Mobile Workflow - Adobe Pushes Forward

I have been a longtime user of Adobe products throughout my professional photography career. While they have often frustrated me, it is equally true that they have empowered me to create in ways I never imagined.

Moving into the current age of digital workflow and especially travel/adventure based photography, being able to edit and share images in the field is crucial to my workflow. Over the past year, Adobe has made some amazing strides in their mobile app and its integration with their desktop based services.

However, as a Mac/iOS user, the implementation of the camera roll and how it coupled to LR Mobile always frustrated me as it essentially created a two step process. First you had to import from your camera into your iOS device and it’s camera roll application. Then you could go into LR mobile and import the image into the LR Mobile app. This multi step process was confusing and ineficient and often drove me slightly mad.

Enter iOS 13 and we began to see major steps forward in how Apple handled both iPads and iPhones and the process of getting images from a camera to your device. These updates allow us to connect a card reader directly to our device and actually import images just like on a desktop computer or laptop. While still not the fastest, it is almost always significantly faster than your camera manufacturers clunky or not so clunky WiFi transfer mechanism.

As of a day or today, Adobe has now released an update to LR Mobile which finally bypasses the camera roll all together for the import process. This minor change is a welcome update that will allow mobile image makers to streamline their workflow and more efficiently use these devices when they are working from the field.

This, along with the other recent changes made by Adobe, when paired with the new IPad Pro, creates an incredibly robust, light, and mobile imaging platform.