Hi all. Recently, I made it my personal mission to finally understand my tablet and the Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop world that exists on it. I’ve been dodging questions about it for too long – and I’ve personally never understood what I can/can’t do on the tablet, and how to get my work back to my main computer.
So I dove in and spent some time learning about the workflow. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it can be to backup, import, edit and share photos with Lightroom on the tablet while traveling – but also get all of that stuff back home to Lightroom Classic or Lightroom on my main computer.
Along the way, though, I learned there are a lot misconceptions that I had, and other people have, about this whole workflow. So I thought I’d write a little more about them today.
Important: Before We Get Started
SIDE NOTE: I want to mention this up front. My goal here is NOT to try to get you to buy a tablet and do all of your editing on it. Far from it. My goal here is that many of you ALREADY OWN TABLETS and have asked me if you can take that tablet (and no laptop) on a photo trip. But, just like me, you have some misconceptions about what you can and can’t do on it. And that’s really what I hope to help with this article. If you’ve got a good workflow with a computer or laptop and don’t have the need for a tablet… perfect! I would never want to change that and I’m not suggesting you change it at all. I just want to help you realize what the tablet you already have can do.
Let’s dig in…
Misconception #1: Can’t Connect a Card Reader to Download Photos
If you’ve got a tablet made in the last 6 years or so, then it will most likely allow you to connect a USB device to it (like a card reader). Once you connect that card reader, you can use the Files apps on your Apple or Android device to copy those photos somewhere. (I Covered that in a free video earlier this week – CLICK HERE) And if you wanted to import and edit those photos in Lightroom while traveling, then you’d be ready to go once you were able to connect that card reader.
I’ll repeat this idea because I think it’s worth repeating… the more you start to see the tablet as just another computer with a hard drive, the easier things can become while using them. Sure the interface may be a little different than your used to, but with practice you’ll just start to see it as another hard drive based computer that you can copy/move/edit your files on.
Misconception #2: Can’t Connect a Hard Drive to Backup Photos While Traveling
Just like the last one, if you’ve got a tablet made in the last 6 years or so, you can connect an external USB hard drive to it. And once you connect that hard drive, you can backup photos to it, or take photos off of it to bring in to Lightroom to edit and share.
You can also use the tablet as a conduit to take photos off of your memory cards and put them on external hard drives. I covered that in an free video earlier, but you’d just need a USB Hub to connect multiple devices. This is the one I use personally and it works great on both Apple and Android devices.
Misconception #3: Can’t Edit Photos in Lightroom
I’m sure you already know you could edit photos using the Apple photos app on the tablet, but you can also bring those photos in to the Lightroom app on the tablet. It’s got all of the same edit controls that Lightroom Classic has, so you’ll feel at home after a few minutes of exploring. And if you follow my workflow, you’ll be able to get the organization, edits, picks, flags, masks and all that back to your main Lightroom Classic or Lightroom workflow back home.
Oh… did I mention you don’t even need to be connected to the Adobe Cloud to do this? We’ll talk more about that in a moment.
Misconception #4: Can’t Work in Lightroom with No Adobe Cloud
This is a big misconception out there. Most people think they need to connect their tablet to the internet to upload their photos to the Adobe Cloud while traveling and that’s just not true. In my workflow, you’ll see that I go through a whole trip worth of photos… organizing, editing, sharing, etc… without ever syncing my Lightroom tablet app to the Adobe Cloud.
Now, syncing when you get back home can help the process of bringing those photos and edits back to your main Lightroom Classic / Lightroom system, but it definitely is not required when on the road.
Misconception #5: Can’t Edit Photos in Lightroom Like I Would in LR Classic
I’m just throwing this in there, but a common misconception or question is that Lightroom on the tablet is a stripped down version of LR Classic when it comes to editing. It’s not. It has nearly every feature that LR Classic has. While things are named slightly different in certain areas, it has all of the masks, Generative Remove, blur, color grading, and other features that LR Classic has.
The one that I do miss sometimes is the DeNoise AI feature and that’s not on the tablet yet. But everything else is.
Misconception #6: Can’t Share Photos without the Adobe Cloud
Again, another big misconception is that you can’t share because you’re not connected to the Adobe Cloud and that’s just not true again. You can import those photos in to Lightroom on the tablet, edit your heart away, and then share them (smaller, exported JPGs) via messages, emails or social media as long as you have an internet connection. You don’t have to be connected to the Adobe cloud, but you do need to be connected to the internet.
Misconception #7: Can’t Get Photos Back to Your Main Lightroom Classic System (or Lightroom)
This is the big puzzle out there. A lot of people think it’s mystical voodoo to get photos from the tablet back to your main computer system at home (LR Classic or Lightroom). Not only the photos but all of the edits you’ve done too.
The good news is that if you follow a good workflow while traveling, it’s fairly simple. I cover a bit more about syncing in the Edit on the Go Course, and there’s no way I can go in to the whole process here. But in a nutshell, when you get back home you can turn on the Adobe Sync option in Lightroom on your tablet. There’s also an option in Lightroom Classic or Lightroom so you’ll want that turned on as well (though it probably already is).
From there, if you were to open Lightroom Classic after you give it time to sync, you’ll see a “From Lightroom” Collection Set in LR Classic. Your photos will end up there with all of their edits. And yes, the FULL RAW FILE will get sent over to Lightroom Classic and end up on your computer based on your preferences setup in LR Classic. Once they’re there, you can then move those photos in LR Classic to whatever hard drive you normally use for your photos so everything is back in to your main catalog and on to the drives that your photos usually live on. Essentially, you’ll be back to your normal workflow from that point.
If you use Lightroom, it’s even easier. Once you open it, those photos will be in Albums on the desktop version. You can then save the album locally and it’ll move the photos from the cloud to whatever folder in whatever normal drive you have back on your main computer. It’s actually very clean and simple to do.
Misconception #7.5: Can’t Edit in Photoshop
I know this is 8, but 7 just sounded like a much better number to lead with 😉
Another problem people think the tablet has is that there is no Photoshop. Well, if you’re on an Apple tablet there is (it’s not made for Android yet and I don’t know if or when it will). Now, this is of course a stripped down version of Photoshop where as the Lightroom App editing tools are pretty much the same as LR Classic on the desktop.
But it has layers and some really good selection tools, so you can swap out backgrounds, select specific areas to edit, use the Remove tool for larger distraction removal, and use Generative Fill just like you could on the desktop computer.
And it saves those files back and forth to Lightroom just like the desktop does. Plus, they get saved with layers so if you wanted to re-edit them when you get back home on your desktop you can.
Wrapping Up
Well I hope that helps you with some common misconceptions about tablets. As I said before, I didn’t write this to convince you to do all of your editing on a tablet. That’s actually not even close to my goal here. My main hope is to help those of you with a tablet, that think it’s not a viable place for photo editing while traveling (or at home), to realize you have a lot of features and tools that you may not have realized you have. Also, to realize you’re not restricted by some of the things that the internet mislead you to believe – or maybe have changed over the years and you’re just going off of old information.
And of course, if you do decide you want to explore more of a tablet workflow while traveling, I happen to have the perfect place for you to learn more about it. My “Edit on the Go with Lightroom” Course is on sale for 40% off this week, so feel free to stop by and take a look.
But if I just convinced some of you to take a look at the tablet you already have, and some of the features you have more closely, I’m happy with that. Trust me, for some of you I just opened up a can of worms and ruined the productivity of your day if you were to go explore the things I mentioned here. But I think you’ll have some fun and learn a thing or two about the tablet and apps you already have while doing it 🙂 Enjoy!
I love teaching and photography... In that order. I feel that enjoying photography, and photo editing can get WAY too complicated. So my personal mission (and favorite thing to do), is to create education that simplifies the process of taking great photos, and how to edit them to get the results you’ve always wanted.
I’m a good way through the Edit on the go course and am getting very confused about sharing. My goal is to share all the photos I take while traveling with Adobe cloud but not photos from earlier shoots I have already incorporated into my desktop workflow..
If I turn on the share to cloud on my iPad do all the photos in the iPad library get qued for the Adobe cloud or can I specify I only want certain folders or albums shared.
If everything gets shared that seems to mee I need to delete old shoots from my iPad before my trip so that when I turn synching back on for the Desktop when I get home it only synchs the images from the trip – not previously I’m[prted IPad photos not relevant to the trip.
Just as other cloud services such as Dropbox allow one to specify which folders get synched and which don’t it seems like Lightroom would allow granularity in the synch process.
Hi. Once you turn on Sync everything will be synced. Adobe does NOT work in a local mode at all and you’re only tricking it to do that by not turning on sync.
Good summary Matt.
Thank you. The USB-C hub is a game changer for being apple to back up cards when traveling with a tablet.
I’m still waiting for merge to pano and hdr on the tablet. That is what keeps me bringing my laptop sadly.
Matt, This is great to see as I travel with a laptop and iPad plus external hard drives to save files twice, so I don’t lose them.
You were talking about a hub to use but what end goes into the hub? They talk about USB 2 or 3. I have a lead that can go into the iPad but not sure what end to hub. Somehow, I don’t think I am making sense!! I worry about raw files and too many for iPad so need to save them to an external hard drive and using the iPad with external hard drive makes sense to me. I will have to try and find a hub!! Enjoy always listening to your tips on LRC!
Thank you, Matt. I very much needed the workflow from camera card to iPad to Lightroom classic back home.
I hope you will soon discuss more about moving away from Lightroom Classic to just Lightroom. You brought it up several months ago.
I just tried the above suggestions. It works. It is easy. Thanks.
Thanks for another informative and well explained post. I have the LR app on my iPad but after a brief exploration of its tools, I never used it. Although I take plenty of pix on my Canon 6D, I’ve always waited until I returned home from vacation to do any photo editing and/or sharing.
However, I may just give that a try on my next trip….. Thanks again!
On my iPad, I can connect wirelessly with my Canon cameras and transfer my photos camera-to-iPad easily which has been quite convenient. I have found the Seagate Wireless Plus portable HDD (which I can connect my iPad to directly) to be invaluable when I travel as I can save images or import/export assets as needed for design work and don’t have to worry if there is no internet. What I REALLY would like to see is a complete update of Photoshop to full functionality on the iPad so that I can travel and do the work that I normally do on my desktop, since I do not use LR. I am still an old-school Bridge/Photoshop user, which I find far simpler for what I do. Thank you for all the info you provide!
Great to see I was not completely wrong editing photos on the tablet when on the go. :):):)
Syncing is my problem. Will need to find out how you sorted it out, Matt.
Thanks as always for the inspiration.
Thank you for this info, Matt. So far I have had no desire to edit photos while traveling. I spend too much time exploring where I am and taking photos that I simply don’t want to spend the time on editing on a trip. Still, there may be a time, … just not yet. Now, I know what is possible.
Matt,
Thanks for these sage bits of wisdom. The webinar was very helpful. I will add this new course to My MattK, almost complete, library of courses. I waited for a couple of days in case I was the lucky random drawing winner but no dice so I will take advantage of your sale. As I mentioned in one of my comments to you, this will allow me to lighten the load with the tablet rather than the laptop. Thanks again and hi to Diana.
Thank you, Matt! Great info and I can’t wait to dive into your course while I’m traveling to Brazil in 10 days.. with my iPad.
Thanks for your efforts on this, Matt. Your suggestion of using a USB hub to connect both an SD card reader and an SSD drive to my rtablet is one I had not considered. I had tried to copy images from SD to tablet memory, then transfer to SSD from tablet. For full res images, way, way too slow. I tried connecting my SD reader and a thumb drive via a hub, and found a trandfer rate of about 6-7 seconds per image. That is a better solution.
I did complain to Sony rep that my camera should be able to transfer images/videos directly from camera to SSD drive. No solution for that yet.
I do shoot some exposure bracketed images, I don’t find a photo merge feature for that in Lightroom on tablet (Android). Is it available on iPad?
In a previous comment I mentioned that I did not want to transfer my files to the tablet then to a separate hard drive. Found a solution in a USB-C Hybrid SSD enclosure/adapter that uses SATA SSD cards. The hub has a USB-C power connector (not useable for data transfer) that can handle 1002. Now have a 1Tb drive I can connect directly to the tablet and connect my card reader through the hub. Tried it and found download faster than to the tablet. Also, easy to back up files to a separate 1Tb drive connected through the hub.
Also makes it much easier to transfer files to my main editing system when I return home.
I understand Matt that you are not encouraging people to buy a tablet, but I am curious if you have any preferences about tablet brands for photo editing.
After recording this class with a fairly high end new Android and a 4 year old iPad Pro I would never ever buy an android again. But it was also $1000 cheaper than the iPad. It was horrible though.
I love editing on even my Old iPad Air. I fond it super easy and have been doing it for years.
The ONE (okay two areas) that Adobe needs to allow, is allowing HDR and Panorama stitching!! This is one of the main things keeping me off of my iPad full time.
Matt,
I don’t use a pad for photos while I travel but your tutorials and videos on this series make me really think about how that could be very usuful. You also dispelled my fears of following this new method for travel photography. Thanks for all you do to enlighten and entertain us on our photography journey. I’m going to give this a try so wish me luck !!
It was a great webinar, thanks so much. I was hoping to edit my photos, then export them to an external device to import when I get back. My iPad storage is limited, the only option I can find is as a dng. This means I cannot access denoise etc, on my return. I’m looking into 1 month 1TB storage, but I’ll need to check the internet connection at the various Canadian hotels we’ve booked.
Hi Chris. With DNG you can access DeNoise when you get home. And you’d only need the internet connection while traveling if you wanted to move the photos to the cloud, which you don’t have to do for any editing or sharing. Thanks.
Is the sky replacement feature available in the photoshop for iPad app?
Thanks
It is not. You’d have to do it the old way.
I’m tired of lugging my large laptop with me so I’ve been considering taking only an iPad. After seeing this, I know I’ll need a card reader and portable hard drive (I assumed I would and you confirmed it.) Didn’t know about not syncing but it makes perfect sense now. Thanks a lot, Matt.