Rikk Flohr

Adobe Lightroom for mobile & Photoshop Mix formidable roundtripping in the Lightroom ecosystem

It started with a simple tweeted image - then the masses wanted to know more...

The accompanying graphic to my original tweet

Unobtrusively, Adobe’s Lightroom for mobile and Photoshop Mix have integrated behind the scenes and given us a robust image solution that enables our Lightroom for mobile to Photoshop Mix and back to Lightroom for mobile workflow. This has long been the missing component. Sure, we could have an image in Lightroom for mobile and we could edit it quite nicely on our mobile device. We’ve been able to send that image to Photoshop Mix for a while now and tweak it a little further. Now, that tweaked result comes back to our Lightroom for mobile synced collections and, here’s the good part, ends up in our Lightroom Desktop catalog!

Let's start at the beginning...

It starts with the raw capture. Here is a jellyfish from the Minnesota Zoo. It is a fairly unremarkable image of typical aquarium lighting and a standard subject. Imported into my Lightroom Desktop catalog, it was synced as part of the larger shoot so that I could edit down the shoot later. I liked this image and when I stumbled upon it while editing on my iPad in Lightroom for mobile, I processed it a bit.

The Lightroom for mobile image is a lot cooler and I was pretty happy with it. I didn’t like the amorphous splotches scattered about nor the two fluorescent tube highlights on the top of the jellyfish. Tapping Share in Lightroom for mobile and selecting Open In… I chose to send the image to Photoshop Mix.

Photoshop Mix

Tapping the […] icon I was able to access the Content Aware Fill in Photoshop Mix and clean up those nagging areas and do some additional editing. Content Aware Fill is a server-based online tool which Adobe Photoshop Mix leverages. Using server-based functions it is possible to do things that the ordinary hand-held device lacks the power to accomplish. After finishing the edit in Photoshop Mix, you tap the Share icon and something interesting happens.

Not only can you go to your Photoshop Desktop, Behance and others, notice there is a Save to Lightroom option. This is the exciting part! Tapping Save to Lightroom sends the edited file back into Lightroom for mobile.

Lightroom for mobile

A new shared collection is created called Photoshop Mix. The result of my editing in Photoshop Mix was automatically saved here!

Tapping the thumbnail to go inside the collection, you can see the image (and all others returned to Lightroom for mobile from Photoshop Mix) and continue to edit it in Lightroom for mobile.

Here's where it gets even better!

So – to recap… Lightroom Desktop – Sync to Lightroom for mobile – Edit in Photoshop Mix – Send result back to Lightroom for mobile – ????

You guessed it – it makes it all the way back to the Lightroom Desktop and integrates with your master catalog.

A pseudo device is created in your Folders panel resembling the devices for my iPhone, iPad and Android tablets. In this “Lightroom” device is the Imported photos folder containing my Photoshop Mix image that round-tripped through the Lightroom for mobile ecosystem.

Before

During

After

The finished image, edited in Lightroom for mobile – continued in Photoshop Mix – finished in Lightroom for mobile - edited solely on a mobile device – no Desktop editing required.

The power of our mobile device-based editing has taken a great step forward. The Lightroom ecosystem is rapidly evolving into the hub around which our photography is centered. With companion apps like Photoshop Mix, with its great local tools and powerful server-based tools, we now have access to an unprecedented level of sophistication in our image editing. The best part of this is that it keeps our existing catalog workflow intact and allows us to continue our creativity when we wander far from our desktops.

Oh, and the Adobe Slate app used to tell this story integrates with that Lightroom ecosystem quite nicely.

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Rikk Flohr

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