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Help please.

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nashtockdw

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May 19, 2025
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Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
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Classic
Operating System
  1. iPadOS
Hello all, newbie here. I apologize for being confused with Lightroom, I use an iPad Pro 11-inch (M4) OS 18.4.1 using Lightroom 10.3.0 9B89DD/197 My problem is that since the latest update in Lightroom that when I upload my photos to the iPad that it takes longer to be able to edit my photos, I can browse them and rate them but when I go to edit them every option is greyed out. I have tried to store them locally or use the default only edit smart previews but nothing seems to work. Also since the update it takes forever to synch to LRC on my home computer. Now I shot around 1755 photos yesterday of my local District track meet and on my phone I can use every available option for editing. My phone is an IPhone 15 proMax running the same version of Lightroom. I have never had problems with using my iPad in this manner until now. Any ideas?
 
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Can you edit them eventually? Lightroom needs time to either download the original or a smart preview. If you shot those photos on your iPhone, then it’s logical that you can edit them right away on that iPhone. But before you can edit them on your iPad, they need to be uploaded to the cloud by the iPhone and then downloaded from the cloud by the iPad. I can edit the photos on my iPad right away, but they all have been downloaded and stored locally (as smart previews). I see no delay.
 
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I should have been more clear, these are all shot in a camera then uploaded to my iPad. With the recent update to LRm it takes longer to be able to edit my photos, it doesn’t matter if I have them stored locally or not it takes quite a while to be able to edit the smart preview since the latest LRm update on the IPad. I was hoping to not need to do away with my iPad centric workflow. I have not encountered this problem since I started this workflow.
 
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The delay can be as long as 24 hours in some cases. The iPad has 98.46 Gb of 1Tb in use and my cloud storage in LR is 610.98Gb of 1Tb. The photos from the R6 Mark II are 24.2 megapixels. Last night prior to posting this thread I could not edit any of the photos past the 600th photo on this iPad. The weird thing was that on my iPhone and my wife’s iPad and iPhone I could do everything to all of the photos. I just would like to have the ability to do my workflow without delay.
 
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Tried to edit but cannot, I will say that prior to each and every shoot I clear cache in LR, format the cards, use Pro Grade Digital cards etc. I am just amazed that on the iPad that has Store Locally clicked that I cannot edit my photos but on other devices without the store locally feature clicked that I can edit with a minor delay to download the smart preview. This is just frustrating. I have a baseball game coming up to shoot and I will upload the photos without Store Locally enabled and see how that goes.
 
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That is clearly not as it should be. If all photos are in the cloud or you have copies elsewhere, so no photos are lost if you do this, then I would uninstall Lightroom and install it again to see if that helps.
 
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I tried after the conclusion of today’s game and at first I thought it worked perfectly. It is almost 8 hours after the end of the game and I cannot edit my photos. I guess I will do as you say and delete and try again. Hope this works as I don’t want to be forced to purchase a MacBook so I can edit in a timely manner.
 
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nashtockdw said:
Hope this works as I don’t want to be forced to purchase a MacBook so I can edit in a timely manner.
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Lightroom is one of the reasons I retired my old MBP in favor of a 1TB (M1) iPadPro. I have never had any issues being able to develop on the iPad. I import directly using a card reader and the camera card from my camera. Can you explain how do you import from your R6 Mark II to your iPad? I have a CFExpress card Reader that plugs into the USB-C port on my iPadPro. I import directly into Lightroom and need to do no syncing until I get home where I have a GigaBit inter net and decent WiFi.
 
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I import the same way, card in reader, USB-C port, I usually synch while at the venue or on the way home. Could I just set it up to Store locally and not synch until my edits are done?
 
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So I can turn off synch, edit, then use the photos before the synch is complete? I feel like such a buffoon. I thank you. Guess I can cancel my new MacBook Air purchase.
 
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nashtockdw said:
So I can turn off synch, edit, then use the photos before the synch is complete?
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Yes. Lightroom Mobile does not need to sync in order to edit local photos and export them. Sync is to get the photos into the cloud (and replace them by smart previews if you want to). Searching based on subject recognition and EXIF also needs sync, because indexing is done in the cloud.
 
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nashtockdw said:
I import the same way, card in reader, USB-C port, I usually synch while at the venue or on the way home. Could I just set it up to Store locally and not synch until my edits are done?
Click to expand...
Like Johan, I have turned off syncing over cellular. An Lightroom will not even attempt to sync if there is no WiFi connection. It is not necessary to store the images locally. They get stored in Cache until the sync process is active.

When I am in the field, I usually do not sync unless over night when I am at a Hotel with very good internet connectivity. For a Day trip, I simply connect my iPadPro to my home WiFi network and open Lightroom to let syncing start. The trip from the iPadPro to the Adobe Cloud and then to my Mac Studio upstairs running Lightroom Classic usually takes minutes to sync a few hundred image files to my master catalog.
 
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Well I picked up then returned the MBA so this little pecadillo is now marked as solved. I thank both of you gentlemen for helping me out. Up next eventually will be my impending move to Lightroom Cloud. But that is not something I want to tackle the week of the Pa state track meet. Thank you for your expertise. God bless.
 
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Just as a precaution: in the app settings you can limit the local cache size. I don’t know if that influences anything if you disabled sync, but just to make sure that it doesn’t, I would suggest to set that to ‘Maximum’.
 
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Well I guess deferred is a better way to say it. When I got to photo 467 of 562 all photos are marked as Preview-not editable. I do not have anything to shoot tomorrow so I guess I will wait until they are all synched and on my computer hard drive and reinstall the app. I will say this is the most frustrating thing and I blame the new Lightroom update. Oh and I forgot to mention I have the cache set to Maximum on all devices that I have connected to my Lightroom account.
 
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You're definitely not alone—this latest Lightroom update seems to have introduced sync and preview issues for many. Hopefully Adobe pushes a fix soon. Reinstalling might help in the meantime. Hang in there!

 
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The week I posted was the last week of the Track and Field season here in PA so I borrowed my friends MacBook Air to edit. I think sometime before football season I will be getting one of those to help.
 
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Well, my problem is back with a vengeance. Now even with them stored locally it will not let me edit all of the photos on the iPad frustrating is this silly thing.
 
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