Workflow using LR Classic, LR Mobile (IOS) and Apple Photos

[TheBassmanBlog]

Lightroom Version Number

LR Classic 11.5

Operating System

1. macOS 12 Monterey
2. iOS

Over this summer I've been using my iPhone 12 much more frequently as a P&S camera, using the built-in Camera app. The images it takes are excellent, especially if the light is decent and I have the camera set to record raw (DNG). I also have Lightroom Mobile installed, which will happily load all the new images from Apple's photo roll and sync them to my main computer, where LR Classic will also be happy to Import them. This means if I'm out for the day, or away for a few days, all of the images are already in LR Classic when I get home. So far, it's really swell.

Once I have the images in LR, I can go through and edit them. I'd like to get them back into Apple Photos for several reasons. First, it's an extremely convenient way to share (the now-edited) images with friends and family. Second, I only need the modestly sized JPEGs on the iPhone and iPad, rather than the 25MB DNG files. Finally, I can export only the selections that I want back to the phone. So I export the images I want back in Photos as JPEGs, then import them into Photos. I also go through and delete all of the DNGs from Photos. Of course, once LR Mobile sees the new JPEGs, it immediately re-syncs them up to LR Classic. So I now have to go back into LR Classic, and delete all of the newly loaded JPEGs.

This is certainly not a huge effort, but it adds an unnecessary step. In particular, I get nervous deleting images - it's too easy to make a mistake and delete the wrong ones. Does anyone have a better workflow?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Jim Wilde]

Are you exporting the images from Classic, then adding them to Photos on your desktop system, then sharing via iCloud? If yes, which I assume is the case, then I can see how the issue arises.

Personally, I do all my sharing via the Adobe cloud directly from within any of the Lightroom apps. That has the massive advantage of never having to do any exports for sharing, the system automatically creates previews of the shared images, and automatically updates those previews if I make any subsequent changes to any of the shared images. I also keep iCloud for Photos disabled on my iDevices, as Lightroom and iCloud do not always play well together, as you are discovering. I also prefer the camera within LrMobile, which eliminates the problem of having to keep deleting the originals from the camera roll on the iDevice.

However, assuming you've thought that through and decided that you want to continue with your current method, that's fair enough, we all have different ways of doing things. So one suggestion I would make would be to do the exporting of the images for sharing from within the LrMobile app on the iPhone, using the "Export to Camera Roll" sharing option (you could also share directly via email or text message or social media to your family and friends, which would create a jpeg that would not be left lying around on the phone for subsequent confusion). If exporting to Camera Roll, the resulting jpegs are NOT auto-added back into LrMobile, which is great....but this is where iCloud bites again. If you have iCloud for Photos enabled on the iPhone, it's possible/probable that the jpegs would be uploaded to the iCloud and later for space-saving reasons iCloud may delete the jpegs from the camera roll and replace them with smaller previews. These are then likely to be seen as "new" images by the LrMobile app and thus would be auto-imported again, which would bring you back to square one. As I said earlier, iCloud and Lightroom don't work well together!

So, there's a couple of things for you to consider.

 

[TheBassmanBlog]

Jim:

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I feel that Apple Photos is my best choice for sharing, as the family uses Shared Albums extensively. But I’ll try putting the LR Camera widget on my Home Screen and using that. I wish there was someway to invoke it directly from the Lock Screen.

 

[clee01l]

Jim:

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I feel that Apple Photos is my best choice for sharing, as the family uses Shared Albums extensively. But I’ll try putting the LR Camera widget on my Home Screen and using that. I wish there was someway to invoke it directly from the Lock Screen.

I have concluded that you should only use one photo manager. The Photos app and iCloud Photos is IMO more limiting the Lightroom and the Adobe Cloud.

Lightroom for the Web and Adobe Portfolio offer a web based access to photo collections the go beyond that which is offered by Apple in the Apple environment.

I am fully integrated into the Apple device/app world, but the Photos app and iCloud photos I found very lacking. The Photos app is too simplistic for edit adjustments. Lightroom does a much better job. Moving derivatives out of one image manager (Lightroom) to another (Photos) is kludgy and cumbersome.

Ultimately I decided to forgo all use of iCloud Photos and the Photos app (to the point of removing it from my Mac) and stay in the Adobe environment.

By using Lightroom for the Web or Adobe Portfolio, my image collections are available to everyone with a web browser including my son which insists on using Android.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[TheBassmanBlog]

@clee01l

LR Classic is my photo database manager. I’ve been using it since V2. Apple Photos is only for sharing finished images with friends & family, as it’s their product of choice.

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[clee01l]

@clee01l

LR Classic is my photo database manager. I’ve been using it since V2. Apple Photos is only for sharing finished images with friends & family, as it’s their product of choice.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Apple Photos is also a photo database image manager. As such the specs overlap. If Photos is your only image database manager them sharing with others that use it is useful. In a Lightroom centric system, less so.


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