# Looking for feedback:  Sort your lightroom photos an Android. or should that be iPad



## luke.sleeman

Hey,
I'm a software developer and amateur photographer.  I think I have the same problem that many people do - to many photos and not enough time to organise them.  I've been tossing around the idea of creating a (paid for) application for Android smart phones and tablets.  The application would allow you to download a subset of your LR library, tag and flag photos on your phone, before uploading the metadata back to Lightroom.  All final post processing an image manipulation would be done back in Lightroom.

What I want to know is; would anybody pay for such a thing?  How much would you pay if it had the following features?

* A Plugin for Lightroom which allows you to export a subset of your photos on your phone/tablet
* An application for android which allows you to tag, rate, flag photos and add colour labels
* The android app will allow you to filter the photos on the phone by flag status, rating, and colour label
* The plugin for Lightroom would allow you to import back in the metadata changes you have made on your phone

I note that there is already an application out for ipads, costing $17, that allows you to do something very similar: http://photosmithapp.com/  .  Unfortunately, you need to import the photos directly from the camera into the ipad, before sending them into Lightroom.  There is no way to get photos already in Lightroom and upload them to your tablet (though they say its coming soon).

I would like to use your feedback, to decide how to proceed.  Would anybody pay if I created such an app?  Does anybody even have android tablets and phones, or do you all want to use ipads?  What features must I add?  Is the above feature set enough?

- Luke


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## Brad Snyder

Android. And no, you couldn't even pay me to try it, let alone charge me for it.  But, that's just me...


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## Jim Wilde

iPhone/iPad....and little interest I'm afraid, especially the phone. Marc Rochkind's already got an app which does some of what you're proposing (for iPhone and iPad, don't know about Android), so you'll be playing catch-up.

Welcome to the forum, BTW.


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## Brad Snyder

Oops, thanks Jim, where're my manners? Luke, welcome from me as well.


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## b_gossweiler

Welcome to the forums, Luke 

I use an Android phone (my wife iPhone/iPad). And no, I wouldn't pay for it, as I wouldn't tag photos on these devices.

Beat


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## luke.sleeman

Wow, thanks for the feedback.  I posted a in a few other places and the response has been universally negative!  So, thank you all, for saving me wasting time on an app, that nobody else but I would want 

For me, the reason I want this, is its always sorting through, and flagging my photos, that takes by far the longest.  Consequently, I find it hard to raise the motivation and time to do it.  Which means even more photos build up in a big unorganized backlog, and its even harder to find time to tackle them all.  I know if I had an application on my mobile, or a tablet, I could spend my time on the train, or when I am out and about organizing my collection.  Do other people not have the same problem?  How do you find time to go through all your photos?


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## clee01l

Well, not universally negative.  As I posted elsewhere, I think it would be possible to take advantage of the SQLite DB built into iOS to mimic parts of the LR catalog to  add keywords, ratings pick flags etc. This iPad catalog could be  merged into a master catalog permitting you to transfer your iPad work efforts to the PC/Mac. 

I think where you are running into resistance is with the "For a fee" scheme in a mostly "for free" world of Smartphones and tablet devices.  If you are to have a successful business model, then you will need to match the expectations of the smartphone user.  If you want to make money for your ideas, then you need a little lanniappe.  Many of the successful apps found in smart phone app stores offer a feature limited version for free and a feature enhanced version for a reasonable fee.  Adobe has a pretty neat Photoshop Express App for iPhone, iPod, & iPad.  It's free.  How are you going to compete with "free"?[h=1]Lagniappe[/h]


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## luke.sleeman

Yeah, your SQLite approach is very close to what I was thinking from a technological point of view.  I would probably have to have some sort of program that read the lightroom DB, and merged meta data changes into there.

I understand that I would have to give something away for free - I hate apps that only have a paid version, where you cant try it out for free.  Personally, if I can try out an app to see if it meets my needs, I'm much more likely to pay for it.  So I probably would have had some sort of "light" version, which was free, but had some restrictions that would push power users towards a paid version.  The problem is, if my idea was any good I imagine I would have had at least one person respond to my posts saying they would consider paying for it, even if it is only .99c.  However I didn't even get that 

As I said this is a good thing, because it means I'm not going to waste my time working on an app that very few people actually want.  Instead I'll just wait until photosmith supports two way sync, then probably buy myself an ipad.

Thanks for the feedback though!


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## Replytoken

Hi Luke,

As a user of both an Android phone and an iPad2, and having more unrated photos than I care to admit, I am sympathetic to your proposal.  And, the fee is not much of an issue for me unless it was quite high.  But, my problem is not having a device with images when I have free time, its having free time and the discipline to sit and rate images.  I currently use a laptop as my primary machine, and it would not be that hard to take it with me and rate photos.  But, as I said above, free time is really the issue.  What I would find somewhat useful is something that Marc Rochkind developed and then stopped supporting - a run time catalog that could be presented to clients where they could select images that they wanted.  I would imagine that some might find use for a standalone product that could be given to clients, but I am not sure how big that market really is.  I believe that iView Media Pro used to have such a feature, but that was a few years ago.  Its something you might want to consider.

Good luck,

--Ken


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## miroperez

Hi Luke,

I originally started working on a iPad HTML based gallery to allow a customer to view their photos that you posted via a LR web engine plugin. The idea was they could compare photos then select photos so the photographer can process.

I scaled it back somewhat just to get the general interactions right and ended up with a general purpose gallery.

Look at http://dev.miroperezphotography.com/samplegallery3 on an iPad,iPhone , or some of the more recent android phones too.  Do an add to home screen if you want to see a more native feel.

Any feedback is always appreciated.
Miro


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## RunningWithScissors!

I may be a little late here, but I found this thread in a search for just such an app for my Android tablet.  I wouldn't touch it for a phone but the tablet size changes the game.  I would not want to edit anything but metadata, but I'd like a list of editable tags that can be added with a touch, so I can place tags on photos such as "print " "adjust light" "crop" etc, so that I can make it easy to find these again on the PC.

Anyhow, I'd pay up to 10 usd just to do the tagging quickly and easily...but it MUST use some sort of on-screen input for ratings and color tags etc, rather than the android keyboard which takes up half of the screen and requires knowing the shortcuts.  I've tried using logmein and teamviewer, but the input is too awkward to be efficient due to the on-screen keyboard getting in the way.

I'd like to access the database over the home network...as in a live database, but downloading a set to work on would be acceptable also.

I doubt that you and I are the only ones looking for this, and as tablet popularity grows, so too will the demand.

I'm in.


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## Bernd

Hi Luke.

I would love to have the option to use an Android tablet (with enough power) to work on my picture, while I am on a short-trip. For a long trip I always have my notebook with me. But with an app for a tablet, I could leave it at home. The features I am interested in are more or less the photsmith options (tag, rate, flag). For my personal workflow it would be fine to have the option to convert (raw to dng) and rename on import. If conversion is not possible, than at least the renaming. Back home sync with my lightroom database (import files and meta data).

Price? Hmm, I would pay for the option to leave my notebook at home 30-50 USD. 

Greetings from Germany,

Bernd


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## hedystafford

I found this thread whilst googling "android lightroom app". I was so excited to find an app for the iPad, and disappointed to see that Photosmith have no plans to develop it for Android. I don't really want to spend £500 on an ipad - I have an Android phone and I would prefer an Android tablet. However the lack of an Android LR app would be the tipping point for me. To be able to do basic editing in Lightroom whilst travelling for example - just selection and keywording would be enough - would be wonderful. Since thread started Android of course has overtaken iphone in user popularity.....


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## SamVimaire

Hello,

Like some posters in this thread, I'm looking for such an app. And I would pay for it (about 10-15 €).
What I expect from it :
- scanning of user defined directories
- display of both EXIF and IPTC tags
- ability of creating/editing Lightroom-like tags (IPTC, keywords, colors, rating) in a user friendly manner :
 - by creating (importing from LR) a list of pre-defined keywords
 - by "batch-tagging" : select a series of photos by date, name, path or simply touching then touch common keywords/IPTC to affect them... or, the contrary, define a set of keywords/IPTC values then applying it to photos by touching them
- search/filter/display of photos "à la" LR (by keywords, IPTC, EXIF...)
- bi-directional sync with LR as I'd use this app in two ways :
 - loading on my tablet photos directly from the DSLR, tagging them then uploading to my Lightroom-computer
 - loading photos from Lightroom-computer to the tablet for mobile display to family, friends..., maybe editing tags on the go

Sincerely, I would definitely *LOVE* this app


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## Victoria Bampton

Hi Sam, welcome to the forum!  Well hopefully if someone decides to build it, you'll be the first to hear about it.


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## snappy03

I'm also late to this topic but it's because we are about to buy our first tablet.  An android seems to fit our needs and budget.  I've loved Lightroom since it first came out and have tens of thousands of photos on it.  Now I'm looking for a way (like some others on other threads) to at least do my rating and keywords while we are on trips so I can come home and do the touch ups on the desktop (or laptop if I have to).  I would really find this valuable and, yes I would be willing to pay for the app.  I really hope that someone pursues it.


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## neelin

Having recently joined the 21st century with an Android (Google Nexus) I can see the usefulness of burning off an idle moment here and there doing housekeeping tasks in LR compatible "meta-processor"? on the tablet. 

With Adobe coming out with things like Touch for tablets, etc.  how can they NOT be building a LR extension that does meta work on some kind of thumbnails to syncronize later with LR?

Waiting for a app 
Robert


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## BeSt

I know I am very, very late on this topic... but I found it when searching for exactly that kind of android app.
I would really love this app you described. I would pay 20 - 30$ for an app with basic features (export "reduced-image-sized" albums from lightroom to tablet, rate, flag, label the images and re-sync metadata to lightroom). If there would be more features than these, I would probably pay more 

Is there still a possibility for such app? Or is there already something you use for these tasks?

Thank you
BeSt (from Germany)


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## Victoria Bampton

Hi BeSt, welcome to the forum!


BeSt said:


> Is there still a possibility for such app? Or is there already something you use for these tasks?


Adobe are working on mobile Lightroom - Tom demo'd it a while back on an iPad, but it may make it to Android too.


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## BeSt

Is there any idea how long the developement of the android version of LR will take?
I nearly can´t wait for this...


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## Victoria Bampton

Not a clue BeSt, they've demo'd an iOS version, but with no timescales attached.


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