Instagram is all about pictures, so it’s kinda funny that I’ve only just started using it. Nonetheless, I’ve fallen in love with it. I love that I can post to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter all at once, and if i’ve tagged someone it automatically seeks out their Twitter handle, too.

I hate that I can’t post images using my computer.

The Perfect Solution

I prefer to share finished images, photographs that’ve been through Lightroom for a little polish, and I rarely like what my iPhone shoots because I prefer to use telephoto lenses. My GH4 beams pictures directly to my phone or iPad, so I often share images directly from the camera, but many still require finishing before sharing. There are several workarounds people use to get their pictures from their computers onto their phones for Instagram. Some use dropbox, I was using facebook and saving my own picture from there (tedious). My dropbox fills too quickly, and it means I have to create a file from Lightroom and then post it to Dropbox, and I don’t like all those steps. But I’ve just realized that Lightroom Mobile is the perfect solution.

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Pentax 67, LensBaby G3 100mm lens, f/8, 1/30s, Kodak Portra 400. White balance correction in Lightroom, but the effect is all from the Lensbaby. Same settings for the header image.

Make a Collection

All you have to do is make a collection of images in Lightroom 5. You can do it in the Library Module or the Develop Module. Just select images you’d like in the collection, then click the + sign on Collections tab on the left. You can add more images anytime from within Lightroom.

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Login and Download

Lightroom 5 may have invited you to login with your Adobe ID, and, like me, you may have ignored it and disabled the “Sync with Lightroom mobile” switch in the identity plate at the top left. Well, you’ve got to enable it for this to work, but you don’t have to leave it enabled all the time. You’ll also need to download Lr Mobile for your iPhone or iPad.

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Sync Collections

The last thing to do on your computer is to click the little check box next to your collections that allows them to sync with Lr Mobile. The cool thing is, you can check and uncheck these boxes anytime, and Lightroom will simply remove the pictures from your mobile devices for you. You can also remove them in Lr Mobile to control your memory space. In this image I’ve sync’d a collection of images recently shot on Kodak films.

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Launch the app on your device, login with your Adobe ID and you’ll see your sync’d collections handy and ready for viewing/editing.

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Share to Device

To get your pictures out of Lightroom and into your photos app, just click the icon in the top right corner, and choose Share, then Save Image. Now your photograph is in your photos app and it’s ready to go up on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, G+, Ello, LinkedIn, or wherever else you want to send it. You can also share your images from within Lr Mobile with people standing next to you.

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See how great this is? I didn’t have to create new jpegs from my RAWs (or TIFFs, in the case of scanned negatives), and I don’t have to jumps through hoops loading the photographs to different apps and downloading. Lightroom keeps itself up to date across devices and let’s me share my finished images from my phone, both online and in person. Initially, I was having a hard time seeing where Lr Mobile fits in my workflow, but the more I mess around with it, the more I realize it’s the perfect tool.

Join Rob Sylvan and I for a Google+ Hangout to Dive Deep into Lr Mobile with none other than Lightroom Product Manager, Sharad Mangalik. I’m so excited to see what master techniques Sharad will share with us.