HOW TO AUTOMATICALLY IMPORT IPHONE PHOTOS TO LR CLASSIC

[fbx33]

Lightroom Version Number

Classic (up to date) also Catalina on Mac

Operating System

1. macOS 10.14 Mojave

Hello All—

I want to automatically have all Apple iPhone photos imported into LR Classic on my Mac. I also have LR Mobile on my phone and iPad. I DO NOT currently use Lightroom CC (now apparently called just plain Lightroom). Saw a note somewhere from Jim Wilde (I believe it was) suggesting this was easy as pie but I cannot find current (fall 2019) explanation of how to set up.

Much appreciate all links, pointers, explanations, ideas, etc.

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[Rob_Cullen]

So easy I do not know how I did it! but-
1. My desktop Lightroom-Classic has Sync turned on (in the top Identity Plate menu),
2. I have set Classic Preferences/Lightroom Sync... to 'save' photos from the iPhone to a specific folder-

3. I shoot all my iPhone photos in the Lightroom-mobile App (not the Apple iPhone camera).
My photos just automatically appear in the specified folder on my desktop-

If you have used (or are using) the Apple iPhone camera, then in the Lightroom-mobile app you can go to 'Settings' and [Import], and choose to [Auto Add from Camera Roll]- Switch 'on' for Photos, Screenshots, Videos. Then you have all photos syncing back to the desktop.
And my iPhone-6 will sync down DNG type files taken with the Lightroom-mobile camera!

 

[Jim Wilde]

One thing to bear in mind if using the iPhone/iPad's native camera app is iCloud. Generally I would advise such LR mobile users to disable Photos syncing with iCloud....if not there's a good chance that you'll end up with duplicates in the Adobe cloud.

 

[fbx33]

JW—On iPhone I do not have nearly enough room to save photos in Photos, so I have to have iCloud on (I think), as that’s the only way all photos can be visible and available (as smart previews) on the phone. Unless I am confusing things. How then do I get iPhone camera Photos to sync to my LR Classic install on the Mac?

 

[Jim Wilde]

Having iCloud enabled doesn't change the process as outlined above....it simply risks duplicates being imported into LrMobile, e.g. if you also take pictures on another iDevice which also has iCloud enabled and LrMobile set up to "auto add".

 

[camner]

I import photos in LR CC from both my iPhone and my wife's iPhone using LR Mobile, and both iPhones also use iCloud to sync photos between the various iDevices in our respective Apple ecosystems. All the photos are taken with the native iPhone app, not the LR Mobile app. My wife's iPhone even has "Optimize Storage" turned on, because her iPhone doesn't have enough storage capacity to hold all of the originals (she takes too many videos!). Finally, I also have "Auto add" turned on in LR Mobile.

I do not use Adobe Cloud to keep the images available on multiple devices. As soon as images are synced to LR CC, I delete them from LR Mobile.

MOST of the time, this "just works" for me. I have never (yet...) run into Jim Wilde's issue of duplicate photos (perhaps the reason for this is that I ONLY use LR Mobile on the iPhone...I don't have it on my iPad...perhaps the duplicates occur because LR Mobile on the iPad AND on the iPhone both upload the same photos to Adobe Cloud?).

I HAVE had some sync issues where the number of photos reported by, respectively, an iPhone, LR CC, and LR on the web differ. Sometimes I can reconcile this, sometimes I can't. When I can't, I have to (tediously) manually make sure that all the photos are in LR CC, and then I just madly delete everything and start over (by "everything" I mean the albums set up to hold the photos in LR Mobile, etc.). I've had to do this, I think, 3 times in about 2 years, but not recently.

The only glitch I run into is that in order to have LR Mobile start up and upload images to Adobe Cloud, I have to manually open it. Once open, it will continue to do its magic in the background until all photos are synced to Adobe Cloud. This I understand is a limitation of iOS, not the Adobe app (but I'm not enough of an expert to be able to confirm or deny).

Now, one thing that puzzles me is why having "Optimize Storage" turned on doesn't mess things up. As far as I know, when "Optimize Storage" is enabled, as soon as an iPhone uploads the full-size image to iCloud, it deletes the original size photo from the iPhone and only hangs on to a small version. Since there are times I can go several weeks with manually starting the import process in LR Mobile, I would think there are times when my wife's iPhone has deleted the original size photo BEFORE I get around to syncing it via Adobe Cloud. Maybe LR Mobile is smart enough to force a download of the original size image before uploading to Adobe Cloud?

 

[johnxgough]

So easy I do not know how I did it! but-
1. My desktop Lightroom-Classic has Sync turned on (in the top Identity Plate menu),
2. I have set Classic Preferences/Lightroom Sync... to 'save' photos from the iPhone to a specific folder-
View attachment 13172
3. I shoot all my iPhone photos in the Lightroom-mobile App (not the Apple iPhone camera).
My photos just automatically appear in the specified folder on my desktop-
View attachment 13173

If you have used (or are using) the Apple iPhone camera, then in the Lightroom-mobile app you can go to 'Settings' and [Import], and choose to [Auto Add from Camera Roll]- Switch 'on' for Photos, Screenshots, Videos. Then you have all photos syncing back to the desktop.
And my iPhone-6 will sync down DNG type files taken with the Lightroom-mobile camera!

I’m not sure if I’m too late to reply to this helpful comment. I have done as suggested and all photos taken with the Lightroom mobile app appear exactly as described. I can’t get the photos from my camera roll though, despite choosing auto add from camera roll and switching on photos and screenshots. Can anyone help?

 

[Jim Wilde]

I’m not sure if I’m too late to reply to this helpful comment. I have done as suggested and all photos taken with the Lightroom mobile app appear exactly as described. I can’t get the photos from my camera roll though, despite choosing auto add from camera roll and switching on photos and screenshots. Can anyone help?

Switching on Auto Add only applies any captures taken AFTER you enable that option, it does not apply to existing camera roll images. For those you have to manually import them via the Add Photos import option.

 

[johnxgough]

Switching on Auto Add only applies any captures taken AFTER you enable that option, it does not apply to existing camera roll images. For those you have to manually import them via the Add Photos import option.

Thanks, I thought this might be the case so I took a picture using the camera app on my iPhone. It’s in my photo library but stubbornly refuses to appear in the Lightroom file specified in auto-add

 

[clee01l]

I found that have two different image managers and two different cloud storage and sharing locations to be confusing and difficult to manage. Since Lightroom Classic was already my image management system and Lightroom mobile has it own camera app, I elected to do away with iCloud photos storage and syncing and the Photos app on my Apple devices. With one image manager (Lightroom) I have no problem keeping my photos in one place (Classic) and sharing them via the Adobe Cloud. I suppose you could choose iCloud and the Photos app to manage everything in the Apple environment but there is still the issue of importing into Lightroom Classic.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Jim Wilde]

Thanks, I thought this might be the case so I took a picture using the camera app on my iPhone. It’s in my photo library but stubbornly refuses to appear in the Lightroom file specified in auto-add

What iOS version are you using on the phone. If it's iOS14.x, you need to authorise Lightroom to access the camera roll: in the iPhone's Settings, select the Privacy tab, tap on Photos, then Lightroom, then make sure All Photos is the selected option.

 

[teaman]

I import photos in LR CC from both my iPhone and my wife's iPhone using LR Mobile, and both iPhones also use iCloud to sync photos between the various iDevices in our respective Apple ecosystems. All the photos are taken with the native iPhone app, not the LR Mobile app. My wife's iPhone even has "Optimize Storage" turned on, because her iPhone doesn't have enough storage capacity to hold all of the originals (she takes too many videos!). Finally, I also have "Auto add" turned on in LR Mobile.

I do not use Adobe Cloud to keep the images available on multiple devices. As soon as images are synced to LR CC, I delete them from LR Mobile.

MOST of the time, this "just works" for me. I have never (yet...) run into Jim Wilde's issue of duplicate photos (perhaps the reason for this is that I ONLY use LR Mobile on the iPhone...I don't have it on my iPad...perhaps the duplicates occur because LR Mobile on the iPad AND on the iPhone both upload the same photos to Adobe Cloud?).

I HAVE had some sync issues where the number of photos reported by, respectively, an iPhone, LR CC, and LR on the web differ. Sometimes I can reconcile this, sometimes I can't. When I can't, I have to (tediously) manually make sure that all the photos are in LR CC, and then I just madly delete everything and start over (by "everything" I mean the albums set up to hold the photos in LR Mobile, etc.). I've had to do this, I think, 3 times in about 2 years, but not recently.

The only glitch I run into is that in order to have LR Mobile start up and upload images to Adobe Cloud, I have to manually open it. Once open, it will continue to do its magic in the background until all photos are synced to Adobe Cloud. This I understand is a limitation of iOS, not the Adobe app (but I'm not enough of an expert to be able to confirm or deny).

Now, one thing that puzzles me is why having "Optimize Storage" turned on doesn't mess things up. As far as I know, when "Optimize Storage" is enabled, as soon as an iPhone uploads the full-size image to iCloud, it deletes the original size photo from the iPhone and only hangs on to a small version. Since there are times I can go several weeks with manually starting the import process in LR Mobile, I would think there are times when my wife's iPhone has deleted the original size photo BEFORE I get around to syncing it via Adobe Cloud. Maybe LR Mobile is smart enough to force a download of the original size image before uploading to Adobe Cloud?

I've been out of the loop in my use of Adobe LR on my Mac and am somewhat aware that they changed some app names. I know LR CC is now LR Classic. But what happened on the iOS side? Did LR Mobile become LR Photo Editor or did LR Mobile go away?

Please catch me up on app renames and best approach to sync'ing iPhone photos (taken with Apple iOS camera and stored in the Photos library on the phone) into LR Classic on my Mac.

 

[Jim Wilde]

Please catch me up on app renames and best approach to sync'ing iPhone photos (taken with Apple iOS camera and stored in the Photos library on the phone) into LR Classic on my Mac.

Names:

On the desktop there are two apps, similar in concept but significantly different:

1. Lightroom Classic.....the traditional app which stores and manages images on local disk drives, initially available with a perpetual license (versions 1 through to 6), before it was renamed as Lightroom Classic CC (version 7, it's now at version 10) and is only available with a subscription. For a very short time during the Lightroom 5/6 cycles, it was available both via perpetual license or via subscription. Only during the Lightroom 6 cycle was the subscription version known as LRCC 2015.xx.

2. Lightroom.....at the same time as Lightroom Classic CC was released, a new desktop app was also released, which is basically the desktop version of the Lightroom Mobile app, i.e. images are stored in the cloud. Initially is was named as Lightroom CC (aka LRCC), but a year or so later the "CC" was dropped from almost all Adobe applications, so on the desktop we now have Lightroom Classic and Lightroom. You may see Lightroom sometimes referred to as Lightroom "cloudy", but that should be no longer necessary. Stick with the actual names and it will be fine. Too many users still use LRCC, which as you see was previously used by BOTH the desktop apps....so it's the continued community use of LRCC which causes most confusion these days.

Lightroom Mobile....is the generic name for the Lightroom apps which are available for "mobile" devices, i.e. smartphones and tablets. The apps are more or less identical in functionality (though there are still a few differences), but need to be different based on the operating system and the hardware. So for instance there's a specific version for iPhones, another specific version for iPads, a specific version for all Android devices, and another version specific to Apple TV. The individual apps may have different names, such as Photo Editor on iOS, but nobody (not even Adobe) uses those specific names, everyone uses the term Lightroom Mobile (LrMobile) and then adds the specifics about the OS and if needed the device type.

Regarding the "best approach" for syncing iPhone photos to LrClassic, I answered a similar question a few days ago: Take Lightroom on a trip

 

[teaman]

Names:

On the desktop there are two apps, similar in concept but significantly different:

1. Lightroom Classic.....the traditional app which stores and manages images on local disk drives, initially available with a perpetual license (versions 1 through to 6), before it was renamed as Lightroom Classic CC (version 7, it's now at version 10) and is only available with a subscription. For a very short time during the Lightroom 5/6 cycles, it was available both via perpetual license or via subscription. Only during the Lightroom 6 cycle was the subscription version known as LRCC 2015.xx.

2. Lightroom.....at the same time as Lightroom Classic CC was released, a new desktop app was also released, which is basically the desktop version of the Lightroom Mobile app, i.e. images are stored in the cloud. Initially is was named as Lightroom CC (aka LRCC), but a year or so later the "CC" was dropped from almost all Adobe applications, so on the desktop we now have Lightroom Classic and Lightroom. You may see Lightroom sometimes referred to as Lightroom "cloudy", but that should be no longer necessary. Stick with the actual names and it will be fine. Too many users still use LRCC, which as you see was previously used by BOTH the desktop apps....so it's the continued community use of LRCC which causes most confusion these days.

Lightroom Mobile....is the generic name for the Lightroom apps which are available for "mobile" devices, i.e. smartphones and tablets. The apps are more or less identical in functionality (though there are still a few differences), but need to be different based on the operating system and the hardware. So for instance there's a specific version for iPhones, another specific version for iPads, a specific version for all Android devices, and another version specific to Apple TV. The individual apps may have different names, such as Photo Editor on iOS, but nobody (not even Adobe) uses those specific names, everyone uses the term Lightroom Mobile (LrMobile) and then adds the specifics about the OS and if needed the device type.

Regarding the "best approach" for syncing iPhone photos to LrClassic, I answered a similar question a few days ago: Take Lightroom on a trip

Thank you Jim! Adobe has not done themselves any favors in creating all this confusion with naming their apps and renaming and renaming.
I do subscribe to Lightroom/Photoshop monthly subscription and have the LR Classic on my Mac. I did download the LR Photo Editor and found the tabs etc that were described in descriptions for LR Mobile, however I think there were some minor changes in the UI.

I read through that linked article on your sync workflow. In the past I've always used the LR Classic Import button but it requires your phone to be connected at the time. I have a USB-C to Lightning cable. I hadn't imported my iPhone photos in like a year. There is one batch of photos I already have in LR that it thinks I need to import. It's a trip to Kauai and includes quite a few photos. I'm not sure what to do about them. I already have them so importing would result in duplicates. I could import and then delete but does that then result in LR thinking they need importing again if I did that?
There are other photos I take on my phone that I do not want in LR. Is there a way to mark them as "ignore" so I don't keep seeing them when I go to import? Or maybe I should import and delete from LR, but then again, would it then show them in the Import list again?

 

[Rob_Cullen]

I've always used the LR Classic Import button but it requires your phone to be connected at the time. I have a USB-C to Lightning cable.

If you have the Sync turned on in Lightroom-Classic (and an internet connection) you never need to Import with the phone connected by USB. Lightroom-mobile photos (saved to the Cloud) will automatically download to the Classic Catalog.

There are other photos I take on my phone that I do not want in LR. Is there a way to mark them as "ignore"

There are TWO camera (Apps?) in an iPhone.
There is the iPhone camera that saves photos to the Camera Roll.
There is the (better featured) Lightroom camera that saves photos to the Cloud.
TBMK you can only "ignore" photos you take with the iPhone camera, as long as you do not set the option to Import photos to Lr from the Camera Roll. ie. iPhone photos 'stay' in camera roll only, Lr-Mobile photos import to the Cloud (AND automatically download to Lr-Classic!)