Since smartphones are the most popular cameras (because they go with us pretty much everywhere), it makes sense that as their image capture technology improves, so would the tools available for editing and sharing. Today Adobe announced that they were bringing their critically acclaimed photo editing platform to Android phones, and they are releasing Adobe Lightroom Mobile for Android!
Adobe Lightroom mobile is a companion app to Lightroom 5 desktop software, available as part of Adobe Creative Cloud. First released for iPad and iPhone last year, Lightroom mobile offers powerful capabilities to edit, organize and share images anywhere and anytime.
In the Creative Cloud, Lightroom Mobile integrates with Lightroom 5, Photoshop CC2014 and Lightroom Mix to form a suite that lets you edit and share your photos across platforms quickly and easily.
Some Lightroom mobile capabilities include:
- Sync edits, metadata and collection changes to the Lightroom catalog on a Mac or Windows computer
- Automatically import images from the smartphone gallery and sync back to the Lightroom catalog on the desktop
- Edit images using familiar Lightroom tools and presets, including non-destructive processing using Smart Previews
- Quickly flag and reject photos
It is worth noting what Lightroom Mobile does NOT do – it isn’t a full port of Lightroom 5, and the easiest analogy is that it fully contains the ‘Basic’ panel of the Lightroom desktop program. The Android functionality around commenting still hasn’t been completed, but otherwise this is pretty much feature-equivalent to the iOS version.
Another great function is Smart Previews. This works with RAW files to give you all the power and flexibility of using the uncompressed original without the size. You are working with files ~2MB rather than ~17MB, which makes all of the Cloud transfers much quicker, and your final edits are saved back to the original RAW file. It is a great process that made everything feel instantaneous and transparent, as I played around with cross-platform transfers and editing.
As I mentioned, I have had a chance to play around with Lightroom Mobile for the past few days, and for me one of the biggest tests was simply “would I use this?” I mean, I could walk through the features and play with the settings and so on – but since this is part of a subscription service, I wanted to be sure it was worth $10 a month.
My thought? Maybe. Which is actually pretty positive – I am a guy who is not a great photographer, and is pretty ‘bare bones’ about stuff, all of my pictures are done and edited in iPhoto or the simple Android photo tools … if they are edited at all. There would have to be significant reason for me to look at paying $10 a month – but after a couple of days playing with pictures I took at the kids marching band banquet I was seriously considering it. I could definitely see the usefulness, and especially in our shared family setting.
The Creative Cloud Photography subscription costs $9.99 per month, with the first 30 days for free. As a reminder that includes Lightroom 5, Photoshop CC and Lightroom mobile with immediate access to updates as soon as they are released.
Head to the http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/?p=1448Adobe blog for more details on Lightroom Mobile, and you can also head here for tutorial videos to get you going!