# Syncing to Lightroom Mobile - best practice?



## frostbytes (Feb 7, 2016)

Hi there,

I've been using LR Mobile to do my culling on editing on an iPad Pro lately and am finding that it's faster and more enjoyable than doing it on my laptop.  So I'm shifting my workflow to sync to LRM right after I import photos to LR by creating a "sync collection" that I drag new shoot folders into and enable syncing on.  In LRM I enable offline editing, since I often work outside of an internet connection.

What's the best practice for ensuring that those new images have synced to my iPad?  Do I have to open LRM on my iPad to start the syncing or can that be set up to happen in the background?  And does LRM have to be visible on my iPad in order for the syncing to occur?

I'm hoping to be clear on this before I start using it consistently.  Thanks.


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## johnbeardy (Feb 7, 2016)

My way... In the Import dialog you can choose a collection, so I send all new images to a collection called "Current Work". That is already set up to sync, and in LrM it is also set to offline editing.

You do need to open LrM on the iPad for images to sync down to it, and iOS doesn't appear to allow much to happen in the background, and I seem to recall that any background activity can only continue for 10 minutes. That may be different with the iPad Pro, but I don't know. There's a blue progress bar which indicates how much of the download has synced, though I admit I don't really trust it 100%.

John


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## frostbytes (Feb 9, 2016)

Using your workflow, do folders within collections stay separate?  That is, will my shoots in LrM will be separate from each other (which I want for the sake of handling)?



> There's a blue progress bar which indicates how much of the download has synced, though I admit I don't really trust it 100%.



I don't either.  The indicator jumps around so much that I don't trust it.


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## johnbeardy (Feb 9, 2016)

frostbytes said:


> Using your workflow, do folders within collections stay separate?  That is, will my shoots in LrM will be separate from each other (which I want for the sake of handling)?



In Import I can send to a new collection instead, and the new collection dialog has the option to sync that collection.


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## frostbytes (Feb 9, 2016)

johnbeardy said:


> In Import I can send to a new collection instead, and the new collection dialog has the option to sync that collection.



Ah, will look more closely at that.  I've only been looking at sync options _after _importing.  I didn't realize there were sync options at that stage.

Thank you!


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