I had posted on this topic awhile back and wanted to revisit it now that I have some more experience with the iPad Pro and Adobe Creative Cloud suite. At home I have a 15" MacBook Pro essentially set up as a desktop device using a hub and old Thunderbolt Display.
Previously, I dealt with my travel photos on the road in one of two ways. Sometimes I'd lug along the laptop, and go through the nightly ritual of downloading images off the card to the internal drive and immediately backing them up on an external drive. I'd then cull and edit photos on the laptop. For other trips, I took a bit more risk and just left the images on SD cards. I had tried a couple of portable backup solutions with a Raspberry Pi, a Hootoo Tripmate, but these are kludgy and only work at USB 2.0 speeds in general. My more modern cameras all had the ability to generate local Wi-Fi networks or use Bluetooth to send images to mobile devices for a quick edit. In this case, I'd usually load a RAW up into Snapseed, edit, and share with friends and family.
However, no matter what I did, when I got home I'd have a big pile of images left to be edited in Lightroom Classic. I'm very busy with work and family activities and as such don't have nice blocks of time to edit all of these photos huddled away in the basement. I've gone months and months without getting back to these photos! I think the iPad Pro (11-inch in my case) finally offers a solution for me, albeit a bit roundabout. Here is my workflow:
Previously, I dealt with my travel photos on the road in one of two ways. Sometimes I'd lug along the laptop, and go through the nightly ritual of downloading images off the card to the internal drive and immediately backing them up on an external drive. I'd then cull and edit photos on the laptop. For other trips, I took a bit more risk and just left the images on SD cards. I had tried a couple of portable backup solutions with a Raspberry Pi, a Hootoo Tripmate, but these are kludgy and only work at USB 2.0 speeds in general. My more modern cameras all had the ability to generate local Wi-Fi networks or use Bluetooth to send images to mobile devices for a quick edit. In this case, I'd usually load a RAW up into Snapseed, edit, and share with friends and family.
However, no matter what I did, when I got home I'd have a big pile of images left to be edited in Lightroom Classic. I'm very busy with work and family activities and as such don't have nice blocks of time to edit all of these photos huddled away in the basement. I've gone months and months without getting back to these photos! I think the iPad Pro (11-inch in my case) finally offers a solution for me, albeit a bit roundabout. Here is my workflow:
- iPad Setup- I specifically do not have my iPad photos set to back up in iCloud, which I do with my phone. I don't want big image files immediately trying to backup to the cloud.
- Download photos to the iPad- The newest iPad Pros have a USB-C port for charging and peripherals. You can use any old card reader with USB-C and it is recognized. The iOS mandates that photos can only be imported to Camera Roll, and possibly to the files app. I import all of my RAW files (NEF, ARW, dng) into the camera roll.
- Cull images- Not as easy as in LR, but pretty straightforward. If I think it's an image I even may want to edit but could be thrown out, I mark it as a favorite. If there's no heart, it gets deleted.
- Upload to Adobe LRCC- I have the LR CC app on both my iPhone and iPad. It really took me awhile to wrap my head around where these files all reside with this software in the mobile environment. First, I upload images from the Camera Roll to LRCC app. This is done from within the app after you give it permission to see the Camera Roll. Highlight all of the images it detects, and they are COPIED into the app. So now you have 2 copies of each RAW on your device. I also keep all images on the XQD and SD cards during a trip. So after the images are in the LRCC app, I delete them from the Camera Roll. I have the LRCC app set to back up the full size RAW files to the Creative Cloud. This is done over Wi-Fi whenever a network becomes available, and can be done in chunks depending on network speed. Whether it's backed up or not doesn't affect your ability to work on the files in the app. I create a Collection for each trip, or each part of a trip. You can then create a Folder which is just a way to group Collections, NOT a traditional folder to hold files.
- Edit photos in LRCC- The LRCC app is somewhat limited in scope compared to LR Classic on a desktop device or laptop. The features I really miss for my limited needs are batch processing, and panorama and HDR merge. However, the adjustment tools are pretty well featured. Global and local adjustments are pretty much identical to LR Classic. Local adjustments are actually easier for me using the Apple Pencil rather than a mouse. Cropping, geometric corrections, vignette control are the same. There are numerous profiles to choose from, including the camera specific profiles for the files, as well as Adobe profiles.
- Export photos from LRCC- As I said above, I clear out the Camera Roll after copying images to LRCC. Now I export edited jpeg's to the Camera Roll, either full size or 2048 pixels on the long side for social media. These I'll keep on the device for future enjoyment as well.
- Connecting with Lightroom Classic- This part was a bit tricky, because again, it's somewhat opaque how Adobe handles files until you do some internet research and trial and error. First I had to sync my LR Classic with the Adobe Cloud. For some reason, it was perpetually trying to establish a connection with the cloud, unsuccessfully. Apparently there are issues with some wireless networks that impedes forming the connection initially. So I actually had to run an ethernet cable to the hub, at which point it connected to the cloud account. Now it works over my home Wi-Fi. This issue has been documented by other users as well.
- Loading RAW files to Lightroom Classic- Here I had 2 options. First, I could import images directly from the cloud. Second, I could plug in a card reader and import my images locally. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to sync the status of edits from the cloud with the locally loaded files, so I chose the first option. To find your files in the Adobe Cloud, you need to be in the Library module and look under Collections in the left panel. Under the parent collection "From Lightroom CC" all of the Collections you create in the LRCC app will show up. Open the collection and you'll see the images. Next, in Lightroom Classic, I create a local file folder by my typical naming convention. Next, highlight all images from the CC collection, drag and drop to the new folder you've created, just as you'd move files normally. Now there's a catch. Classic is treating this as importing from another drive. So the RAW files are left intact in Creative Cloud. Also, while the files will show up in your new local folder, they aren't actually saved there until the sync status in the upper left corner states that the sync is complete. Once complete, you can delete the RAW files from the cloud. However, this cannot be done from Classic. I had to go back into the LRCC app on the iPad to delete them.
- Edit RAW files in Lightroom Classic- Here's where it was all worth it. All of the edits I did in the app migrated flawlessly into Classic. Here I could fine-tune things as needed on the big monitor, and do my photo merge tasks as well.