Adobe has just released Lightroom mobile for Android version 2.0, and it’s rapidly catching up with its iOS big brother. So what’s new?
Built-in Camera including DNG capture (phone only)
The new built-in camera includes all of the standard adjustments – flash, white balance, exposure, grid overlay, self-timer and front/rear cameras.
It also has non-destructive shoot-through presets, so you can apply a preset when you’re shooting the image, but if you don’t like the result, you can reset the photo using the normal editing controls.
There’s one additional feature which isn’t available on iOS… if your phone supports raw image capture, the Lightroom camera can store them as DNG files rather than JPEGs.
New Collections View
The Collections view has been updated with smaller icons, which are more practical when you have lots of collections.
Further Editing Tools
The Tone Curve now has a Mode button to switch between the existing Parametric curves, and the new Point Curves, which include curves for the individual RGB channels.
Split Toning has been added, allowing effects such as toned black and white images and cross-processed color.
The B&W mix and HSL adjustments now have a targeted adjustment tool, which allows you to adjust the tones by dragging directly on the photo, rather than guessing which sliders you need to move.
Dehaze is also now available in the Android app. It’s designed to remove (or add) atmospheric haze over a landscape or city smog, but it also works well to quickly clean up a range of photos including backlit photos, underwater photos, reflections, and those shot out of airplane windows!
High-Resolution Output
If the original image is present on the device, for example, a photo you shot using the phone’s camera, the Save to Gallery command in Loupe/Develop views (not Grid) now saves a full resolution edited version of the photo, rather than the previous low resolution version.
The updated app is available right now in the Google Play store.
(If you’ve already purchased my Lightroom mobile eBook (or you purchase today), the updated version is now will be available for download from the Members Area tomorrow – I’m just putting the finishing touches to the update.)
Great article. Really informative and helpful. Thanks for sharing
Is there a list of phones that can shoot in RAW/DNG with this? I have a Samsung Galaxt S5 running Android 5.0 Lolipop but am not sure how to force the camera to shoot in raw instead of jpg. Please advise. thanks.
I found a list on another Android camera app’s website – the same ones should work for Lightroom. http://www.camerafv5.com/pages/manual-camera-controls-table.php It looks like raw capture started with the S6, so you’re out of luck until you upgrade.
Editing photos on a phone screen sort of throws the computer screen calibration yes debate out the window imo
Personally I wouldn’t use it to do my finished edits, but it’s really useful to do a few quick edits to email to someone, or to help decide whether I want to keep a photo. I use it all the time for photos shot on my phone that I want to send out immediately.
It does depend a lot on your phone – many more recent phones have extremely well calibrated screens as standard! Sites like Displaymate and Anandtech are excellent resources for that sort of info.
It has logged me out on every version when I open it. Adobe said this was fixed but it was not. I just updated to this one and…..it logged me out.
I’ve seen it log me out the first time I open after an update, but not more frequently. If it’s happening every time you open it, make sure you report it at the Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum at http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family