Using Adobe Lightroom with OSX Photos

Seems the original request can in fact be interpreted in a number of ways. For me, the workflow always starts in Lightroom as I prefer it's capabilities. The sticky part is when I want to have certain albums of photos on my iPhone just for viewing, which is easily handled by setting up published albums in Lightroom and then using those folders during iTunes sync with my iPhone. These folders can also be used via iTunes as the designated location for showing photos on my Apple TV. Since I don't care about using any of Photos' editing capabilities, workflow was pretty straightforward:

1. Import into Lightroom

2. Edit/classify/etc.

3. Publish to to folder(s)

4. Pull from folder(s) via iTunes into iPhone and Apple TV

The only duplication is the exported photos residing on the filesystem, but those are far lower res than the originals.

But it seems that with Apple TV gen 4, the iCloud Photo Library may be the only way to get my photos displayed. So now:

1. Import into Lightroom

2. Edit/classify/etc.

3. Publish to to folder(s)

4. Import from folder(s) into Photos for use by iCloud Photo Library

Keeping various albums intact of course. I'd love to combine 3 and 4, making the whole thing destructive -- if a photo is removed from the export album, it's correspondingly removed from the album in Photos. But I'm not finding a clean way to automate this from inside Lightroom -- the Publish facility doesn't have post-processing options like Export.

Just my two cents' worth...

Keeping various albums intact of course. I'd love to combine 3 and 4, making the whole thing destructive -- if a photo is removed from the export album, it's correspondingly removed from the album in Photos. But I'm not finding a clean way to automate this from inside Lightroom -- the Publish facility doesn't have post-processing options like Export.

You can automate the process with AppleScript and some folder actions. Create a Folder Action that watches your primary publish folder. Then bind an AppleScript to run when a file(s) is dropped there. The AppleScript can import those images to Photos, create albums, whatever. If you want, you could possibly be able to drop the photos / re-add using the AppleScript that may accomplish picking up drops.

Another idea is to use something like PhotoSync and sync your published folder to your iOS device and let the device then sync those photos to Photos. I fear that this may sort of make the trip from iOS back to LR more complicated as the imported picture may appear "new".

With the support of a forum member (because I clearly don't know anything about Applescript), we have written a piece of the workflow you're just talking about :

export from LR to a folder, automatically import to iPhoto. This workflow is also taking care of avoiding duplicates in case you re-edit a photo that was already exported, etc...

The workflow is currently written for iPhoto and need to be adapted for Photo app.

A few bugs were existing but it was a good start.

Please feel free to have a look at it if you have time & skills. Any improvement welcomed!

iPhoto - Automator Import Script Improvements

Right, after a couple of hours mucking around, I think I've worked out this out... (this is for iPhone - I can't speak for Android!)

The answer lies with Lightroom CC Mobile.

I'll try and be as succinct as I can be but please ask any questions you like.

1. Firstly you must subscribe to the CC package but to always have the most up to date version of LR and PS for only £8 a month is frankly very worth it. And with it comes LR CC Mobile.

2. LR Mobile only syncs with one catalog at a time in LR. As a professional photographer, I start a new catalog at the start of every calendar year anyway - not only does this keep things small but also fast. It also means if I lose a catalog, I'm only losing one year's worth of photography - not everything I've ever done! So, for LR Mobile to work, I've created a separate catalog on my computer, and I've put it (unlike the others) into Dropbox so it syncs across my various laptops and desktops (although you don't have to do this!). I've called it 'Overarching iPhone Images'. This also useful as my iPhone photos span back over 8 years and I like to have them separate from my DSLR shots in LR so it all works neatly and I don't get muddled.

3. Download the LR iPhone app to your phone and log in using your Adobe login. In the settings, switch ON the 'Auto Add Photos' option. Then in the app, select 'Add Photos' and add a few images from your native IOS Camera Roll as a tester. Into a folder called LR Photos on your phone, those photos should now appear.

4. On your computer, open LR in the new catalog you've just created for your iPhone photos. Scroll over your name in the Identify Plate and a little down arrow appears. Click on that and the first open is 'Sync with LR mobile' - switch it on... Hopefully, depending on your internet connection, the couple of photos you selected will sync automatically into your new iPhone catalog allowing you to then use LR in the normal fashion on your iPhone shots.

5. Because you switched on 'Auto Sync' every photo that now appears in your camera roll will then end up on your computer (including ones from WhatsApp) - BUT ONLY AS LONG AS THE LR APP IS OPEN ON YOUR PHONE!!! However, it will not sync everything historic. You have to do that manually by 'Selecting All' in the app and then adding it to the catalog... Mine is currently uploading 13,000 photos!!!

6. I've also downloaded the app onto my iPad and it's even better there. However, I've not yet worked out the implications of how much space this is all going to take up so keep an eye on that. However, THANK YOU ADOBE!! You have saved me untold pain and a real sticking point... All my iPhone images will automatically sync into LR on my computer and, even better than that, in a different catalog so it's all nice and tidy!!

7. Working in reverse (and I've not tested this yet) to get photos from LR on your computer to your phone, I suspect that you could export the folder of finished shots from one catalog, import it into the iPhone catalog and the sync process will just automatically happen. Further to that, I suspect (but not tried) that you'll then be able to save to your Camera Roll, and thus back into iCloud and across your devices... That might be a bit long winded but it would certainly avoid having to find a plugin to save directly from LR to your Camera Roll... Just a thought.

Anyway, I think that's it. Good luck and if I hit a road bump I'll come back and let you know... Any DM questions, do email me - enquiries(at)elloydowen(dot)com and I'll try and help you.

Cheers - Ed

www.elloydowen.com

Chelsea // London

How does that answer the question:

Has anyone figured out a way of using Photos for the iCloud integration and Lightroom for the editing and post processing?

You're not using Photos or iCloud at all?

I've been looking for a solution to this for a while.

The closest I've gotten is keeping my photo library in Lightroom, and using Google Photos to keep a backup copy that auto uploads from my Lightroom folder.

While this isn't using iCloud at all, it does allow me to have all my photos easily accessible on my iPhone or iPad through the Google Photos app.

On the downside it doesn't help for Apple TV users, and only uploads edits once they've been exported.

Which is another example of choosing one app over the other as there is no sensible way to use both. Works for you, good.

Hey Ed,

Thanks so much for your write up. You inspired me with a solution that solves an issue I was having.

I was looking for a relatively easy way to take my edited photos from lightroom and get them into my icloud so that I could display them on my AppleTV. It seems that you've automated the task a bit more than I needed, so I thought I'd summarize where my approach differs from your description in case it helps others.

1) Save edited photos in lightroom to an a folder that's synced with the lightroom mobile app (Ed describes this process in wonderful detail)

2) Open up the album in the lightroom iOS app

3) Manually share the photos from the album with an iCloud album (using the standard "share" option provided by iOS)

That's it. Because I've turned on sharing my iCloud shared albums within the AppleTV settings, these photos show up within the Photos app on my AppleTV.

There is a manual element in that I need to manually share the photos from the ligthroom app into iCloud, but I don't mind that step at all as it's only a few photos each week and gives me a good opportunity to review things before they show up on my TV.

Hope that helps someone else.

Is it just me or lately when I take a raw photo and export it from photos and then do the same from Lightroom the quality of the photo from the photos app is very bad compared to the quality of the JPEG I export from Lightroom, Is there a missing setting on the photos app I am missing or something. If I crop a Raw photo in the photo app and then export it to JPEG it looks like I cropped it 300% when I only cropped like 50%. Please let me know if I am missing something.

Start your own topic and tell us exactly how you are exporting the photo.

Someone did publish these instructions as a work around:

http://www.cultofmac.com/177314/sync-your-lightroom-collections-with-your-ipad-a utomatically-how-to-2/

Essentially, you use a plugin to export (duplicate) to disk and have itunes use that as your photos library. You'll get a lot but not the events and not the people tagging. Not the best, but a start.

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/import-iphoto.html

Thanks. I was having trouble importing the exif, and a lot of times, the dates the photos were created were wrong.

Seems to be working now. Thanks for making me try it again!

You realise that query is from April 2015, right?

I've been working like this since two years without any problems, I can edit on Lightroom without damaging neither the softwares or the images