Make Your Photography More Accessible with Lightroom CC Mobile and LR Photo with Dustin Lucas
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Moving to a mobile workflow can seem more daunting than just taking pictures and storing them on your computer. I am constantly changing how I ingest, back up, edit and output files on a weekly basis, as well as the programs I am using. You have to try new things to save more time and get better at what you do. It’s called efficiency. Making your images more accessible is a giant step in the right direction.
Incorporating mobility into your editing workflow is much like using social media to reach potential clients. The ability to edit across multiple devices while providing your clients access to your brand through social media channels is vital to your photography business.
Let’s look at how Lightroom allows you to be more mobile for editing, and why that’s useful. I have a laptop for editing, and I can do it anywhere.
I am talking about your sync-ability between your images when you’re editing with a program like On1 RAW 2017. With Lightroom CC, you can access the nondestructive edits made in your catalog across your mobile devices. The catalogs themselves aren’t syncing; instead, you can edit the images in your browser or on Lightroom Mobile on a phone or tablet. Before we jump into Lightroom Mobile, let’s cover Creative Cloud Libraries.
Get Creative With Cloud Assets
Adobe offers 2GB of free cloud storage on the Photography Plan, not much to write home about. It’s not worth it to store Raw files or as a backup of any sort. It is useful for fully edited JPEGs. This is what Adobe had envisioned for cloud: smaller documents to sync across multiple devices. Now we have Creative Cloud Libraries to browse, sync and manage files. These sync from a desktop folder on your computer and are shared to your online libraries.
From a photographer’s perspective, the Creative Cloud Libraries is most useful when using other Adobe mobile apps, such as Adobe Spark Page and Portfolio. Hundreds of edited JPEGs can be stored here to use for photo web designs. Another addition to these apps is Lightroom mobile, which adds a layer of flexibility to editing that working in catalogs hasn’t offered.
More Mobility on Your Devices
Let’s jump into Lightroom and set up preferences for the mobile app and syncing. In preferences, there is a separate tab for Lightroom mobile where we can review the activity and choose the location for mobile images to store. This is very important when allowing the camera roll on your phone to sync with Lightroom mobile. Your computer HDD will fill up quickly; use an external or NAS drive to store this overflow of files.
Now we can create a Collection to sync images to our Lightroom mobile app. In the Library module, hold Command and strike the “N” key to create a Collection. There is an option to sync with Lightroom mobile; make sure this is checked. Click Create, and you are ready to start selecting images and dragging them into this Collection. When an image is dropped in, the syncing automatically starts. Within a few seconds, you have the Collection loaded to your mobile device with all the metadata and develop settings applied. We are already creating sync-ability within Lightroom like never before.
I love the Lightroom mobile app’s ability on my iPhone to shoot in DNG. Goodbye, Apple camera app—say hello to Adobe Lightroom mobile. Recent updates made this possible for Android users as well. This is nice for taking behind-the-scenes shots at an event or even some stellar quick snaps while the DSLR is tucked away. Pro tip: Choose the option to sync only over Wi-Fi. Otherwise, you will be paying your cellular provider when you go over your data.
Editing features are very similar to those in the Develop panel in Lightroom. I like that the develop settings from an already-edited file in the Lightroom desktop app appear identical in Lightroom mobile. It’s easy to scroll through them like the filmstrip in Lightroom desktop. You can import images previously taken with your phone to sync to your catalog. This provides a great opportunity to organize all those iPhone photos and keep everything in sync. This is useful for social media posts while photographing a client.
Open Images in the Browser
After we have created a collection in Lightroom and synced it with Lightroom mobile, we can make images public or leave them private to access in our web browser. You can edit in your web browser now, and no longer need Lightroom installed on another computer. Select the collection and then right-click. Hover over Lightroom mobile links and choose either Make Collection Public or Private Link: View on Web. If you make it public, you will need to click the link created in the upper right corner of grid mode in Lightroom. This opens the Lightroom browser app in a new tab in your web browser.
This is a huge step for Lightroom’s flexibility. Before, you were limited to an individualized catalog that did not allow for sync-ability or open on NAS hard drives. For team-based workflows, it was inefficient to have to trade catalogs and work one at a time. Now Adobe is taking notes from OnOne RAW’s ability to edit in one location and instantly see these changes on multiple platforms.
In the Lightroom browser app, you have a similar layout as Apple’s photo app. Select an image and choose Edit This Photo in the upper right hand corner, and we are ready to start adjusting. You’ll notice the settings from the desktop app are already applied. You have three categories to edit in: Crop, Presets and Adjust.
In the Crop panel, there is a new feature called Suggested Crop that analyzes the image and auto-crops based on ratio and orientation. It seems simple and useful, with no batching options that I can see, much like auto-straightening at a batch level. Adobe may want to explore this.
In the Presets panel, there is nothing to rant and rave about. The predetermined presets are somewhat limited in their application. It would be nice to see the image previewed in each preset. This feature of OnOne RAW made it stand out.
In the Adjust panel, more commonly known as the Basic panel in the desktop app, the most used tools are White Balance and Light. An interesting upgrade is the Auto feature, which lets you choose between two options for the best image. Adobe is collecting data to make its auto-tone feature even better; the image still needs some work, but it’s a great start.
Sync-ability Between All My Devices
I love Adobe CC’s accessibility and Lightroom’s mobility. I now have instant sync-ability between my computer, phone and tablet. (21) I won’t be editing extensively on my phone or tablet, but I can cull images with ease. Lightroom’s flexibility in my web browser is a helpful feature when I am on the go. All of this is free with your Lightroom subscription. Try it out and see for yourself.
Want more information on this article? Get access to video content and additional supporting images. Launch the June issue of the magazine by logging in or signing up for a free account by clicking here. Shutter Magazine is the industry’s leading professional photography magazine.
