Long gone is the idea of only editing your photos once you get home to your desktop PC or forking out wads of cash for a powerful laptop. Professional mobile photo editing is an essential tool to professionals and even enthusiasts. Last year Adobe brought a version of its Lightroom photo-editing software to the iPad enabling on-the-go editing without pulling out the old PC or laptop. Now a version of the app is ready for Android devices and it brings all of the key features from the iOS version to those handsets running Google’s mobile OS.
Unfortunately the app is currently only available on phones and not tablets (like the iPad version), which I find a bit strange, a tablet will enable better visuals after all. Adobe says a version that’s optimized for tablets is on the way, but for now, the app is meant to be used on phones. To my mind they released the iOS versions the correct way around. The iPad version preceded the iPhone app which makes more sense. While this new Lightroom mobile equips devices running Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) and later with its toolbox of tweaks (more on that in a minute), the creative software company recommends that you have at least 8GB of free space on your device to keep things running smoothly.
The Android app is a free download, but you’ll need a Creative Cloud subscription to use it but you don’t need the full membership. There is a photography-specific plan at $10 a month. Lightroom mobile syncs edits, metadata and collections with Lightroom 5.4 (or higher) on both Windows and Mac. There is a very important reason for this. Most serious photographers like to take their photos in RAW format, which requires a serious amount of processing power to edit due to its size (+-30mb a photo). The clever guys at Adobe has enabled a cloud processing system which captures the changes you make on the app and applies them to your RAW photos in the cloud. Thus you don’t need a sick amount of processing power. That is also why you need a subscription.
From an editing perspective, don’t expect a full set of tools. The mobile software is limited to much of what’s in the Basic Panel and cropping tools. Options like color temperature, exposure, highlights and contrast are available, but those handy presets that you’ve created, or purchased from the likes of VSCO, won’t be accessible. Adobe says that expanded preset support is something it’s working on, but there’s no timeline for when they’ll be added to the mobile apps.
The Lightroom app (subscription actually) might sound a bit expensive to the casual photographer. Ten dollars a month seems a bit much, but for pro’s and serious enthusiasts this will be a life saver. We will see if we can get a review of the Lightroom mobile app on BandwidthBlog as soon as possible.
Source: Engadget
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