Software – Page 4 – Just thoughts

Following my last post on the subject – Lightroom on the move – biting the bullet – I thought it might be useful to record my experiences with using Lr Mobile and my iPad Mini 4 on a recent trip, so that if I should ever be tempted back to using Lr Mobile, I’d have a benchmark to measure the progress of the software against.

Let’s start with some background, just in case a reader (is there anybody out there – to quote “The Boss”) hasn’t read previous posts. This thread started with a post written by Nicole Young – that prompted me to try an experiment travelling without my laptop. That didn’t work well for me initially, but I determined to have another go, which I wrote up in the post – Travelling with my camera and without my MacBook Pro – which also didn’t go too well either!

Now call me a fool (if you will), but having learnt a little more about Lr Mobile (I know it’s not called Lr Mobile, but I need to call it something other than just plain Lightroom – because that’s what Lightroom Classic really is – I’m oldskool), I thought I ought to try it again.
Some starting points …

I decided to set up my Sony A7rIII to use SD-Card Slot 1 for RAW and Slot 2 for JPEG. My reasoning here was that I thought I could upload from the Slot 2 Card to my iPhone for sharing images on WhatsApp etc. This worked fine – no need for Lr Mobile at all for this. Just the SD-Card; an Apple Lightning -> SD-Card Adapter AND an iPhone 6s.

These images also automatically synced to Google Photos where I created an Album to Share with Family. Happy days!

However …

Although the upload to the iOS Photos app worked fine, my External Lacie SSD Hard Drive doesn’t seem to be working with this iPhone using a powered Lightning -> USB 3 Adapter; the drive wasn’t recognised in the Files app, thus I couldn’t Export from the Camera Roll onto the external hard drive. Is this a Lacie fault, or is the iPhone 6s too old? I have to investigate this and will report back later!

Why was this a problem? Well the JPEG Images uploaded to iPhone from SD-card Slot 2 to share from the iPhone were been merged with native JPEG images taken on the iPhone. I couldn’t distinguish where they were coming from. This might not be a problem for some people but the Sony JPEGs were not supposed to replace the RAW images that I was examining in Lr Mobile!

There doesn’t appear to be an easy way to separate them. There are no filtering options in either Apple Photos, or Google Photos. How then do I merge iPhone JPEGs into my Lr Classic catalog?

I can’t find a search on filename available on the phone – there might be in iCloud from a web browser, but I haven’t researched that … yet!

This “problem” was solved by loading JPEGs into another space on my hard disk, not into my regular Images folder, then Adding them into my Lr Classic Catalog (not Moving or Copying), selecting the iPhone photos from the Sony JPEGs using a filter, and removing the Sony JPEGs from Catalog, then Moving the remaining JPEGs into the regular Images folder on my External SSD into the newly created and correctly titled folders in my Catalog BEFORE doing the Import of the RAW image files from the SD-card that had been in Slot 1. [Not forgetting to delete the Sony JPEGS from the other location to avoid clutter!] All an annoyance that makes the workflow tedious!

I also encountered other problems ..

The keywording options available in Lr Mobile are rudimentary and I don’t believe you can create a Preset to apply metadata at the time of the RAW import into Lr Mobile. It can only be done individually to an image. This meant I had to go through the whole collection and tag separately in Lr Classic after the images had been Synced (or in my case Imported as I had abandoned Syncing for the reasons given in my concluding remarks below). At least I could Select and Tag in Lr Classic, which I couldn’t in Lr Mobile! Another annoyance.

Even though I decided to use Compressed RAW in the camera, I ran out of space on the iPad Mini 4 – I would need to upgrade to a new iPad Pro (or a new MacBook). Also, the Lacie SSD didn’t work on the iPad either … again, is this a question of old kit, or a Lacie problem – I need to follow this one up.

I quickly ran out of Creative Cloud space – 20GB definitely not enough, even when using the “Delete folder (saved for 60 days)” trick! See below, a note I wrote to myself on table-top experiments with Lr Mobile before I left …

Quick note after using “web-enabled” Lightroom last night. It took very little time to sync both iPhone and Camera (using card reader connected to iPad) up to the cloud – 45 photos. I remembered to switch off Sync as well!!!! It took a couple of minuted to then sync to the desktop this morning. What was interesting however was that when I switched on Lightroom Classic, the application already knew how much of my Creative Cloud storage was being used – 1.59Gb for 45 pictures.

I must say now that I’ve got used to it, it’s much more straightforward than I though to use the Syncing with Lightroom Cloud. I particularly like the way that photos taken yesterday with my iPhone have been easily integrated into the workflow. One thing to note however which I forgot to cover … you need to switch off Syncing from the Lightroom Classic Collection (Albums in Lightroom) by clicking on the double-facing arrow against the Collection, and then perhaps (if you use Collections in Lightroom Classic) move the Collection to a different place. Also, your final task should be to Delete the photos from the Creative Cloud storage by clicking on All Synced Photographs (in Catalog panel) – and deleting them; as long as Sync is still enabled they’ll be deleted from your Creative Cloud storage allocation. You should then Pause Syncing. Remember however that everything you Delete will still be in the Deleted storage in Creative Cloud, and will stay there for 60days without counting against your storage allocation. That’s all. I’ll try and get round to amending the notes tomorrow to add these points.

However, unlike the experience when syncing at home, syncing in the wild was slow and not a realistic way of saving local storage. Also syncing when I got home was temperamental and I waited for some time, and then gave up, attempting to get a connection to Creative Cloud from my desktop. Things have to work smoothly and not rely on “clever” kludges or workarounds!

At one time I thought there was duplication in Google Photos due to Backup and Sync but this does not appear to be the case. It’s just a delay issue in refreshing the caches I suspect.

So a conclusion …

I would have to upgrade my Apple kit to get Lr Mobile to work for me. Does that mean a new iPad Pro? Or a new MacBook Air?? But I don’t need either as my MacBook Pro works well – it’s just heavy. I do however probably need to review whether getting a new iPhone sometime soon might be a good idea – improved camera(s), connection to external SSD, etc. A cautionary wait and see is probably in order but currently a new iPhone would seem a better way forward.

I do not like the Default Sync setting which means you have to remember to switch Syncing Off after an upload. This also reverts back to being the default when the Software is upgraded. It is really the wrong Default and Adobe should review this.

I do not like the lack of Selection in Lr Mobile. You should be able to Select what you want to Sync – not everything. What’s the point of having the ability of selecting the Collection you want to Sync from Lr Classic to an Album in Creative Cloud, if you can’t do exactly the reverse from Lr Mobile to Lr Classic. It doesn’t make sense and the phrase “hammer and nut” comes to mind; plus of course “upgrade to more Creative Cloud storage needed”, and more dosh for Adobe!

The inability to Select and Keyword a group of images is also a drawback to me; as is the absence of Colour Labels – which I use a lot.

So I have decided NOT to sync. photos from the iPad using Lr Mobile. I could not get a quick and reliable Connection. I will however keep watching for developments from Adobe that might encourage me to have another try. I will continue to use Lr Mobile in one situation – that of integrating native JPEG iPhone Photos into Lightroom Collections. That might be a useful addition to my workflow if I get a new shiny iPhone. This “use case” seems to be what Lr Mobile should be good at!!!

This is not a post that replaces or upgrades any information published elsewhere … it just clarifies in my mind what I should do when I setup a Publish service in Lightroom, or Export from Lightroom with the intention of using an image on another service. Just to be clear, there is no right solution, just a number of things you need to bear in mind. What are these?

Well to start with, the output medium or device, is critical as it will affect the sizing decision of the image you make prior to publishing, or export.

There is the format of the image which is related to the above – it might be TIFF if the image is to be printed, otherwise it is likely to be PNG (from Lr Classic 8.4, August 2019), or more likely JPEG.

Then there is the compression, or quality, you decide to accept if you’re converting from RAW to JPEG. This won’t be an issue if you’re already working with a native JPEG image, unless it’s produced a very large file size when you might consider some further compression, prior to the re-sizing I discuss below.

So … the output device. If it’s going to a print shop you’ll probably be selecting TIFF and will size the image as you require it – so I’ll ignore that except to say that you need to enquire what Resolution the print shop can accept – the file size will be large, depend on that! If it’s going to your printer then you’re going to print to the maximum size that your printer will allow and you should use the Print module in Lightroom, but making sure that you let the printer control the Colour Management. You might need to convert to JPEG to print to your printer, if there is no device driver for your printer in Lightroom and then you will have to Export first; but if you’re using the Print module in Lightroom, this will not be necessary.

If the export is to a display screen you need to know the dimensions that the screen will support. There is no sense in sizing an image larger than the device is capable of displaying as that will just produce an image file size larger than it needs to be. Likewise it’s debatable whether it’s desirable to enlarge an image to match the dimensions of the device as that will involve interpolation (inventing data) and the image quality will therefore drop – let the device do the re-sizing if necessary!

So the Lightroom settings for a 4K screen might be either of …

… or …

… of which I’d probably select the latter. Note the Resolution field. This is totally superfluous when exporting an image for a screen display, or indeed for the web. Note also the Sharpen options which you should choose appropriately. If you’ve sharpened in the Lightroom Develop module already, you might not want to further Sharpen here.

If you’re exporting to Flickr or Google Photos then you need to take note of the size that the service will accept. For Flickr each image will have to be less than 200Mb (or it will be compressed), but with a cap on file storage space of 1Tb and 1000 images in total it makes sense to use an Image Sizing long edge value of 1024px. For Flickr Pro users there is no limit, so you can size as you wish. If you’re using Google Photos then the “free” allowance limit is 16mp for each image, so it’s perhaps worth bearing this in mind and using an Image Sizing Megapixel size of 16mp.

If you’re Exporting (Publishing) to the web you need to consider the maximum size that you can “get away with”, because the smaller the image size, the faster it will load. Generally, I’d probably use a Long Edge Value of 1024px and Sharpen to a High level.

Now we come to the RAW to JPEG conversion, which like re-sizing of the image dimensions will also affect the file size of your image.

Lightroom fortunately provides only one parameter to consider here, after you’ve chosen the Colour Space which should normally be sRGB. This parameter is called Quality. It doesn’t call it “compression” because it is taken as read that JPEG is a lossy format, and that compression and loss of data will take place in the transformation. It is left to you to decide what level of Quality you can accept. To help you Jeffrey Friedl has written an excellent, one might even go so far as saying the definitive, article on the subject. So much so that I’m not going to even try and summarise it. But having read it – which you should, you might also choose to look at this one too.

From reading this and my own experiments, I’ve decided to adopt a Quality setting of 72 as my general purpose setting. It’s NOT a good idea to Limit the File Size here – instead look at re-sizing the image as previously described to reduce the file size, if necessary.

So to export to Dropbox for instance, to share images on a 4K screen, my settings would be …

And that’s it.

Category: Software

Lr Mobile – moving on!

Publishing images from Lightroom to Flickr, Dropbox and the web