Adobe Lightroom for the iPad is finally here, and it’s superb

Hands on review





Adobe’s Lightroom has become the dominant image-organizing and non-destructive-editing application among serious photographers. However, it has been very awkward to integrate mobile devices into a Lightroom-based workflow. Not only has it been inconvenient to incorporate images shot on a mobile device, but unless your tablet runs a full version of Windows, it hasn’t been possible to review, edit, or share your images on the go in a way that is compatible with your main Lightroom system and catalogs. Adobe has just changed all that with Adobe Lightroom mobile — available today for the Apple iPad. Lightroom mobile allows you to view and edit your existing Lightroom collections on your mobile device, and to create new collections from your mobile images.

Adobe has made the process of sharing a collection with your iPad amazingly simple and efficient. You simply mark collections in your desktop or laptop Lightroom as “Sync with Lightroom mobile.” Adobe then uploads smart previews of those images to its cloud-based servers, that are then downloaded by Lightroom mobile for review and editing.

To get started you’ll need the new Lightroom 5.4 — a free update for registered Lightroom users, available today. You’ll also need to have a subscription to one of Adobe’s Creative Cloud offerings. You simply log into your Adobe account and link your desktop or laptop Lightroom to your mobile device once you’ve installed Lightroom mobile from the App Store on your iPad. The app is currently only available for iPads running iOS 7, with the iPhone scheduled as the next supported platform, followed by Android.
Lightroom mobile makes image editing fun

I get to see a lot of compelling software demos, and Adobe’s Tom Hogarty gives some of the better ones. So I wasn’t surprised that he was passionate about the advantages of Lightroom on the iPad, and made using Lightroom mobile look not only useful but fun for reviewing and editing images. I wasn’t even surprised that when he handed me his iPad and showed me around the interface it was straightforward and easy to learn. Unlike with a lot of other products that demo well but fizzle in real life, when I had a chance to set Lightroom mobile up for real with my image collections and my iPad, it was actually as easy to use and as fun as when I demoed it. Adobe has done an amazing job of stripping down the basic tasks of image review (simple thumbs up, thumbs down), and editing, into something intuitive and tablet-friendly.



The first thing you see after logging in with your Adobe ID is a screen of your collections — the ones that you have synced from your desktop or laptop Lightroom. You can also create a collection of photos from your iPad’s camera roll that will show up on the main screen. Touching a collection brings it up in a stylish grid for quick reviewing. From here, selecting an image displays it in Loupe View — where you can examine and edit it in detail.



Loupe View offers four different modes: Filmstrip shows thumbnails of the collection below the image, Adjustments lets you edit the image non-destructively using Lightroom’s Basic settings, Presets lets you apply any of a number of Adobe-defined settings, and Crop lets you crop the image. The Adjustments are dead simple to use. You simply click on the adjustment you want to change and a slider appears that you can move left or right to increase or decrease its value. You can also share the finished image from here.

Lightroom mobile’s clean UI is augmented with some simple gestures. Swiping up flags an image as a “Pick,” while swiping down makes it a “Reject.” A three-fingered touch switches between your original and edited image. Adobe was very careful with the design of the Loupe View to make sure it would work in both portrait and landscape modes — as well as eventually on the smaller screen of the iPhone and other smartphones.