Today on Kelby TV’s Grid show, Adobe Product Manager Tom Hogarty demonstrated an iPad app still under development that might give us many of Lightroom’s capabilities. How many is unclear, but specifically mentioned as possibilities were basic editing, sorting, picking, and collections management. This app would not use our original raw files, but the “DNG smart previews” generated back on our computers with Lightroom 5. Tom kept things a bit vague, but it appears that we would be able to sync our Lightroom catalog across devices via the Creative Cloud. (I have no information on this, but I am hoping that there will be a trimmed down cloud service just for photographers that is less expensive than the full service.)
When will we see this app and service? When it’s ready … but not in time for the Lightroom 5 release. I can’t wait!
In the meantime, Adobe wants your feedback on this idea — what would you want to see and how would you use it?
Watch the recording from today’s Grid Show with Tom Hogarty on Lightroom (once it is posted – it may take a day).
It would be nice to click on ‘Send to my lrCloud’ a folder of pictures that can be reviewed and edited on a mobile device using a LR type app. Even better when you next open up LightRoom on your computer, there are your chosen edited images already synced. I have been a long time cynic of Apple but have recently become a working convert, why? Because Apple were the first to smoothly integrate apps that sync across all your devices. There are a few other apps, nothing to do with photography, that also have the ability to sync across devices following Apple’s lead, and unquestionably this is the new way to work. Now wouldn’t that be great to see on Lightroom and Mobile Lightroom?
BTW, the technology is very clever that was hinted at in so far that no full images are stored as such, but mainly the text data that refers to image adjustments. This is already stored in LR catalogues, so it would seem that much of the technical data required is already in place. This data is a fraction of the size of full images, just as your LR catalogue is a fraction of the size of all your raw image files on your hard disk. This is the crucial information that will be stored ‘in the cloud’.