# Downloading RAW files to Lightroom on an iPad



## Dave Miller (Apr 27, 2016)

I have an iPad with plenty of spare storage capacity and wonder if I can download RAW files from my Canon to it so that I can work on them in Lightroom whilst travelling?


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 27, 2016)

Yes, you can download raw files on an iPad, but Lightroom Mobile does not support raw files. It simply does not see them.


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 27, 2016)

There is a work around, but it requires a good internet connection during traveling, and it requires that your home desktop computer stays on and Lightroom on that desktop is running all the time while you are traveling. Not really a setup I would use, but I thought I would let you be the one to decide that for yourself: RAW Photo import and editing on the iPad - it CAN be done!


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## Dave Miller (Apr 28, 2016)

Thank you Johan for your answers. I had come to the same conclusion but thought that I must be wrong. 
It leaves me wondering at the value of having Lightroom Mobile, at least for me. I guess I will have to invest in a stand alone back-up and wait until I get home before processing my images.


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 28, 2016)

Lightroom Mobile is a work in progress, so we may see raw support one of these days. The built-in camera app in LR Mobile for Android can shoot in DNG, so that's a small step. Right now LR Mobile is indeed of limited value. Personally, I think that Adobe has focussed on the wrong things for a while. They keep adding editing features, but they still do not support adding keywords and other metadata. To me, the ability to add metadata is much more interesting than editing images on a non-color managed tablet.

Adobe seems to focus more on selfie-shooters than on serious photographers these days. That does not only show in Lightroom Mobile, but also in Lightroom for the desktop. We still remember the disaster of the CC2015.2 update that was aimed at making Lightroom easier for newbees, and look at a new feature like 'Ken Burns' effects in slide shows. These effects are quite powerful if you can control them, so you can decide what effect is used for an image, and you can control the effect itself (how far does the zoom effect go, from where to where does the panning go). Apple Aperture could do that, but Lightroom only has an option to add random effects. Nice for selfie-shooters, totally useless for serious users. But let's be optimistic...


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## Dave Miller (Apr 28, 2016)

I agree but understand that a company has to try and stay in front of it's perceived market but they should be able to do that without leaving serious users behind.


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 28, 2016)

It's that 'perceived market' that worries me. It seems to be selfie-shooters and people using a phone to make pictures rather than a decent camera... I simply don't think you can make a 'one fits all' product. If Lightroom is good for selfie-shooters, it won't be good for me. That is exactly the reason why real photographers leave Apple Aperture for Lightroom, not for Apple Photos.


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## Dave Miller (Apr 28, 2016)

Very well put.


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## johnbeardy (Apr 28, 2016)

I have no doubt that sooner or later Lightroom Mobile will be able to process raw photos and will be used as a replacement for a laptop while travelling. So far, no matter how much some people think that's what it must be, it has not pretended to be that tool. See this article. 

That doesn't mean it's not for serious users - there are other ways to use it and its sibling Lightroom Web.


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 28, 2016)

That article is two years old exactly. A lot of things have changed since then, such as the iPad Pro with USB 3.0 connection. Only Lightroom Mobile didn't change much. I recently downloaded dozens of Sony A7R raw files (36 Mp!) to my iPad Mini. Granted, it was not that fast, but it's doable. I was also able to edit some of these raw images, so I could place a few on Facebook. But I could just not use Lightroom Mobile to do it...


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## clee01l (Apr 28, 2016)

It is hard to consider a mobile device suitable for a RAW image processor. The first area that it falls short is storage. With a storage capacity about the size of a camera card, you won't get many 36mp Raw images. These 64GB or even 128GB mobile devices need to use that capacity for RAM, OS Apps, possibly music and then anything left over can be used to store images from an external camera.   i thought that I could use my iPad as a replacement for my laptop. I bought a card reader to transfer my camera images to the iPad.  That plan fell through the first extended camera trip that I took with the iPad.  I now have a MBP that runs LR but can't benefit from my LR catalog on my desktop computer or LR Mobile.


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## johnbeardy (Apr 28, 2016)

JohanElzenga said:


> That article is two years old exactly. A lot of things have changed since then, such as the iPad Pro with USB 3.0 connection. Only Lightroom Mobile didn't change much.



Two years old but still basically true, Johan. I did say "I have no doubt that sooner or later Lightroom Mobile will be able to process raw photos". However, people aren't replacing tablets or phones so quickly, and Lightroom Mobile/Web has in fact changed plenty, just not in that direction. 

If you had to buy a new iPad to process raw files, and not as well as on a real computer, would you really spend that extra money? A few might, plenty won't. I know I'm happier that they first broaden its capability.

John


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 28, 2016)

johnbeardy said:


> Two years old but still basically true, Johan. I did say "I have no doubt that sooner or later Lightroom Mobile will be able to process raw photos". However, people aren't replacing tablets or phones so quickly, and Lightroom Mobile/Web has in fact changed plenty, just not in that direction.



And that was exactly my point. It seems to move in the direction of snapshooters and selfie-makers...


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## PhilBurton (Apr 28, 2016)

JohanElzenga said:


> Personally, I think that Adobe has focussed on the wrong things for a while. ... To me, the ability to add metadata is much more interesting than editing images on a non-color managed tablet.
> 
> Adobe seems to focus more on selfie-shooters than on serious photographers these days. ... That does not only show in Lightroom Mobile, but also in Lightroom for the desktop.
> Nice for selfie-shooters, totally useless for serious users. But let's be optimistic...



Johan,

You are describing a product strategy that seems seriously out of whack, mis-aligned.  Selfie-shooters are probably less likely than the "average" to even use a PC or Mac, so Lightroom for PC or Mac is simply irrelevant to them.  But even if they were inclined to use a desktop/laptop, they would not pay US $145 for the perpetual license or US $10 a month for the CC subscription, not when most iPhone apps cost under $10 or even $5.

On the other hand, judging by the pictures of members of this forum, I think "on average" we aren't selfie-shooters (unless using a tripod and self-timer.)

So if your comments and my observations are correct, the decision-making in Adobe these days is completely emotional and in need of "adult supervision."

Phil Burton


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 28, 2016)

Maybe they are indeed. 

Of course I am exaggerating a bit, but I do think that Adobe is leaning towards less serious photographers, for the simple reason that the photography market is like a piramid; the lower you go, the bigger it gets. If shareholders want continued growth, then it may be inevitable to go lower and move away from a professional product towards a more mainstream product.

And as far as Lightroom Mobile is concerned, I do see an emphasis on people using their phones as cameras. One of the last updates added a built-in camera, not raw-support, not support for adding keywords, not support for organizing your collections in sets, not support for selective sync (so you can sync different collections to your iPad and your iPhone), just to name a few much more useful features.


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## johnbeardy (Apr 28, 2016)

JohanElzenga said:


> And that was exactly my point. It seems to move in the direction of snapshooters and selfie-makers...



Who use features like HSL and B&W with a targeted adjustment tool? Or Tone Curve? Or Dehaze? Who use Before/After comparisons, and clipping indicators? It may not have moved in the direction of processing raw files on devices unsuitable to be a laptop substitute, but plenty has changed.

I must admit, I am rather mystified by the addition of camera features!


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 28, 2016)

Who indeed uses that on a non-color managed device?...


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## johnbeardy (Apr 28, 2016)

The lack of colour management doesn't matter that much. You use LrM to get into the ballpark, which it does perfectly well, and then fine tune stuff when you're back chained to the desk.


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## johnbeardy (Apr 28, 2016)

The lack of colour management doesn't matter that much. You use LrM to get into the ballpark, which it does perfectly well, and then fine tune stuff when you're back chained to the desk.


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## PhilBurton (Apr 28, 2016)

JohanElzenga said:


> Maybe they are indeed.
> 
> Of course I am exaggerating a bit, but I do think that Adobe is leaning towards less serious photographers, for the simple reason that the photography market is like a piramid; the lower you go, the bigger it gets. If shareholders want continued growth, then it may be inevitable to go lower and move away from a professional product towards a more mainstream product.
> 
> And as far as Lightroom Mobile is concerned, I do see an emphasis on people using their phones as cameras. One of the last updates added a built-in camera, not raw-support, not support for adding keywords, not support for organizing your collections in sets, not support for selective sync (so you can sync different collections to your iPad and your iPhone), just to name a few much more useful features.



John,

Couple more points.  First, although the pyramid is bigger towards the bottom, as far as price is concerned, the pyramid is inverted. Second, think about the Adobe brand overall.  What is the "promise of benefits" and to whom is that set of benefits targeted?  It's creative professionals and serious amateurs.  Adobe Creative Suite is like Microsoft Office for creative professionals, the standard.  For those target market segments, the Adobe brand is very strong.  Adobe even named their new delivery model *Creative *Cloud. 

Now let's consider the average selfie-shooter.  They probably never heard of Adobe.  They have probably heard of Photoshop, as in, "The picture of that supermodel was _Photoshopped _to remove blemishes."  The Adobe brand has little or no value for these people.  

Putting in too many features for selfie-shooters risks brand value dilution and gives an opening to serious competitors.  On1's preview announcement of their new RAW Editor could be a serious threat to Lightroom and even Photoshop.

I hope I wasn't being too much of a marketing geek here.  

Phil


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 28, 2016)

John,

This is exactly my point. Adobe keeps adding _editing_ features to Lightroom Mobile, but as long as there is no support for importing raw files, the only images you can edit are images you've shot on your iDevice, or images you've already downloaded to your desktop computer (and most likely already edited on that computer too). So who indeed is doing that? There is no "getting into the ballpark, and then fine tune stuff when you're back chained to the desk", because you can't download your (raw) images!

In that two year old blog post, Tom Hogarty talks about Lightroom Mobile being the 'point of entry' (my words), just like you talk about that right now. That's also what I would like to do on short trips: leave my laptop at home and use my iPad and Lightroom Mobile for some basic edits and perhaps upload an image or two to Facebook. And in the plane, I could use that travel time to add keywords and captions. Except I still can't do any of that. In *that* respect, nothing has changed.


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 28, 2016)

PhilBurton said:


> John,
> 
> Couple more points.  First, although the pyramid is bigger towards the bottom, as far as price is concerned, the pyramid is inverted. Second, think about the Adobe brand overall.  What is the "promise of benefits" and to whom is that set of benefits targeted?  It's creative professionals and serious amateurs.  Adobe Creative Suite is like Microsoft Office for creative professionals, the standard.  For those target market segments, the Adobe brand is very strong.  Adobe even named their new delivery model *Creative *Cloud.
> 
> ...



What can I say? I couldn't agree with you more! But I also conclude that Lightroom Mobile now has a built-in camera, and no support for importing raw files. I rest my case.


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## johnbeardy (Apr 28, 2016)

Well, it certainly hasn't moved in that direction, but that suits me just fine. I just don't want to process new raw images on it, even more so when that would mean upgrading my perfectly-good 32Gb iPad to cope with a camera that shoots 38 megapixel files. For now, wanting it to be a laptop replacement is making the perfect the enemy of the possible.


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 28, 2016)

johnbeardy said:


> Well, it certainly hasn't moved in that direction, but that suits me just fine. I just don't want to process new raw images on it, even more so when that would mean upgrading my perfectly-good 32Gb iPad to cope with a camera that shoots 38 megapixel files. For now, wanting it to be a laptop replacement is making the perfect the enemy of the possible.



So, out of curiosity: do you use it for more than just displaying images? Do you edit images? If so, do you edit often/sometimes/hardly ever? I do use LrM for displaying images, but I haven't done more editing than perhaps straighten a horizon once or twice.


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## johnbeardy (Apr 28, 2016)

Most of all I use Mobile for display and reviewing, Johan. So after a weekend when I might have shot 1500-2000 pictures, I return home and set up an import, sending new photos to a synced collection. Until the following day I just won't go near the main PC but will usually look at new pictures as they start appearing on the iPad or via Lr Web on my laptop. During that more casual reviewing, I'll often identify individual images and then apply initial adjustments and crops, similar to how Quick Develop is intended.


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## Conrad Chavez (Apr 28, 2016)

JohanElzenga said:


> Who indeed uses that on a non-color managed device?...


iOS is now color-managed, although there isn't yet the level of user control over it that we have on OS X and Windows. If you buy the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro, you have a tablet with a wide gamut (DCI-P3) display running a color-managed operating system that can properly handle that wide gamut.

I'm not sure if Lightroom Mobile automatically takes advantage of that right now, but the "there's no color management" objection is falling away, on iOS at least.

I also agree that Lightroom Mobile has not only been about selfie shooters. They've added many features that selfie shooters would never care about like the Tone Curve and on-image HSL sliders, like John said. It's still missing too many features like noise reduction, raw import, and keywording for me to use it for much more than basic image review and a first pass at correction, but there are definitely controls in Lightroom Mobile that you don't find in other serious mobile photo editing apps.


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## mcasan (May 24, 2016)

I suggest that if anyone needs to do serious work on editing photos, especially raw images, in the field....you want at least a Macbook, if not a Macbook Pro.   Then you can run full LR and PS and the full range of plugins.   You also have proper file management to move and copy files to external drives for storage and backup.  On IOS you have neither raw support nor file management.   Of course you can jailbreak IOS and put in file management.

The wife and I accept that as the current situation.   We don't like it, we just accept it.   But we are tired of carry rMBPs on trips.   So yesterday we migrated from iPad Air 2 to iPP 12.9".   We will take the iPP units into the field to do email, browsing, FaceTime...etc.    We can read the preview thumbnails of our raw files on the SDXC cards and import into camera roll if there any we want to edit and share.  Naturally we leave all the raw images on the SDXC cards (Lexar 1000x 128GB cards are $59 at B&H).   When we get home we will use large monitors attached to our rMBPs to cull and edit.   Maybe end of the year or early next year will we replace rMBP and monitors with 27" 5K iMacs that do USB-C and Thunderbolt 3.

And if we ever get native raw support and file management in IOS by Apple, we will be happy.   The same goes for Adobe stepping up their game to make LR Mobile something worth downloading.


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## johnbeardy (May 24, 2016)

mcasan said:


> I suggest that if anyone needs to do serious work on editing photos, especially raw images, in the field....you want at least a Macbook, if not a Macbook Pro.



If you think that's what Mobile is for, that's obviously the case. The trouble is, LrMobile hasn't ever pretended to be a laptop replacement for ingesting new raw files in the field. Adobe have explicitly said that it's not, and its value is for other workflows.


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## mcasan (May 24, 2016)

I fully understand that Adobe and Apple are both totally ignoring the use case of importing raw images in the field via an iPad.   Adobe is using LR Moble to address editing further down the workflow where someone needs/wants to work remotely from their desktop.   Hence for me the app is of little to no use.   I fully understand others may have the use case of remotely editing    images away from their desktop.   I wonder how they plan to invoke and use their desktop plugins.    But I leave that to them to sort out.


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## Johan Elzenga (May 24, 2016)

johnbeardy said:


> If you think that's what Mobile is for, that's obviously the case. The trouble is, LrMobile hasn't ever pretended to be a laptop replacement for ingesting new raw files in the field. Adobe have explicitly said that it's not, and its value is for other workflows.



Actually, that is not entirely true. Tom Hogerty has written a blog post some two years ago, where he does describe a future where LrM is the entry point when you are on the road. It just hasn't materialized...


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## johnbeardy (May 24, 2016)

I was thinking about that blog post, Johan, and while acknowledging the demand he's explaining what LrMobile is now and what it's not. But I think we're splitting hairs. Obviously there is some demand to import raws, and plenty of wishful thinking.


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## mcasan (May 24, 2016)

Has either Apple or Adobe ever made a public statement about why neither has put raw support into IOS LrM?   After all, both develop raw converters that work on Mac OS.


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## johnbeardy (May 25, 2016)

See The Field Triage Opportunity for Lr Mobile


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## mcasan (May 25, 2016)

Thanks for the link.   I guess the key is in what Apple will do or not do.  Since Apple has turned their back on the serious photography by killing off Aperture to support only IOS based jpg snapshot photography, they seem to have no motivation to help use raw images in the field.   Sad you have to jail break an iPad just to do file management.


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## Johan Elzenga (May 25, 2016)

mcasan said:


> Thanks for the link.   I guess the key is in what Apple will do or not do.  Since Apple has turned their back on the serious photography by killing off Aperture to support only IOS based jpg snapshot photography, they seem to have no motivation to help use raw images in the field.   Sad you have to jail break an iPad just to do file management.



Apple Photos does support raw files, so Apple did not abandon them completely.


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## mcasan (May 26, 2016)

Which Photos...IOS or MacOS version?   In IOS version the app will import a raw file but only edit the jpg preview embedded in the raw file.   In MacOS Photos can use the raw converter service to edit the raw file.    I wish IOS Photos did have all the capabilities of the MacOS version, including extensions such as the Macphun apps.


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## mcasan (Jul 12, 2016)

Things are a changing via IOS 10.  IOS cameras will be able to save DNG raw files, not just JPEG!  IOS Photos will do both native DNG raw files and lots of other camera raw formats.  That should set the stage for Adobe to finally deliver a version of Lr Mobile that is not a joke.


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## DGStinner (Jul 12, 2016)

mcasan said:


> Things are a changing via IOS 10.  IOS cameras will be able to save DNG raw files, not just JPEG!  IOS Photos will do both native DNG raw files and lots of other camera raw formats.  That should set the stage for Adobe to finally deliver a version of Lr Mobile that is not a joke.


I believe the ability to save as DNG will be restricted to iPhone 6S/6S Plus and newer.  I'm running iOS 10 beta on my iPhone 6 Plus and there isn't an option that I can find to use DNG.


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## Dave Miller (Jul 12, 2016)

The Apple advert says the new OS will run on iPads and iphone 6's.


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## DGStinner (Jul 12, 2016)

Dave Miller said:


> The Apple advert says the new OS will run on iPads and iphone 6's.


Yes, it will run on iPads and iPhone 6 models (I'm running it now on an iPhone 6) but the ability to save an image as DNG is limited to iPhone 6S and 6S Plus models.


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## Gnits (Jul 13, 2016)

See latest update for Lr Mobile (Ver2.4.0 on iPhone)......Raw processing now available on mobile..

My personal view is that I would prefer to see more effort prioritised on Lr Desktop, sad that still no ability to edit my metadata on mobile (have not tried on version just release but not mentioned in the release notes), expect that the mobile platform will improve with time but not an area of interest to me for the foreseeable future.  I do not plan to edit raw or jpg on current generation mobile devices.  When they get the file system and colour calibration to a usable status then I will re-consider.

.


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## Gnits (Jul 13, 2016)

Here is the release notes from Adobe re Lr Mobile Ver2.4.0 and Raw.

Lightroom for Mobile July Releases

Also, some positive comments regarding possible improvements to allow editing of metadata.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 13, 2016)

I believe it when I see it. I know several problems in Lightroom desktop that Adobe is 'working on' for several years...


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## johnbeardy (Jul 13, 2016)

Note that Lightroom Web, the browser-based sibling of LrMobile, has offered title and caption editing for a few months.


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