When Lightroom mobile was initially released a few years back, I, like many Adobe users at that time, was curious, and found myself finger tapping all the way to my phone's respective App Store to download it. After that addition to my phone was made, the once fresh home screen icon for a long time sat irrelevant, and relegated to the end of the bench, placed inside of a seldom seen, far lateral, home screen folder.
A couple things factored into this being the case. First of all, I brushed it off at its release as a diet version of Lightroom, strictly designed for images taken on mobile devices. I reassured myself that what I needed to utilize, in my mind seeing this mobile version of Lightroom as not a serious contender for real editing work was the tried-and-true, heavy-lifting capable Lightroom for desktop. Second, let’s be real for a moment, mobile phones are already brimming with distraction. There was already plenty there to steal my ever waning attention. Turns out my perspective on this was simply in need of adjustment. While my feelings have not wavered with regards to where I turn for serious editing of bulk images, which remain in heavy favor to the desktop experience. But what has changed is my realization that Lightroom mobile, now part of a broader Lightroom family and renamed Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC, makes for the absolute perfect compliment to my desktop editing, one that now is an unmovable and time-saving staple in my workflow process.
Recently upon dipping my toes in the Sony waters, I found myself switching away from being a long-running Canon user. I had thought now perhaps is also a good time to try out some Lightroom alternatives. As a fresh Sony Alpha user I had basically a golden ticket to try out Phase One's Capture One Sony 11, no commitment necessary. After all I had always heard wonderful things about the way Capture One handled Sony’s raw files. In addition, I recently purchased Alien Skin's excellent photo editor and organizer, Exposure X3, after a recent anniversary sale price proved to tempting to pass up. But at the end of the day as great as both of these programs may truly be, the biggest feature Lightroom has over the competition for me is a strong cloud based presence, which provides the very 2018 like ability to sync my desktop work with my phone and vice versa.
Most importantly is Adobe seems to understand the phone goes everywhere I do. What they leave out of the Photography Plan product page is that small dopamine drip that hits every time I fire up my desktop catalog only to see the magic of the cloud sync up with the changes I made while on the go. No longer does my productivity have to take a complete nose dive when the outside world calls me into action. I don’t focus on wall to wall edits of my images, instead while on the go I will make small adjustments to them. Edits like straightening a horizon line, slightly adjusting exposure, or applying lens corrections, as small pockets of time during my day allow. As busy as we all are, these breaks in our days are everywhere, there are no shortage of editing opportunities. Heck even the two biggest mobile operating systems will soon have simple ways to track how much free time you spend on your mobile devices on any given day. These small edits add up, and ultimately now allow me to spend less overall time chained to a desk in front of a monitor.
Something as simple as a trip to the grocery store provides an opportunity to work on your next masterpiece.
So let this be the reminder you need so that next time you find yourself waiting for cheese to be sliced at the deli counter, or perhaps stuck in the slow moving line at the post office, or maybe waiting for your clothes to dry at the laundromat, or even on a extended bathroom break (just joking, let's not go there) remember there is full-featured software on your mobile device. It is ready and waiting for you to tap into its potential, ultimately allowing us busy photographers the ability to keep the workflow moving along no matter how far from the studio we stray.
I don't use it because it seems like a way to make me pay for Cloud storage.
I understand, these type of expenses for sure add up over time. With that said if you are already paying for the Adobe CC photography plan than you will have at least 20gb of cloud space to play with. I stick to smart previews so I only ever use a small portion of that amount. And as soon as I export, and deliver the final images to my client, I then immediately remove those respective images from the cloud sync.
I'll never see the allure of toning photos on a non color correct screen... a mobile none the less..
Agreed, I keep toning to a bare minimum on anything other than my 5k monitor. But once you have a few dialed in on the monitor, you can then copy and paste via the mobile app while on the move.
I'll be honest, I've been pretty fantastically impressed with the color fidelity of my iPad Pro and how well it matches up with my laptop screen and desktop monitor.
Lightroom CC on my smartphone is worth the entire subscription plan alone. In my opinion it's the best work Adobe has done for years. Being able to just import the shots on the mac and let them sync to my phone is incredible helpful. I prefer to work on the desktop but sometimes I don't have time for that. Working with the raw files where ever I'am and do culling and edits that are synced back to my desktop is a boost of productivity.
Furthermore I can synch my libary and always have a couple thousand of my good shots with me.
I agree 100%
I found myself using it a lot with jpgs from my X100F - import, apply my own preset, adjust, export.
They're having some glitch now, so no photos since April will load into cloud from my phone - waiting for them to fix it :/
Ahh that's a bummer, sounds like a solid system you had going. I hope whoever it is you are working with gets you a fix soon!
I have been editing weddings on Lightroom mobile now for about 18 months. The last 3 weddings I shots I imported directly from my phone using an SD dongle whilst traveling home in the car, edited them on my phone whilst around my family and not tucked away in my office, and only opened my laptop up to export to make sure the quality was spot on and naming convention was suitable. If 90% of your photos are going to be viewed by someone on their phone, why wouldn't you color correct on a screen everyone is going to be viewing it on. Literally Lightroom CC on my phone has changed me as a photographer and has given me more time with my family.
Awesome Keagan, thanks for sharing. I'm with you, weddings are a perfect example of how you can utilize the mobile aspect of Lightroom. Even just culling down from thousands of photos right from the phone can really save you time in the long run. Happy you have found a way to spend more time with the family!
I shoot cheerleading action shots and post-process in Lightroom. Since my primary workstation is a desktop, I use LR mobile on a tablet for basic culling, cropping and straightening tasks while on the go, but keep the color-critical parts of my workflow to Lightroom Classic my calibrated monitor.
I still haven't found the appeal of the new Lightroom CC on the desktop, though.
I've been renting LRCC and all that for a year now and I'll be dumping them next month when my renewal comes up. Maybe I'm old school but I really try to get my image the way I want it in-camera. When I need changes I can use other software that isn't as clunky as Adobe is. And I really don't do anything on my phone.
just another infomercial for Adobe
Maybe I'm just tired, but this is a very weird headline for the story that follows... Why should I avoid long editing hours in LR CC?
As far as I can tell, the story is suggesting editing in short spurts on the phone instead of sitting down to a longer editing session at the desktop.
OTOH, I can perform any given editing task much, much faster on my desktop than I can on my phone, so I suspect I'd actually be consuming much more time accomplishing the same amount of work.
Every one of my shoot imports get immediately made into a synced collection in LR Mobile in my workflow. Just the freedom of being able to cull images on the go..pick, X, stars, etc is a huge timesaver and a task not necessarily relegated to the desktop. I also do the small adjustments mentioned such as horizon, lens correction, etc.
Using the OTG dongle that came with my Samsung phone I can use the data cable for my Canon to import the Raw files straight onto the phones storage.
I then go through and triage the images to get rid of any rejects and rate my keepers. It's an instant back up for when things go wrong too.
I use a loupedeck to save myself time, endlessly uploading and download stuff to the cloud would drive me nuts. I am not a fan of Light Room and use Capture One for my raw editing. With a little bit of effort i got the loupedeck working with C1 (before the latest beta driver) and absolutely love it. i have used the mobile app and found it clunky and not suited to my work. As an event and theatre photographer i spend lots of time raw editing :-)