Questions about auto-adding photos from Camera Roll in iOS

[switters]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom version 5

Operating System

1. macOS 12 Monterey

I have a question about the "auto add" feature in Lightroom, which automatically adds photos from Camera Roll in iOS to Lightroom.

If I enable it now, will it work retroactively? i.e. will it add all photos from Camera Roll that aren't currently in Lightroom? The reason I ask is that I just did enable it, and then when I tapped on the cloud icon to check sync status, it says "Auto-importing from Camera Roll", and under that, it says "11470 pending". Does that mean it's trying to import 11470 photos from Camera Roll? Yikes!

If so, is there a way to enable it for new photos only? I'm trying to decide whether to enable this at all. On the one hand, I like the idea of all of my photos being in one place. On the other hand, quite a few of my iPhone photos are not keepers. Sometimes my 10-year old daughter gets a hold of the phone or an iPad that is laying around and takes about 134 pictures of our dog, 75% of which are blurry. And with my Fujifilm X-T4 photos, I do not import everything from the SD card. I first use Photo Mechanic to sort and cull, and then I only import keepers to Lightroom.

So, maybe I should do the same with my iPhone photos... leave auto-add off and then selectively "send" photos from Camera Roll that I want to have in Lightroom. The problem with this is that, while I am conditioned to add photos from the X-T4 after every shoot, I am not conditioned to do this with the iPhone. Maybe I need to set up a reminder to add selects/keepers every 2-3 days until I get into the habit.

Curious to know what you all do?

 

[Jim Wilde]

The "Auto-Import" function is only supposed to add any images in the Camera Roll that were created after you enable the option. It's not supposed to work retroactively (though there were some suggestions that it did a long time in the past). I just tested it again, i.e. turned off the option, then took a few photos on my iPad, re-enabled the option and nothing was auto-added (as expected). Then with the Lightroom option still enabled I took another photo with the iPad, started Lightroom again and only that last photo was imported (again as expected).

So I can't really explain your issue, other than to ask if it's definitely trying to import 11470 images, or does that mean that you have syncing pending for 11470 existing images? If you turn that auto-import setting off, does the "11470 Pending" message go away?

I also like the idea of having all my photos in the one place, it never makes any sense to me to try to keep iPhone/iPad captures separate from my main camera captures....Lightroom is my image manager, therefore it should manage all my images. That's the way I view it.

You don't have to "send" pictures from Camera Roll to Lightroom, you can manually import into Lightroom from the Camera Roll (where you could select specific images to import).

 

[clee01l]

I have the auto import feature turned on and I do not use iCloud for storing any photos. By removing all photos from the camera roll to an album you will only import the album called "Camera Roll". Onceyou have accumulated all of your images in to Lightroom Classic or Lightroom Cloud, delete all of the iCloud images and albums. From that point forward, you can use the Lightroom camera , turn off importing into iCloud and remove the images from the Camera Roll as soon as they accumulate it you should accidentally use the Photos camera.

 

[switters]

I have the auto import feature turned on and I do not use iCloud for storing any photos. By removing all photos from the camera roll to an album you will only import the album called "Camera Roll". Onceyou have accumulated all of your images in to Lightroom Classic or Lightroom Cloud, delete all of the iCloud images and albums. From that point forward, you can use the Lightroom camera , turn off importing into iCloud and remove the images from the Camera Roll as soon as they accumulate it you should accidentally use the Photos camera.

Interesting! I have to think this through a bit more, but I like the idea of having all of my photos in one place, and not having duplicates (other than backups, of course.)

I guess there are two ways I could do it:

1. Stop using iCloud for storing photos from now on, but leave any photos I've taken with my iPhone previously in Camera Roll / iCloud.
2. Import all photos (or perhaps just certain albums?) from iCloud/Camera Roll into Lightroom

If I choose #2, is there a way to "batch import" photos/albums from Camera Roll into Lightroom? Or would I need to manually select all of them?

Regardless of whether I choose #1 or #2 above, I would like to continue using the native iPhone camera app rather than the Lightroom camera app. If I turn on auto-import into Lightroom, and then turn off iCloud Photos on my iPhone, that would ensure that all of the photos I take on my iPhone would end up in Lightroom but they would not also be duplicated/stored in iCloud?

I guess the only potential downside is that photos taken with my other iOS devices (iPad Pro) would not end up in Lightroom? But that is probably an upside, not a downside, since I don't really take pictures with my iPad. That's where all of the blurry dog photos come from (courtesy of my daughter)!

 

[clee01l]

I’m missing your bullet points 1 & 2.

You can open the iCloud Photos locally on the computer and import what you wish from iCloud into LrC.

I have found that iCloud and Lightroom/ Lightroom Classic do not play well together. You can turn off iCloud photo importing in Photos settings on your mobile device so that all (new) photos remain in the mobile device. If they are captured by the Lightroom camera, Lightroom will manage the local image copies. If captured by the iPhone camera, you will have to do your own housekeeping since eventually you will consume all of your iPhone storage.

Lightroom Mobile installed on the iPad Pro works exactly like Lightroom on the iPhone. I import from my camera card into Lightroom on my iPadPro as a front end to Lightroom Classic on my iMac.


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[switters]

Thanks again, Cletus.

To import photos from Camera Roll to Lightroom on my Mac, would I just export the photos I want to import to a folder and then import into LrC? Or is there an easier way to do it?

 

[clee01l]

Thanks again, Cletus.

To import photos from Camera Roll to Lightroom on my Mac, would I just export the photos I want to import to a folder and then import into LrC? Or is there an easier way to do it?

If you choose to store by reference in the Photos app, your image will be stored outside of the Photos Library package and accessible by the filesystem and LrC. Other wise you need to export a copy the originals from Photos to a location visible to the Filesystem. It used to be possible to make a symbolic link to the Master folder inside the Library package, but I believe Apple killed that option.


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