In the last post, we learned how to import photos captured using other camera apps on your phone or tablet… but if you can import photos from the camera roll, that means you can also import photos shot on real cameras too. It’s a great way of backing up and even starting to edit your photos on vacation.
Transfer the photos to the phone/tablet
Lightroom doesn’t add photos directly from your memory card, so you first have to import the photos into the phone/tablet’s photo storage space, before they can be added to Lightroom.
iOS
Apple sells SD memory card adaptors and USB adaptors for use with your camera cable and iOS device. This means you can insert your SD card or plug in your camera, and import the photos onto your iPad or iPhone using the iOS Photos app. Lightroom can then import the photos from the camera roll. To do so:
- Put your memory card into the SD adaptor, or plug your camera cable into the camera and USB adaptor and turn on the camera.
- Plug the adaptor into the Lightning or 30-pin port at the bottom of your iPad/iPhone.
- The Photos app automatically opens. At the bottom of the screen, tap Import.
- Thumbnails of your photos start to appear. Tap the photos you want to import, or tap Import All at the top of the screen.
- Tap Import All or Import Selected to begin the import.
- Wait… and wait… It can take a long time if the photos are large. If there are raw+jpeg pairs on the card, both formats are copied to the iPad/iPhone.
Android
I understand the same is possible on many Android devices, using an OTG cable to connect the camera or card reader and then using a file browser to copy the photos from the memory card to the DCIM folder (or a subfolder) on your phone or tablet. I’m not an Android user, so I won’t confuse you by attempting more detailed instructions, as the exact instructions vary by manufacturer.
Add the photos to Lightroom
- Once the photos are safely copied to the phone/tablet’s camera roll/photo storage, switch back to Lightroom.
- Add the photos to Lightroom, as we learned in the last post, either by enabling Auto Add or adding them manually. If you’re adding them manually, at the top of the screen, where it says Camera Roll, tap the Recently Added album (iOS) or the subfolder you created (Android) to view just the new photos. If you have Lightroom mobile set to automatically add new photos, you can skip this step.
- Once the photos have finished importing into Lightroom, you can delete them from the Photos app and clear its Recently Deleted collection (iOS) / delete from the DCIM folder (Android) to free up space on your device.
On iOS, if you’re reusing the same memory card without reformatting, it’s better to delay clearing the Photos app until you switch memory cards. Otherwise, if you delete the photos and then reinsert the card to transfer the next day’s photos, it’ll try to import them all again, instead of just importing the new ones.
Can I just take my tablet on vacation now?
A tablet now makes a useable vacation workflow tool, with a couple of provisos:
- You either need a tablet with large enough storage space to hold all of the photos you shoot on vacation, and a fast upload speed when you return home.
OR
- You need an unmetered internet connection at your destination with a fast upload speed, which would allow you to upload the original photos to the cloud, and then clear the cache to recover space on your tablet. Sadly this seems to be hard to come by in most hotels, but leaving the tablet awake and uploading overnight may be adequate if your files are small.
If your internet connection is slow or your bandwidth is limited, disable your internet connection (e.g. Airplane mode or just turn Wi-Fi off) while sorting through the day’s shots, then delete the rejects before reenabling Wi-Fi. This avoids wasting time uploading the photos you’ll eventually delete.
The original files (whether raw or JPEG) are uploaded to the cloud, and then back down to your desktop version of Lightroom, however for safety, I’d still recommend keeping the photos on the memory card in addition to your tablet as a backup, at least until you return home and add the photos to your normal image backup drive.
How do I recover space?
Photos added using the mobile app or website are stored as full resolution photos, unlike the smart previews uploaded by the desktop app. These can take up quite a lot of space, although the app is quite smart about managing the space it uses.
If you need to clear space on your device, perhaps to import new photos, tap the LR icon in the top left corner of the Organize view, and look through the different preferences for the Clear Cache button. The exact location varies by OS and app version. Tap the Clear Cache button to clear all of the full resolution photos that have already been uploaded to the cloud, and are not marked for offline use. To just clear an individual collection, switch back to the Organize view, tap the … icon next to the collection and tap the Clear Cache menu item instead.
Further posts are coming up over the next few weeks, explaining how to view and edit your photos.
More information
For extensive information on the Lightroom cloud ecosystem (including mobile, cloud desktop and web interface), see Adobe Lightroom – Edit Like a Pro which is already updated for the latest features, and can be downloaded immediately after purchasing. If you already have a current Lightroom Cloud Premium Membership, the latest eBooks are available for download in your Members Area.
Note: purchase of this book includes the first year’s cloud-based Premium Membership, giving access to download the latest eBook (each time Adobe updates the software), email assistance for the applicable Lightroom version if you hit a problem, and other bonuses.
I have an android tablet with LR mobile that syncs images fine to the cloud but when I try to sync from my desktop it starts to sync and anywhere from 6 to 12 images appear in the all synced photographs collection in the catalog section in the library module I get pop-up window that says “Another catalog name.lrcat has started syncing with the Lightroom mobile catalog. Only one catalog can be synced with Lightroom mobile. Sync disabled.” As soon as I click okay in the pop-up window the collection that was started “All synced photographs empties and shows a zero. This catalog that is listed in the pop-up dialog is the current and only catalog that I have. Any suggestions on how to fix this? I am a current LR CC subscriber on a P.C. After many attempt to fix this including deleting data on the cloud and removing and reinstalling lightroom mobile as well as logging in and out of all devices online I created a brand new catalog and everything now syncs fine. Is there a way to change the name of the main catalog I use and retain all presets,previews and all without having to build anything?
Since everything’s now syncing fine, let’s stick with the current catalog. I’m guessing it’s only got the photos from the cloud in it though?
Go to File menu > Import from Another Catalog and navigate to the main catalog you usually use. That should let you bring the contents of your main catalog into the one that’s syncing ok. The only warning is that any publish services (Facebook/Flickr etc.) wouldn’t carry over, so we might need a plan B if you use those extensively.
Thanks Victoria, so far I have been only moving images from my tablet’s camera to my desktop via the cloud so there are not that many, but I would like to have it all work too. once it synced with the new catalog that works and the files were available on my hard drive I was just going to import them into my main catalog that won’t sync and clear the sync catalog for the next sync. What are your thoughts on doing this versus your idea of importing from my old catalog to the new one?
One way or another, you need all of the photos in the sync catalog. Moving the photos into your working catalog is fine, as long as you can then get your working catalog to sync. By all means try that first, and if it doesn’t work, then try the other way round.
Hi Victoria, I went ahead and imported all into the new “syncable” catalog and so far everything seems to be in the new catalog as you said except the quick collection, that diodn’t import but I have resolved that. Thank you again for all your excellent guidance with this and all things Lightroom! Larry
Thanks Victoria for this post. I’ve been trying to clean-up space on my iPhone without much success. I have stopped synching all collections and cleared all the cache. However I still show 8.58GB in ‘Locally Stored Copies’ that I’m not aware how to clean-up. This is critical since my iPhone is running low in memory. Any suggestion? Thanks SO much.
Hmmm, that sounds odd. Are there still collections showing in the Organize view? Having some marked for offline use would be the usual suspect.
Thanks Victoria. Only one with 9 images which do not occupy this amount of space. I can send screen. Sprites it that would help. I’m not seeing how to attach them here. Thanks.
The prior post should have said that I can send screen captures if you want to.
Good plan. You can’t upload screenshots here, but you can if you post on the forum https://www.lightroomforums.net
Hi Victoria.
I have a question regarding my Lightroom Mobile workflow in exporting a high res photo.
I take a photo with a Leica M9 camera and I import the file to my iPhone 5 in its original resolution JPEG + raw format.
Once in my iPhone camera roll I then import this photo into Lightroom Mobile, where I ‘m able to make any adjustments to it.
I want to be able to email, share or save this photo to my camera roll in the same resolutution that it was imported into lightroom.
Each option I try to use the resulting photo is much smaller/lower resolution version of the originally imported photo.
How can this be ?
However whats annoying, when trying to email or share the photo from lightroom mobile it reduces it down to 72 dpi!?! That`s fine for screen viewing, but i need the file for print.
Best regards
John
Ignore the DPI – what are the pixel dimensions you’re getting? Tap the LR icon and look around for the Only Download Smart Previews toggle switch and make sure it’s turned off too.
I have a situation where there are a few photos in my library that were taken with an external camera, but first imported into mobile via dropbox. Only a subset of the files I put into dropbox made it into LR mobile. I have the original files still in a dropbox folder. I can’t quite see how to consolidate the files back into their normal place in my photo folder, along with tags and other edits made to mobile versions.
I might just import (“Copy as DNG”) the dropbox/photos folder into LR desktop, it’s not really worth spending time faffing over maybe a couple of dozen minor edits, but I wonder if there’s an elegant approach to this kind of use-case.
p.s. I notice you’re Southampton based; greetings from Winchester.
Hi Peter. “First imported into mobile via dropbox”… on your desktop? Or on your mobile device? Take me through the steps, or what’s where now?