# Color Match between Lightroom mobile and Classic



## BJB (Oct 28, 2020)

Greetings.  I am a long-time desktop classic user and have used a calibrated Adobe RGB monitor for my Lightroom editing.  I calibrate myself with an i1Pro.
I am thinking of dipping my toe in the water of gasp....mobile editing.  But not to take over my editing, just to be able to edit a few images in the field when needed.  Either from DSLR or phone.  I really do not even care that much about syncing, as on the desktop will probably start with a RAW file and have correct colors etc. 

Way back when, I worked with a mobile calibration piece of software but the only issue was you could only view calibrated images within the software.

As far as I know, there is still no real mobile calibration solution as android is not color managed.  I am just curious how serious Lightroom users deal with that on their mobile devices. For example I use a new Samsung S7 Plus tablet which is wonderful and a current android phone also, and by default the screens are of course set to VIVID!  Now you can choose Natural also but still not calibrated. 

I have also read the threads of color management issues when syncing to the desktop, exporting, editing in ProPhoto on the desktop vs on tablet etc... I am less concerned about this but how do users deal with that?

In general, my thought is if I am editing on a mobile device that is similar to others mobile devices, and I edit a JPEG and save it and share it, it will probably look similar on their devices (assuming LR mobile exports in SRGB and I believe there are settings for that now).  However my assumption is if I sync and open that up on my desktop, I may not be happy. And I certainly would never print my mobile editing work without looking at it on a calibrated monitor.

I also read about the bug where previews in the library vs. edit didn't match even within lightroom mobile. But the last post I read on that said it was fixed?

Just looking for any thoughts on how others deal with this issue.  

Thanks,
BJB


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## Conrad Chavez (Oct 28, 2020)

Yes, there's no way for a user to profile iOS or Android devices in a way that the mobile OS will use. But that doesn't mean they aren't calibrated. Those mobile devices are calibrated at the factory; the questions are how well, and to what standard?

iOS devices are factory calibrated and iOS has color management, that helps. Not a perfect situation because we're not sure how well calibrated it is, and if the display drifts, we can’t reprofile it, because iOS doesn't provide a way to apply a display profile. (iOS color management is more about applications being able to use embedded profiles and the built-in display profile.) I assume that how Android devices work depends on the manufacturer’s quality control, so it probably varies at lot. But Samsung is a major player; how do they do? I like to look at the tests that DisplayMate runs. I don't see the S Plus tablet on there, but the other Samsung devices seem to get excellent marks for color accuracy. It looks like Samsung does a pretty good job, and if the display is put into sRGB mode, it should be reasonably reliable. Again, maybe not as good as a desktop display that’s fully verifiable by the user.

But I think it's important to put that into perspective:
For many years, it was common for Windows and Mac users to simply take home some random combination of computer and display from the store, plug it all in, and start editing pictures. A very small percentage of them would even think of calibrating or profiling their displays, much less actually do it. You and I do, and that makes us the exceptions. Those desktop displays were of widely varying quality, especially the low-end models made for general office/home use. Comparing that to what we've seen with mobile displays, I think it's possible that today's mobile devices might have more consistently accurate displays than what most people have used on their computers. So the situation with mobile devices is no worse than it was before with computers alone, and possibly better.

Even if a mobile device could be calibrated and profiled by the user, how each one actually performs will still vary because of the other modes and settings laid on top of it. For Apple, if TrueTone, Night Shift, and Automatic Brightness are on, then colors and tones are going to change as lighting conditions change throughout the day. I think Android has similar options and for Samsung, there are the multiple display modes. That's a lot more variables affecting colors. This doesn’t give the advantage back to the desktop, because the latest versions of macOS and Windows include similar features, affecting color on desktop/laptop displays unless we switch them off.

So the best practice is still to edit using a calibrated and profiled desktop display as your reference, and export to a common gamut such as sRGB for online distribution, and let it go. But how do you choose the export color gamut in Lightroom on iOS and Android? In the current version, you have control over this if you tap Export As after tapping the Share icon. Unlike the other options, Export As provides almost desktop-level export options, including color space.






Because iOS has color management, I assume (but am not sure that) Lightroom can translate between its own color space, any embedded profiles in images it's working with, and whatever built-in display profile iOS is using. For Android, the question is what is Lightroom assuming about the display and non-raw images that are imported? If it’s sRGB, then we should know to set a Samsung device display to sRGB mode. But I'm not sure about that part.


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## BJB (Oct 29, 2020)

Thanks for that great and detailed reply!!!
I have used IOS in the past but am all android now.  I do not think we have any color management options...  If anyone has any android-specific suggestions please chime in.  I am mostly using that Samsung Galaxy S7 Plus, a really nice tablet with a stylus.

Sounds like the best I can do from a color space standpoint is choose a less aggressive screen color mode, say natural.
And of course choose the appropriate output color space as I do now with LR classic.  Good to know that is an option now.

Seems like if I keep my desktop and mobile editing worlds separate, I should be okay from a color space standpoint.

Thanks,
BJB


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## clee01l (Oct 30, 2020)

BJB said:


> Seems like if I keep my desktop and mobile editing worlds separate, I should be okay from a color space standpoint.


My workflow has been to import into Lightroom using my iPadPro and do basic culling and editing there. 
These images are sync'd to my iMac running Lr Classic.   Any color issues on the image, I resolve on the iMac running LrC where I have full color management before I consider the images as fully processed.


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## BJB (Oct 30, 2020)

clee01l said:


> My workflow has been to import into Lightroom using my iPadPro and do basic culling and editing there.
> These images are sync'd to my iMac running Lr Classic.   Any color issues on the image, I resolve on the iMac running LrC where I have full color management before I consider the images as fully processed.



Thanks!  That makes a lot of sense to me and the direction I was thinking.  I was embarrassed to see that I had not updated my signature....well for ages.  I do print on my Epson P800 so of course I would always fine tune color on desktop first.  And I think for my casual mobile JPEG tweaks for quick sharing, I probably will never sync those to my desktop.....

I guess syncing for me only becomes an issue if I edit a RAW file in the field, like what I have, and want to start with that on my desktop. But if I am just making basing adjustments, and they will be different on the desktop anyway due to color calibration and brightness calibration, starting with the settings in my field may not make sense. But good to know I have the option. I understand I can setup one collection to sync both ways if I was reading correctly.

That being said I do find myself using that nice tablet a lot more .  If only it could be calibrated......

Thanks again for everyone's help.
BJB


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## clee01l (Oct 30, 2020)

BJB said:


> Thanks! That makes a lot of sense to me and the direction I was thinking...
> 
> I guess syncing for me only becomes an issue if I edit a RAW file in the field, like what I have, and want to start with that on my desktop. But if I am just making basing adjustments, and they will be different on the desktop anyway due to color calibration and brightness calibration, starting with the settings in my field may not make sense...
> 
> That being said I do find myself using that nice tablet a lot more . If only it could be calibrated...



I replaced a laptop running LrC with an iPadPro running Lr for my field. I found the iPadPr pretty close to the calibrated iMac Any color adjustments in Lr translate fairly close to the calibrated iMac image when it gets sync’d to LrC. This is especially true for this images that get shared on the web or my FireTV. Because I can not control the viewer’s viewing browser (often not color managed) or the uncalibrated many devices that my screen media might get displayed upon I only worry about color management for the images that I might print and I will soft proof these in LrC.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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