This morning Adobe announced its December updates, complete with the heavily anticipated Direct Import feature for iOS and iPadOS. This lets photographers import their photos directly into their Lightroom library without relying on a laptop or desktop, creating a truly mobile solution.
By connecting a Lightning to SD or Lighting to USB 3.0 adapter on iPhone, or a USB C card reader on iPad, you can import photos without having to create an extra copy in your device’s camera roll. Imports are faster because of this, and don’t require the extra space taken up previously with the camera roll copy.
All photos and edits are automatically synced to the all other versions via Creative Cloud, to other devices that are connected on the same account. This includes desktop versions of Lightroom and Lightroom Classic. Here’s a video of how it works:
Other updates for Lightroom
Advanced Export
Adobe also announced its Advanced Export tools coming to Lightroom for iOS and iPadOS, which was previously released for other devices in November at Adobe MAX. This lets you have complete control over export properties, including the ability to export as original, DNG, JPEG and TIFF files, as well as control over metadata, watermarking, file naming, output sharpening and color space.
Improved Shared Albums
All versions of Lightroom see improvements to the Shared Albums function. In August, the company added the ability to share and invite others to contribute their own photos via Lightroom on the web. Now this function comes to all Lightroom applications on desktop, tablets and phones — including the free version.
New camera support
Both Lightroom, Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw added support for the following new cameras:
- Canon EOS M200
- Canon EOS Ra
- Google Pixel 4 and 4 XL
- Leica SL2
- Nikon Z 50
- Sigma fp
- Sony a9 II
- Zeiss ZX1