If you decide not to use Lightroom’s built in camera – or you occasionally forget – you’ll want to add other photos to Lightroom. This can be done automatically, so you don’t even have to think about it, or manually.
How do I add photos and videos automatically?
To automatically add new photos and videos to Lightroom, tap the LR icon in the top left corner of the Organize view to show the Preferences, and look for the Auto Add switches. The name and exact location of this preference varies by OS.
These automatically-added photos are added to the main Lightroom Photos collection, which contains all of the photos synced to the cloud, but you can also select a specific collection to make them easier to find. To do so:
- In the Organize view, which shows the list of collections, tap the + in the top corner to create a new collection and give it a name such as “iPad Photos” or “Inbox.”
- Tap the … icon to the right of the collection name to show the collection menu.
- Select Enable Auto Add from this menu and confirm your choice.
How do I add photos and videos manually?
Auto Add only adds new photos automatically as you shoot them, but you can add older photos to Lightroom mobile using the Add Photos command. The process varies slightly by operating system:
- Tap the Add Photos button at the bottom of the Organize view (or at the bottom of a collection’s Grid view, if you want to add them to a specific collection).
- Lightroom displays the photos stored on your mobile device. At the top of the grid, select the album/folder of your choice, for example, Camera Roll. You can filter to show only specific file types by tapping the … button at the top of the screen. Photos already imported into Lightroom on the current mobile device have a LR icon in the corner.
- On iOS, swipe across the photos to select them, or tap the … button to Select All. (If you just tap on a single photo, you can start editing it immediately, then choose to save the edits in Lightroom.)
On Android, tap the photos to select them, tap the … button to Select All/None, or tap the checkmark next to the date/folder name to select a segment of photos. - When you’ve finished selecting the photos to import, tap the Add button at the bottom of the screen to confirm your selection.
So if you can add photos from your camera roll, does this mean you can also add photos from your DSLR or mirrorless camera, perhaps using your tablet on vacation? Learn more next week!
Further posts are coming up over the next few weeks, explaining how to view and edit your photos, but if you’re keen to started in the meantime, you can download the full set of infographics right now. They’re yours to download absolutely FREE when you sign up for my monthly Lightroom newsletter using the form below. (Don’t worry, I won’t share your email address with anyone else. You can read previous issues of the newsletter here.)
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This doesn’t seem to be possible on the newest version, there is no settings option and you can’t change anything under preferences for turning on and off auto sync or were to decide to sync from?
Hi Anne-Marie
The layout has changed since this post, but the options are still there. Under App Settings > Import you’ll see the top screen that let’s you decide where to auto Add from.
Is there a way to setup auto-import so that different devices are being imported into different albums? For example, I Both my wife and I have an iPhone logged into the same LR account, is there any way to distinguish which device the pictures are coming from other than looking at the EXIF?
How are you doing the auto import? Through the Lightroom mobile app on each device? Or another way?
There it is! Thanks
I need to start at the beginning. It says “To automatically add new photos and videos to Lightroom, tap the LR icon in the top left corner of the Organize view to show the Preferences, and look for the Auto Add switches. The name and exact location of this preference varies by OS.”
I’m assuming I should be in the LR Mobile app on my iphone, but I don’t see how to get to the “Organize view. ” I see six icons across the top my phone screen: home, Library , people, search, cloud, and settings
Settings – Import. Then you can set the sliders to auto add from Camera Roll.
Hi, reading this (and other comments), it is possible to only auto-upload certain folders (e.g. only Camera roll, but not Whatsapp, Screen shots etc.). This relates to Android, not iOS, in case the LR mobile feature set is different for the two.
Not for auto import, no. There are a couple of settings to specify file types, so you could exclude PNG’s for screenshots.
Hi! I just answered my own question. I needed to look at the app’s setting under its listing under “Settings” (the top level). I was looking under “Privacy.”
I still feel like all these companies want my photos!! LOL
But I am in good humor about it. My Queen, please feel free to delete this and my question unless you feel both might help somone.
I am, however, grateful that this prompted me to discover your newsletter and ebooks.
God save the queen!
(In all seriousness, thanks for what you do)
Michael
Oh well done Michael.
Hi! I am trying to import a handful of photos into Lightroom form my iphone’s Camera roll and it appears the only option is to tell
Lightroom to automatically add ALL of my camera roll.
Your comments here in response to other questions suggest that LightRoom mobile will not do that but instead will only import the ones I specify but then every photo I take thereafter. This used to NOT be the case, correct? In any event it’s regretable that Adobe is trying to “trick me” into using it on all my photos.
Anymore it seems like whenever I insert a memory card into my computer or take a photo any number of companies start wanting my photos ??
Thanks in advance ??
Michael
I just downloaded Lightroom CC on my Pixel 3 and every time I go to import photos, nothing shows up. I select the photos, hit ‘add’ and then I’m back on the home page and still no photos are in my gallery. I’ve repeated this a few times. Shut down the app and then tried again. No luck. Any advice?
I’d start by rebooting the phone. If that doesn’t do the trick, here’s instructions on how to report it to Adobe: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/send-bug-report-feature-request-adobe/
I have my camera roll automatically uploaded to my Lightroom Mobile CC. But when I delete a photo in my camera roll it does not delete in Lightroom. Is there a way I can make this happen?
No, but it would be a great feature request https://www.lightroomqueen.com/send-bug-report-feature-request-adobe/
I am using a Gmail account to subscribe to the newsletter. The images in this post are not appearing in Apple Mail on my Mac, iPhone or iPad.
The images also do not appear when I access this email in Gmail’s webmail.
The images are visible on the web page for this post.
Thanks Paul, I’ve figured out the cause (relative instead of absolute image links that didn’t translate automatically in the RSS feed) so I’ll avoid it in future.