# A few questions on LR Mobile



## erro (Jul 9, 2014)

OK, so I have a guru-badge, but i haven't even looked at Mobile yet... but it looks interesting as I already have an iPad. So, a few questions then:

1. Even though the Mobile app runs on an iPad, I assume I can still use a Windows desktop computer for my main LR use?

2. I suppose I can run the Mobile app on both my iPad and my iPhone? And everything will be kept in sync everywhere? All three devices (PC, iPhone, iPad) all working against the same catalog (which is actually stored on my PC)?

3. What about offline use and internal storage space on the iPad/iPhone? As I understand it, I can mark a collection as beeing available for offline editing (so I can work on those photos while on an airplane for example). How much storage space will that typically require on the iPad/iPhone?

4. Auto-import? It seems that photos taken with the iPhone can be automatically imported into LR Mobile. And that means they will be also automatically synced/downloaded onto my desktop computer "main LR" when I get home to my WiFi-network? Am I correct in assuming that this works on the camera roll in each "iDevice"? So that I have to enable the auto-import on the iPhone and iPad individually. Thus meaning that it is not the photo stream that is imported, but rather the actual "physical" camera roll? And: are the photos imported at full size, or is there some rescaling going on?


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## Jim Wilde (Jul 9, 2014)

Robert:

1. Yes, you have to have a base for the full catalog, the Mobile app only ever has the synced collections.

2. Yes.

3. The synced images are actually Smart Previews, not the full file, so will obviously take up less space on your iDevices. When you enable for offline editing you will get a message indicating how much space will be needed, and how much is currently available on the device.

4. Think you have it all correct. And yes it is the full file (jpeg) that gets synced if you add it from the iDevice.


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## erro (Jul 9, 2014)

Jim Wilde said:


> Robert:
> 
> 1. Yes, you have to have a base for the full catalog, the Mobile app only ever has the synced collections.



Yes, I realize that I have to have a "real" LR installation on a computer, with a LR catalog. I was wondering if it has to be a Mac-computer in order to use the app on an iPad/iPhone, or if it also works with a Windows computer. But as far as I can tell by Googling it works with both Mac and Windows.


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## erro (Jul 9, 2014)

Jim Wilde said:


> 3. The synced images are actually Smart Previews, not the full file, so will obviously take up less space on your iDevices. When you enable for offline editing you will get a message indicating how much space will be needed, and how much is currently available on the device.



Yes, I realize that too. Was wondering if there is a ballpark figure on the amount of space needed, for say 1000 photos.


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## johnbeardy (Jul 9, 2014)

I don't find this a problem but LrM always gives you a warning anyway - like this.


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## erro (Jul 9, 2014)

Thanks John. But is that 312 MB for one collection with 183 photos, or for 8 collections with 532 photos? Or possibly for the half hidden collection that appears to have just 12 photos?


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## johnbeardy (Jul 9, 2014)

"This collection" - yes, it's for the 183 and a mix of D700 and D800 raw files.

I don't find offline space a big issue, even with an iPad2 and 32gb. The more practical problem is the need to babysit the synchronisation so that the download completes and isn't cut off by iOS after 10 minutes or so because LrM is no longer the active app. If I really want to have certain images offline, I keep LrM open at that collection.

John


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## erro (Jul 10, 2014)

Some more questions then:

5. Is it possible to sync different collections to different iDevices? Lets say I would like to sync many collections to my iPad (where I have lots of storage), but only sync one collection of my 5-starred photos to the iPhone?

6. I suppose I could also run the app on my wifes iPad? She has her own Apple ID, but that shouldn't matter, right? But she would obviously have to log in to the LR Mobile app using my Adobe ID in order to sync Lightroom. I would see this as an easy way for her to be able to see all of our photos, that I manage using Lightroom.

7. What if one photo is included in many different synced collections? Will it only be transfered/stored once, or will each "copy" in each collection take up space? Perhaps I'm nitpicking but I'm just curious. Suppose I have 1000 collections, all containing the same photo, and they are all marked for offline editing. Will that mean that 1000 copies of that photo is saved on my iPad? Or just one copy?


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## johnbeardy (Jul 10, 2014)

5 No, but a collection can be enabled for offline, or not, on each device

6 Correct

7 impossible to tell for sure. I suspect it is repeated yet I am also sure that Adobe's developers must have thought about the issue. But again, remember it's the offline editing that eats up the space.


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## erro (Jul 10, 2014)

johnbeardy said:


> 5 No, but a collection can be enabled for offline, or not, on each device
> 
> 6 Correct
> 
> 7 impossible to tell for sure. I suspect it is repeated yet I am also sure that Adobe's developers must have thought about the issue. But again, remember it's the offline editing that eats up the space.



Thanks John. I suppose most of my questions are concering the offline mode really. If I'm online the local storage is really not an issue.

I'm trying to find out if LR Mobile could be a good "family solution" where I "the photographer" manages everything in "my" LR on "my" computer, but where the rest of the family can see the photos in their iPads. And that should be just fine from what I can tell. It seems it would also be just fine for all of us to enable "auto sync" in their LR Mobile, so that all photos taken on all of our personal iDevices end up in the main LR catalog on the computer.


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## erro (Jul 10, 2014)

Also... we're talking about "offline editing" but I suppose the same local storage is required for "offline viewing"? I would imagine a situation where I would like to be able to view and edit photos offline, but my wife would only want to view photos offline.


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## johnbeardy (Jul 10, 2014)

To be frank, Robert, I feel you're worrying a little too much about storage here. I think I'm quite a heavy user on an older iPad, and I've never really been forced to think about it, though I don't have a second device (I'm not sure my phone qualifies as smart but that may be the user's fault!). If you're already a subscriber, maybe you should dive in now and see how it goes, or just kick off the 30 day trial. 

I'd just repeat what I said about babysitting the sync before going offline.

It would make sense to enable Auto Import of photos added to Camera Roll. When they appear in Lightroom/Desktop, I then move them to a folder in my main folder system. They're still in the collection, so they remain available in LrM.

John


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## Jim Wilde (Jul 10, 2014)

According to Victoria's e-book, the collections on the iDevice work the same as on LR Desktop, i.e. the same image in multiple collections will still only result in one preview on the iDevice.

Robert, the only concern I would have with your family scenario is that there's nothing to prevent the user of the iDevice being able to (inadvertently or otherwise) edit the images, and those edits would eventually sync back to the desktop in due course. If WebView is no good for this purpose, you might want to think about using VCs for your family sharing collections.


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## johnbeardy (Jul 10, 2014)

Good point, Jim .


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## erro (Jul 10, 2014)

Jim Wilde said:


> According to Victoria's e-book, the collections on the iDevice work the same as on LR Desktop, i.e. the same image in multiple collections will still only result in one preview on the iDevice.
> 
> Robert, the only concern I would have with your family scenario is that there's nothing to prevent the user of the iDevice being able to (inadvertently or otherwise) edit the images, and those edits would eventually sync back to the desktop in due course. If WebView is no good for this purpose, you might want to think about using VCs for your family sharing collections.



I guess I'll just have to trust my wife not to do anything stupid with our photos... 

My concern with storage space is due to the fact that we both have iPad's without mobile network. And I imagine a scenario where we would like to have all of our photos (or at least most of them) available on our iPad's even when we are away from our home WiFi network. So that we can easily and quickly show photos at our friends place, out on town, at work and so on. So I imagine that we would have a fairly large number of photos synced in offline mode. But, like you all say, with 32/64 GB iPad's maybe the storage isn't an issue.


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## johnbeardy (Jul 10, 2014)

erro said:


> My concern with storage space is due to the fact that we both have iPad's without mobile network.



As do I, Robert.


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