We have been hearing from photographers, especially those out in the field when travelling, that it would be great to have the ability to take the SD card from the camera and edit RAW files, on the go with Lightroom mobile, without having to go back to the studio.
This remote workflow if finally here for iOS, and it’s great !
You will need to get a card reader, like the SD card reader to ightening adapter shown below.
All you need to do is to put the SD card into the adapter and plug into the iOS device. Upon doing so, iOS will recognise the card exists, and will ask if you would like to import images to the Camera Roll.
RAW Images on your card are displayed on the import screen. Images marked in Green already exist, the ones in Blue have been selected for import on this occasion and those images without any ticks are not imported.
Once “Import” is clicked, Import All or just selected can be chosen.
Once the import has completed, the import will ask if you would like to keep or remove the images on the memory card. I personally keep the images, then, depending where I am, back up the images to a separate drive using Lightroom desktop on my computer (I always keep an additional back up at this point, then I’ll remove the images from my card).
In Lightroom mobile on the iOS device, I would typically create a new collection (which will sync to Lightroom desktop automatically, most likely when I next have a WiFi connection).
Once the collection has been created, clicking the … (three dots) by the side of it, will allow you to “Add Photos”.
Add Photos will take you to the camera roll, where the RAW images will be waiting for you. To import them, just tap on each one (each image will have a blue edge to show it’s been selected), then choose import.
Lightroom Mobile will import them into it’s database and then show them in the collection. Once imported, I tend to remove the images from the Camera Roll (for space reasons).
To edit the RAW image in Lightroom mobile, just select the image as you normally would do.
As soon as the edit has been completed, and you move to the next photo, the RAW file and any adjustments will be synced to Lightroom desktop.
Correct the Lens Profiles
The correction of lens profiles are also part of this update, and work the same way as on the desktop version of Lightroom. To turn these corrections on, you need to make sure it’s configured. Within Lightroom Mobile you can get to the app preferences by clicking the LR banner on the upper left hand corner.
This will open the preferences panel, where you need to scroll down, then select import.
Under import, you can then turn on the Lens Profile for RAW files.
Ability to urn on/off the profile corrections on each image, is available from the “Edit” option, then selecting the Lens Profile icon in the adjustments list.
