Today’s Question: I am going on an extended trip where I will be doing much photography, but would rather not take my laptop. Can I use an iPad while traveling and then just sync the photos one time after the trip and then go back to my traditional laptop using Lightroom Classic, without syncing?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can import photos to Lightroom on a mobile device (smartphone or tablet) while traveling. The photos will synchronize to Lightroom Classic, and you can then remove the photos from cloud storage after they are in your normal Lightroom Classic workflow.
More Detail: The Lightroom mobile app for smartphones and tablets makes it possible to travel without a laptop but still get your photos into your normal Lightroom Classic workflow relatively easily.
The first thing I recommend is to check your settings in Lightroom Classic for where photos synchronized from the cloud will appear. On the Lightroom Sync tab of the Preferences dialog I recommend turning on the “Specify location for Lightroom’s Synced images” checkbox. Then click the Choose button to the far right and select a folder location where you want the images to appear. This can be a generic name to indicate that the folder will contain images that need to be sorted still, such as “Cloud Images to Sort”.
You can then import photos during your trip into Lightroom on your mobile device. This often requires having an adapter that enables you to connect your memory card to the mobile device, and I strongly recommend testing this before your trip to make sure everything is compatible. When you import photos into the Lightroom mobile app you can assign star ratings, apply adjustments, and more. These photos will synchronize to the cloud automatically.
When you return home you can find the images in the folder designated on the Lightroom Sync tab of the Preferences dialog. I recommend marking those photos in some way to indicate they are synchronized to the cloud, such as with a color label. Then move the images to the desired folder destination. To remove the images from cloud storage (while leaving them on your local hard drive) you can go to the “All Synced Photographs” collection in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module, select the applicable photos you had marked (such as with a color label) and then right-click on one of the selected photos and choose “Remove from All Synced Photographs”. You can then remove the marker (such as the color label) that had identified the images as being in cloud storage and continue with your normal workflow.
