Lightroom Mobile Adobe Demonstration on iPad

As I mentioned in my last post on Adobe’s Photography Creative Cloud announcement, at Photoshop World last week Adobe Product Manager Tom Hogarty demonstrated Lightroom Mobile, an exciting solution now in development that will allow us to seamlessly review and make at least basic adjustments to photos in our Desktop Lightroom catalogs using our iPads or iPhones.

This is a component of the future direction of Lightroom that Tom articulated, moving from being just “your Desktop photography solution, to being your (complete) photography solution”.

Adobe Lightroom Vision

Adobe Vision for Evolution of Lightroom – click to enlarge. (c) Adobe

Lightroom Mobile is still very much in development, but Tom demonstrated in Lightroom on his main computer:

  • Putting a checkmark next to collections that he wanted Lightroom to sync to his iPad
  • Logging into his Adobe account from within Lightroom
  • Turning on a  “Lightroom Sync” switch.

This was all it took for Lightroom to upload photo smart previews and a small Lightroom catalog up to the Cloud, and down to his iPad.

Then in Lightroom Mobile on his iPad, Tom showed:

  • That photos automatically appeared –  with their develop work (and presumably keywords and other metadata).
  • Reviewing  and rating photos in Grid and Loupe View
  • Applying Basic Panel develop adjustments
  • Uploading photos to a web gallery and to Behance.net.

Lightroom Mobile Demo on iPad

Tom then jumped back to Lightroom on his main computer, and the  work he had done on his iPad was there, with no further instructions to Lightroom needed!

Who knows how much functionality will ultimately be built into Lightroom Mobile (or whatever it is ultimately called). The really impressive thing so far is how seamlessly and intuitively it works.

As Tom indicated, many of us would still want to do serious development work on our computers with our calibrated monitors, but I am waiting eagerly for the day when I can review a shoot while I’m sitting on the couch or waiting for an appointment (or on a train or on a plane, as Tom pointed out), do basic adjustments, and have that work show up back on my main computer!

This demonstration was paired with the announcement that owners of Photoshop CS3 or newer can subscribe to a special “Photography Creative Cloud” for just $9.99/month. This gives us always-up-to-date Lightroom and Photoshop, as well as 20 GB of cloud storage (which is presumably what will facilitate the sync to Lightroom Mobile.)   This Creative Cloud offer will be available the week of September 16. next week – stay tuned to this blog for more details as they become available.

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Below is the Keynote Address from Photoshop World. Tom Hogarty speaks from 33:08 to 46:12.