you don’t have to deal with the ridiculously slow SD card reader, you don’t have to import twice (first to the Photos app, then Lightroom), and you get a built-in portable backup of all of your photos, which Lightroom can‘t do natively.

My my personal recommendation is for the LaCie DJI CoPilot. The only down side to it is that it is a hard drive, not an SSD.

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New Here ,
Sep 12, 2018 Sep 12, 2018

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Hello!

Question, do you need a WIFI connection to transfer the photos from your SD to the iPad? If you are in the backcountry with no WIFI signal like I will be, I want to know that I can still back them up to the iPad and then upload to iCloud and LR when I get a WIFI/Cell signal again.

Thanks

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Participant ,
Sep 22, 2018 Sep 22, 2018

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No, you would want to use either the SD Card Reader or the Camera Connector. If you are looking to use WiFi to transfer, usually the camera can generate it's own local WiFi network. But for the iPad, I don't bother. It eats up battery power. If you don't have an internet connection at time of upload, the full files are copied locally to the iPad until you get a connection that it can use.

This is another good reason to use an external drive as well. You'll automatically get a second backup built-in to the upload process until you get back to an area that has coverage.

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