I am just curious about peoples workflows in order to achieve this way of working.
I've watched some videos on it and am just trying to find out whether it's a viable option for me moving forwards.
How to get the images from the ipad back to the computer is of particular interest because I don't fancy paying the additional sub for the terrabyte adobe storage in addition to the subs I already have.
I do have an upgraded dropbox I could use, or could just take them directly from the ipad to the external HDD and then back to the computer I suppose, but curious how others tackle this.
Also wondering how colour matching is controlled as the ipad is obviously not colour calibrated?
I am perfectly happy just using my desktop with C1 normally, but actually really enjoyed revisiting lightroom to see if I could figure this out (and edit whilst sitting on the couch downstairs
)
Cheers,
Mike
I did this for a good while, using the iPad as my primary editing device and then letting things sync back to the PC. It takes a bit of work but it can be done. The workflow goes like this:
1. Import the files on your iPad, but pause syncing! This is very important if you're working with a big batch of Raw files that are over 20Gb, or over whatever amount of cloud storage you have left. Also, put your images in an Album on the iPad. Albums on the iPad = Collections in LR Classic. This will make the steps on your PC much easier. Do your culling on the iPad and reject and delete any images you don't want on your iPad. Once you've done this you can re-enable syncing and let the files start to upload to the cloud without worrying about running out of cloud storage.
2. Do any editing etc on your iPad while the images sync.
3. Open Lightroom Classic on your PC. It has to be Classic, this method won't work with the newer Lightroom desktop client. This will start to sync the album you created on your iPad down to your PC. Go to the Library view. The album you created on your iPad will appear as a Collection in LR Classic, under the "From Lightroom Mobile" part of the collections navigation pane. Let LR Classic finish syncing the files down to your PC.
4.Select all images in the collection synced from LR on your iPad, and create another Collection in LR Classic with a similar name. I always used to use the same name as the one created on my iPad, suffixed with _DESKTOP so I knew which one I was working with. Make sure Add Selected photos is ticked.
DO NOT set the Desktop collection to sync with LR mobile yet (very important). Leave all of the photos selected in LR Classic.
5. In the Library view still go to the top of the left-hand navigation pane. Under the Catalog heading, you will see an option called All Synced Photos. Go into here, and right click on your already selected images. Near the bottom of the menu is an option to "Remove From All Synced Photographs". Click this, and the files will be deleted from your cloud storage and on your iPad. However, they stay on your PC and in LR Classic.
6. Go back to the _DESKTOP collection you created in step 4, and now tick the little lightning bolt symbol to Sync with LR Mobile. This will upload the smaller Smart Preview files of your images to the cloud, and they will re-appear on your iPad. The beauty of Smart Previews is that they don't count towards your cloud storage allocation! So your files are still available to edit on your iPad, and anything you do there syncs back to the original file now stored on your PC.
As you can see it's a bit of a faff but once you're used to it, it's not too bad. I did end up springing the extra tenner a month for 1Tb storage after about 18 months of working like this though, just so I didn't have to worry about it. Also test this workflow with some photos you don't care about, just to practice and make sure you've got the steps right (and I've remembered them right!)
