Pro photographer's Lightroom workflow on iPad 2023 (Import, edit, sync, border, export)

From importing files to Lightroom on iPad Pro to file handling and syncing, deleting raws, through to editing, copying settings and exporting with borders, I show all the steps I use in my professional photography workflow. I show how I use presets (and where to get free Lightroom presets), how I edit exposure, colours and grading and simply how I quickly mark photographs to be deleted.
Lightroom on the iPad is an incredibly powerful tool, not just for casual photographers wanting to edit in comfort, but for professionals who have to work quickly on the move. It's quicker than Lightroom Classic on the desktop and the file syncing in the cloud between devices means I never leave home without the photos I need.
I've tried to keep this video as succinct as I can, while still keeping in as much important information as I feel is necessary, but there is of course plenty more to touch on so please let me know in the comments if there are any areas you want me to go into more detail with.
Follow me on Instagram: / batteryhq
#Lightroom #Tutorial #ipad
00:00 - Intro
00:48 - Importing photos to iPad
01:53 - Import to folder on iPad
03:10 - Local raw files in Lightroom on iPad
05:08 - Delete unwanted files
07:35 - Batch delete files
09:07 - Image editing on iPad
09:50 - Lightroom presets on iPad
10:31 - Free Lightroom presets
13:24 - Colour editing
14:47 - Masking in Lightroom on iPad
16:36 - Copy settings in Lightroom
20:35 - Color grading in Lightroom on iPad
24:00 - Sky select in Lightroom on iPad
25:26 - Subtract from mask with Luminance range
28:41 - Lightroom export settings
30:00 - Add border to photo in Lightroom on iPad

[@rifz42]

if you press P to pick photos instead of rejecting 200 photos, you would save 100 key presses.. then delete anything without a flag

[@rafikz77]

nice

[@OniZame93]

How to delete everything without flag?

[@sam9558]

@@OniZame93filter it to unflagged

[@kroghhejl]

Hi Andrew Great vid When culling your photos and if you don’t have a keyboard. Instead of going into the info panel and do it there, press the star icon instead. This takes you to the rating panel. If you swipe down on the right side of the screen you reject(same as pushing x) and if you swipe on the ledt side of the you can star rate. This works really well if you use the Apple pencil.

[@laurahompus]

Even without the pencil! I use this all the time to get through my culling. I use my left thumb for the stars, and my right thumb for the flags. and I use the filter too. It's set to show only those that have no star, and NO flag status. I decide (ususally) immediately once for each foto, one snap decision. boom boom boom. and bob's your uncle

[@gregoryowain2073]

Perhaps it's different on iPad but I've looked into this on my android phone and it looks like while I can edit images that are stored locally on my device, I can only rate images that are imported into Lightroom and therefore into Adobe Cloud. Rather annoying as I have the 20GB plan and I don't really need it for anything else! If it is actually different on iPad then do let me know.

[@LMActionsports]

I have been using the iPad Pro for photo editing since 2018. In 2021 I upgraded to the M1 iPad Pro with one terabyte of storage and 16 gigs of ram and honestly it’s been valuable tool in my editing process. Even though I have a Mac PC I prefer Lightroom on the iPad Pro so much easier and quicker to edit. Using the Apple Pencil is so simple to remove blemishes off of my clients faces then it is with a mouse or trackpad. And using Lightroom on it you don’t need Internet or cell service to operate the app. After I’ve done with a photo shoot I download all the images onto my iPad pro and let my clients go through the images and pick out some of their favorites. I even edit a photo in front of them and they are just blown away that I can do this anywhere. Really great about the iPad Pro it handles my Sony a7rv 62mp raw uncompressed Files like a champ. I don’t mess around with the cloud storage and syncing all my photos to the cloud through Lightroom. Sometimes it takes way too long to upload all the images. But I do use portable NVME drives over portable SSD. And I uploaded all my images on them and then transfer them to my hard drive when I get home.

[@creatingwithjon]

I use lightroom on ipad daily and you taught me a lot of new tricks! Thank you Andrew!

[@AdventuresofCarlienne]

Love this workflow. Gives us more confidence to use our new iPad to edit photos. Thank you for sharing it all!

[@karenandmurraytriggs2888]

I am so happy I came across my video… I am going to be travelling and didn’t want to take my laptop with me and have been really scared about only having my ipad… this video has answered a lot of questions and made me feel much happier about relying on my IPad to do photo edits on the hop! Thank you so much.

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

I'm glad I could help, thanks for watching!

[@maks280176]

Extremely helphul. Thanks!

[@bruthurnature]

You’re awesome, loving your energy! Thank you for sharing🙏🏼🙌🏼

[@galesaunders4120]

Great tutorial as always, I love using my ipad and I have learned loads of new tips and tricks today.....thank you so much

[@caseyrice768]

Incredibly useful! Thanks for sharing

[@marylounorman4276]

I've watched numerous videos on this subject.. you are amazing. wow.. best I've seen

[@stewartlogie]

Thanks Andrew for explaining the workflow. In particular I learnt about how much storage Lightroom is using on my iPad. Until this video that was always muddy in my mind.

[@jessicafolgmann4267]

That was a very informative video! I am a bit of a mess when it comes to organising my photos so I am trying to get it together 😅. Also thank you for pointing out the border option. I always liked how organised some Instagram pages looked because of this but I never knew how to do it!

[@paulwayjbk7499]

Another great video. I use an iPad Pro and it’s nice to find an excellent video done by someone using the same setup.

[@RichardLiloc]

I love the faded film look!

[@josemateo7795]

great video thank you so much !!!

[@dekar-7]

Great tutorial! I’ve been looking at how to edit photo quicker, away from my main Mac setup, and the iPad seems very capable! FYI - the ‘Filter’ icon is a cross section of a ‘funnel’ device, i.e. it’s filtering/narrow result down 😊

[@stevil78]

I appreciate the tutorial, I've recently started taking photos and I've been looking for something good to use with my ipad in terms of editing. This is very good. Thank you.

[@Newtorin]

Very nice tips - thank You!

[@s.aracing5431]

Great video! I've always thought the "filter" icon as the outline of a funnel ^^

[@Jackk7]

Really cool video! I've been looking at pin pointing my workflow on editing etc. and this is a nice video for the iPad, I might even look at getting one to make it more simplistic for me!

[@christianhepburn4795]

Great video. I only export to and from files… SOOOO much faster and you don’t have to wait for Lightroom to read all raws

[@francescoacri488]

Incredibly informative video! I am just starting out as a photographer and this has really helped me a lot.

[@Gonethinkin]

love the in-depth, step by step explanation on the workflow. I do have a question open to anyone… Since art is subjective and open to ones interpretation, how do you attack color grading, exposure, contrast, lighting and overall flow of each image? Are there “industry standards” that I’m not aware of? Are there unwritten rules of photography? You talk about “too purple, or too blue” in your lessons, how do you look at an image and come to those conclusions?

[@rogergranquist]

This was a great video! I especially liked the detailed walk through of the initial photo management for importing and all. That said, I’d love if you’d do some sort of video on managing photos after a long time or when cloud storage gets full and how to sync them to an external storage drive for “backup” or “archive” and then be able to remove them from the cloud but (and this is key) without losing the edit data. I’m having a hard time finding info on how to go about this. But I’ll continue researching myself as well! Thanks again for the tutorial!

[@jonpowell8503]

Thank you so much. So many features about Lightroom on iPad I didn’t know existed!!

[@TheStonesvids]

Realy good video i starded to edit on ipad and it realy help me!!!

[@Jwitherow1964]

Your the only person on KZbin that has help me with the work flow with my ipad, thank you I will watch this 100 times lol

[@IanMcKenzie]

Helpful video. I've been doing more of my editing on the iPad and you've given some good tips here. BTW I've always thought the filter icon shape was that of a funnel.

[@rgeorgek42]

This has been very helpful. I was always concerned with IPad storage, especially with giant RAW files. Do you do an additional backup not in Adobe cloud?

[@grantnewton5705]

Really helpful ….. I’d love to see how you might finish off editing in LR Classic/ PS on desktop. Thinking of a quick start in the field on an iPad and seeing how it is all migrated to LrC… so it keeps cloud storage cleared afterwards

[@verybuck]

I like the “finger support device “ you use😂. Nice video, i was looking for something like this bc I found the ipad is a great tool to develop raw photos on the way.

[@lawlinyourface]

Wonderful content, I’ve been deterred from Lightroom mobile as Lightroom classic was deemed superior. I own an iPad and the keyboard case for this reason that you just showed. so thank you for the confidence and the video I subscribed and will be looking forward to more videos! -Unbound Photography LLC

[@kikreen]

Nice shooting

[@stevehurrell9368]

Thanks for a great educational video. Only use lightroom on my tablet or phone, seldom on my laptop.

[@jacquesgiard6943]

Thanks!

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Thank you, very kind!

[@EngineFD223]

About to look through your videos to see if you talk about working between iPad and LR Classic on desktop. Really want to know more about moving those files off of the cloud and onto my hard drive.

[@stephaneduffroy1878]

Thank you very much for these explaining regarding editing photos on an iPad. I'm currently thinking of buying one for that type of work. 11' iPad Pro perhaps with 512GB should be great.

[@zozoa1]

Excellent you have a new sub

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Thank you!

[@colingreen2320]

Very useful video! 👏🏻 Do I need to set my screen brightness to a particular level? Tia

[@rainerrenner5942]

Great video, thank you so much! How do I get vsco presets into Lightroom mobile? 🙏🏻

[@bifty9]

Thx for sharing your workflow! I concider also moving from LR Classic to CC.... I heard it is a good idea to deactivate the sync before importing the photos. So only after culling activate the syn again, so there is no senseless upload to the cloud. MAybe thats an idioe to add to the workflow

[@hjamieson]

Such a helpful video. What I still don't get is when I sync my from my Macbook, and open on my iPad, the photo quality is still significantly dimished from the original RAW. Is this a setting or is the sync just lower quality / not full size?

[@bjrnrs]

It's a pretty cool device. Ive used it for over two and a half years for my professional photo edits. Especially Lightroom is good. But things like Photoshop and Final Cut Pro X were absolut unusable crap because of the limited functions.

[@TomRyanElliott]

I got one yesterday and would highly agree. While that's the case, I suggest anyone have another place to store their images. I use a NAS and an external SSD, meaning I don't have all my files on the iPad. As a Photographer/videographer, I simply bought the smallest iPad available because of the external storage.

[@errol1967]

Great video, im stil thinking of getting an ipad. How much internal memory do you have on your ipad, cause it was so fast...incredible. Is 8 gb ram enough to edit photos on the ipad? Greetings Errol

[@jamesss1953]

I bought an iPad purely to quick work on my images then later on MacBook. I am struggling with the ‘Detail’ editing. On Mac option key and you can see, but how on earth do you get same on iPad🙊 I have found this video very useful indeed and thank you for sharing….

[@zemanns]

Thx for Vid. Does anyone know How to export Raw with all inf about changes to external storage back from the ipad, like ssd. And save space in adobe cloud storage.

[@peterc2248]

Another brilliant vid. I'm irrationally wedded to LR Classic and irrationally fearful of moving to LR mobile. You've given me a prod. Still nervy about losing my existing edits and moving my original files to the cloud though!

[@photographicamateur]

I am in the same situation- I wonder what would miss ?

[@lisamariecirincione6086]

It’s not an either or… I use both, and I’m not a professional, but it is easier to travel light with the ipad and import into that when I travel, and then sync to LR classic when I get home.

[@lisamariecirincione6086]

Look for a video by Terry White on Syncing between LR Classic, Cloud and Mobile

[@DANNYBLVCK]

Your edits will go between Lightroom and Lightroom mobile.

[@ManuelRodriguez-et7tr]

Greatt! Which size its this ipad???

[@stevepersighetti3400]

Great video, many thanks. My M2 iPad Pro is definitely faster than my PC. What keyboard are you using please? Apple Magic?

[@andytudor6377]

Just discovered your channel, a quick question if I may: Tethered to an iPad and using Lightroom for iPad, Images from the tethered camera show up onscreen as a group of large thumbnails but can you have one large image with shutter release button underneath as you can with the desktop version? Cant find that view anywhere so may not exist?

[@ugurabdioglu842]

Hi Andrew, Great video really!! I have a question maybe you can help. I want to Export all photos I have edit in one time not 1 by 1 (iPad Pro Lightroom). Can you maybe help me with it:)?

[@yvesdelange9979]

It was a very interesting video, but do you need to be connected? If you are on the road, you don't always have internet connection. Is there still a possibility to edit on a iPad (or tablet, or phone) if you are in the middle of nowhere and there is no internet? If internet is necessary, I think I just go home and edit on my computer.

[@OlivierMelcher]

Solid video! What will you do when you reach 1Tb in Lightroom, can you get more storage space? Can you download all your raw files from LR servers if one day you decide to switch to a different setup?

[@zemanns]

Did You found answer in other place, since I know only pc help with this

[@frankb3229]

Hi Andrew, great lecture - many thanks! My only concern with the workflow is the bottleneck of the sync process. When I am travelling and coming back from a wildlife shooting, I have sometimes > 1000 MB50 files on my express card. In normal hotels a syncing of that mass does not work. So what to do? First importing into a folder on the iPad? How to backup my material? In the end I still use the combination of MacBook & SSD for that process. That’s a pity because I like the editing on the iPad in combination with the latest pencil … Thanks in advance for your advice Frank

[@57sapke]

Great video, but some functions I can't use as they are grey out.

[@steve3751]

How do you feel about the ergonomics of constantly hovering your right hand up to interact with the screen? Is it more tiring than using a traditional mouse, especially in a long editing session? Thanks for the video

[@MrHosmer79]

Do you ever cull images rather than import everything from the SD Card? I have noticed in the last couple months that when you pinch and zoom to the images before importing the quality is terrible. I do sports and want to do a quick check of focus before importing rather than import everything and then delete but can't do it anymore with the low image quality. Was not like this until somewhat recently though. Good video though and love doing my culling and editing on my phone.

[@zemanns]

Hi, thanks for video. I have using an ipad version from two years, dont want to change it, its great, but my cloud space is almost full. Is it really only one option to move albums to external hardrive by install lightroom on mac? I understand that only reason why adobe keep two versions and mix minds of people its that lightroom its light version than lightroom classic. Right?

[@daf80]

Hi Andrew, thank you for sharing your knowledge. I have a question and that is that when syncing from lightroom classic to ipad i have the raw originals saved locally. What happens if I upload new photos directly to the ipad, what happens to the original raws where they remain. Because after working and synchronizing I will see the collection created from the ipad in lightroom classic but since the synchronization is reversed where the original file remains. A hug from Argentina.

[@AndrewC092]

Great video! Do you find that editing on Lightroom on the iPad offers you the same level of editing as if on PC/Mac?

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Yeah it's basically identical these days. It's also super quick on the iPad so it's become one of my favourite ways to edit.

[@Acconda]

Does the Apple Pencil hover feature work yet on photoshop ipad m2 ?

[@chrisobrien4934]

Hi Andrew, could you please tell me whether Lightroom on the iPad has AI capabilities such as masking individual face features such as eyes, lips, teeth etc. Cheers Chris

[@stephanielouwagie7481]

Is this the iPad pro 11 inch? Would you recommend it or should I consider the 12.9 inch for photo editing purposes?

[@Viti]

I use Lightroom CC on my laptop professionall, but the iPad app is still so much behind. I love that they added automatic masking features, but I still can't select 50 photos in the grid view and batch grade or flag them. That is the biggest reason I very rarely pick up my iPad for editing

[@GetsOne]

I'm currently running out of space with LR. Are there any recommendations for exporting without losing edits and so forth?

[@JonBushell]

Cool. I tried luminance to subtract from mask but it won’t let me toggle mask on and off like yours. Help?

[@AndrzejSagalara]

Isn't that Portobello Beach? :) Cheers from CURIO Photography, Musselburgh ;)

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Sure is! Always a good spot for photos, I find!

[@Zetaphotography]

What memory card and camera do you use (file size)

[@user-mt8pf8ei8y]

How were you able to get the VSCO presets in LR? I have VSCO pro and didn’t know this was possible.

[@Paul_anderson_creative]

I run Lightroom Mobile on an Amazon fire hd 10 2020 with 10,000 RAWs on a 400gb micro SD... Piece of cake...👍🙏

[@Gonethinkin]

also, where do I find these VSCO mobile presets? Or do you have a recommendation for other presets? TIA

[@randomcommenterurl]

The filter icon is in the shape of a funnel

[@kariba109]

hello what model or ipadpro do you recommend as a minimum

[@karlyb5846]

do you have the ipad pro with the m1 or m2 chip?

[@thb5505]

Great video, thank you! You have a nice way of presenting and explaining information. I found it very useful and inspiring. Here is an idea for another video. After I finish editing)exporting I want to sync my photos locally on my oc drive, but I dont want in in the cloud any more (dont want to pay adobe for extra storage). I feel Adobe pushes us to keep stuff on the cloud... Im sure there is a way, but its confusing. Not a lot of info on the web. How to "un-sync" from cloud, to store locally, and be able to re-sync again if I need to revisit those files in the future. Cheers!

[@zemanns]

Looks like U can do this only by mac ligtroom

[@danielzimmermann-dzfotogra1982]

Hello! I can import only rating photos on camera to lr mobile?

[@cosmo.didit2]

Can you tell us which i pad you are using and the specs? Please.

[@ChillVibesAT]

is htere a posibility to make the editing bar on the right down?

[@willsenecal2741]

Whenever I export using add border, it loses a lot of the image quality and downsizes it. Is there a way to get around this to have a full file size after adding a border?

[@SundayLunch]

Is there a way to hide all the photos from the import folder once there have been organised into folders in Lightroom mobile?

[@mikepredmore3886]

Exactly which version of Lr is being used here? Is it the app for iPad or purchased plan from Adobe?

[@stevenpitts376]

love lightroom but hate having to pay a monthly subscription fee main reason why i won't use it anymore capture one all the way

[@meryembauch1891]

Hello, I have a question. I have my new Lightroom and I don’t know how to get my „presets“ on my iPadPro. However, I don’t have a PC computer Mac or Windows operating system. So how do you get the „presets“ on the iPad?thank you

[@TKRR15]

Does this IPad fully supports the LightRoom Classic including all features?

[@63MacGuy]

I may have missed it, but can you make a virtual copy of an image on an iPad?

[@MindGymMeditations]

What do you do if it doesnt bring up the device connected box? I cant find where i go to import the photos.

[@PaulVotava]

OK Brilliant, now how do I import VSCO presets, not found in Adobe Exchange and VSCO membership doesn't show use outside of their iOS app.

[@BoomerrHQ]

When i use LR on my ipad the image files are smaller than when i upload them onto my computer. Do you know how to fix that on LR ipad?

[@justsayjay]

Firat step. Doesn't detect device in lightroom. But it does find them in photos, just not in lightroom. Cool Ah i found it. You have to set auto import from sd card up as a first time user. The rest of your tutorial is great though. I

[@brio481]

Does anyone know how you get the Vsco presets like he has in the video?

[@guillaumedesmarest3723]

Working on Lightroom for iPad is great. However the app is optimised and after 20 minutes of editing my iPad Pro screen deems by 50%. The iPad is really hot and it is just a nightmare to work on. Do you have any similar issue?

[@gavinsnap]

how do you put a caption on the picture in file info?

[@XDLazypanda]

Question does anyone know is it .raw only or can it take other raw types e.g cr2 cr3

[@ffoeguk]

I find the images exported to Facebook are of a lower quality than from desktop version, what am I doing wrong?

[@jmarshallky]

I really want to use the iPad for editing at different events. However, I routinely shoot events where I have 5000+ photos...there just isn't a good way to cull through images before importing into Lightroom. I wish Photo Mechanic had a lightweight culling app for the iPad for people like me. Again, I really want it to work but I can't for these types of events. So packing my MBP around is the only option for large imports. Small portrait sessions are doable.

[@zemanns]

Thats numbers are crazy, I belive that even sorting as a first step on mac and then use ipad its not enough

[@sandralind5097]

I have an IPad Pro 3rd generation & I can’t see the menu, pls help. Thanks.

[@benoitpiret9065]

the one thing that really bothers me with LR is you cant stack RAW and JPG

[@matthewwareley]

Can you batch export on ipad?