Adobe CC Lightroom with iTHings

Intro

Those of you who follow me on Facebook and Twitter know that I take a lot of snapshots with my iPhone or iPad and that some of them actually look good. The tools I use with my phone are Apple Photos for quick hacks and Adobe Lightroom CC for more thoughtful work. One problem with this arrangement was that I had to manually manage two photo archives, one in Photos and one in Lightroom. Recently, I learned how to get my Lightroom environment to behave like an Apple Photos environment. That’s what this article is about.

References

This article is summarizes information from two references that I used to get my environment initialized. Reference 1 gives much more detailed descriptions of the process than this CLiff’s Note does.

https://tidbits.com/article/15640, Photos Everywhere with Lightroom CC and Apple Photos, retrieved 10/25/2016.
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/how-to/lightroom-mobile.html, How to get started with Lightroom Mobile, retrieved 10/25/2016.
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/how-to/edit-organize-photos-mobile-to-desktop.html, How to Edit and Organize Photos Mobile to Desktop, retrieved 10/25/2016.

What you need

In writing this article, I have the following kit. Other phones and cameras capable of running Lightroom Mobile work equally well.

An Adobe Creative Cloud photography subscription for $10/month
An Apple iPhone 6+
An Apple iPad Pro 13 inch
Adobe Lightroom mobile on both.

It is also a good idea to install Camera Raw, especially if you have a real camera (one you look through to compose images). And now for iPhone and iPad which make Apple raw format available.

The next two sections describe some configuration preliminaries in Lightroom and Lightroom Mobile. The secret sauce is to subscribe to Creative Cloud and log the devices in. Then create a CC collection for each device that will automatically receive new photos taken by the device’s camera. This happens in the camera itself and is independent of the GUI used to operate the camera. Photos taken with either the Apple Camera UI and the Lightroom Mobile camera UI will be queued and saved to Creative Cloud.

Setting up Lightroom Creative Cloud

I have a monthly subscription to Photoshop Creative Cloud. This subscription allows me to use Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom, and Creative Cloud. Creative Cloud is Adobe’s network storage environment that allows devices to share a library of image assets across hardware platforms. The basic subscription includes enough storage to get started. As your collection grows, you can add more storage.

Once you have purchased your subscription, follow Adobe’s instructions for installing Photoshop Lightroom. Go to the preferences menu and enable Lightroom Mobile.

Setting up Lightroom Mobile

Install Lightroom Mobile on your phone or table using the platform preferred source: for Apple iThings, the App Store and for Android things, the Google Play store. Android people, remember that it is a dangerous world out there, Play Store only.

Once through the initial screens you will enable creative cloud.

Tap the LR logo to bring up the dialog
Set Sync only over WiFi as you desire (recommended)
Set Auto Add Photos to on
Set Auto Add Videos to on
Set Collect Usage Data as you desire

Once these settings have been made, create an auto add collection for the device.

Open the organize view
Tap + to open the Create Collection dialog
Create and name a collection.
Once the collection is present, tap the collection’s … icon to open its settings form
Enable auto add

Work Flow

My two collections are iPhone photos and iPad photos. Both collections appear in Lightroom Mobile on my iPhone and my iPad and in desktop Lightroom CC. Lightroom CC groups them under Collection From Lr Mobile.

Take photos with the Apple camera
Open Lr Mobile and let it sit. It will import new photos from the camera roll and push them to your CC account.
Open Lr and let it sit. After a bit, it will sync with your CC account.
Edit your new work in the normal Lightroom CC way.
After a bit, your edited images will appear on your devices.

Creative Cloud App

Adobe Creative Cloud also includes a manager program that provides the following services.

Checks for and alerts you to updates
Shows which programs your subscription allows you to use
Lets you monitor your storage usage
Lets you maintain your CC credentials.

Adobe has designed CC app to launch at log in and periodically do its checks. It has a status bar widget that lets you wake it from standby to install updates or download additional products from your entitlement when you find a need for them or to try additional Creative Cloud products. The trial collection gives you access to all of the video and still image tools, prepress tools, and web tools.

The Catch

The $10/month plan entitles you to 2 GB of online storage. Reference 1 explains how the 2 GB is used as follows

Adobe’s Creative Cloud includes just 2 GB of storage with the Photography plan for $9.99 per month, but there’s a twist: that 2 GB is dedicated to storing files in Creative Cloud that are shared with other CC applications. Photos you sync via Lightroom mobile do not count against your CC storage allotment, because they’re stored as much smaller DNG files and therefore don’t take up as much space; I’m guessing the amount is negligible to Adobe. However, keep in mind that you need to pay for a Creative Cloud subscription simply to use Lightroom mobile in the first place.