Importing photos from apple mobile devices

[valerie_c]

Lightroom Version Number

Classic 11.5

Operating System

1. macOS 10.15 Catalina

I would like to know where I can find clear non-jargon instructions on how to copy my iphone/iPad photos onto an external drive and into my Lightroom Classic catalogue. At present I take photos on my ipad but mostly on my iPhone 12 plus, some of which are Live Photos, some are RAW, and some are long exposures. All are stored in iCloud. If I copy them from my ipad the file names are different than if I download them from the iCloud. The capture times / dates don’t match and even the number of files is different. I need to get to the bottom of this so I know what is going on but haven’t been able to find answers that I can understand anywhere online.

 

[clee01l]

I think it is best to abandon iCloud Photos completely. With your Adobe Photography plan subscription, you have available Lightroom Mobile app for the iPhone and 20 GB of Adobe Cloud space to store photos. If you turn on Syncing in Lightroom Classic, everything synced to the Adobe Cloud will automatically import into your Lightroom Classic catalog and stored in a folder that you designate in Lightroom Classic preferences.

In the Lightroom Mobile App, you can choose to auto sync the Photos camera roll to an album in Lightroom Mobile and the Adobe Cloud. Better than using the camera in the Apple Photos app, you can use the camera in the Lightroom Mobile app. The Album in Lightroom Mobile will show up as a Collection in Lightroom Classic.
There are other more complicated way to copy files from the Phone to the computer and import in the traditional way, but this sync process using the Adobe Cloud is the least convoluted and simplest IMO.

 

[johnbeardy]

To paraphrase Cletus:

1. Turn on syncing in your Lightroom Classic catalogue
2. Install Lightroom Mobile on your iPhone/iPad and sign in
3. In Lightroom Mobile, go to App Settings, Import, and ensure photos (maybe videos) is enabled - ie automatically imported

Optionally:

1. In Lightroom Mobile, use the Add button to import existing photos from in Apple Photos
2. Lightroom Mobile has a camera button - you may prefer this to the standard Apple camera

 

[Conrad Chavez]

I would like to know where I can find clear non-jargon instructions on how to copy my iphone/iPad photos onto an external drive and into my Lightroom Classic catalogue.

Regarding the bold quoted text above, if that means you keep all your originals on an external drive, then there is one more step to add to the other advice:

In Lightroom Classic, open Preferences and click the Lightroom Sync tab. Set both of the options under Location, especially Specify Location for Lightroom’s Synced Images. Set that to where you store your originals on your external volume. In the big picture, what you probably want to do is make these settings match what you usually use in the Import dialog for images you import from camera cards. That way, photos and videos coming into Lightroom Classic from your iPhone through Lightroom sync will be stored in the same folder structure as the photos and videos from your camera cards, if that’s how you want to do it.