lovelifey: [Photography] How to Sync Your Develop Presets to Lightroom Mobile

Oct 9, 2018

[Photography] How to Sync Your Develop Presets to Lightroom Mobile

Better. Faster. More efficient.

That’s what we photographers demand from our gear as we keep pushing them to perform at levels that were unheard of a few years ago. Even the means to post-process our digital images has been ramped up to the point where we can do it on our mobile device within minutes (if not seconds) of making the exposure.

For the past couple of years Adobe has done its best to keep pace with the need for mobile-friendly editing with Lightroom Mobile – the mobile device counterpart of the Lightroom CC flavor of our beloved Lightroom Classic. But in June 2018 Adobe upped the ante by fully integrating develop presets into the Lightroom Mobile application. This means we can take ALL of our develop presets (purchased and self-made) with us on our mobile devices, which is a huge deal for those of us who use presets for the bulk of our photo editing.

So how do we get the presets from our computers to our Lightroom Mobile app? Until recently we could do it only by using some unofficial workarounds. But with Adobe’s newly minted cross-platform support for develop presets, you can carry your presets with you wherever you go simply by clicking a button.

Let me show you how to sync your beloved develop presets from Lightroom Classic to your Lightroom Mobile app.

What You’ll Need

To sync your develop presets from your computer-based Lightroom Classic you currently need to be a member of the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan. If you have a standalone (non-cloud) version of Lightroom you won’t be able to sync your presets with your mobile device.

Every Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan includes both Lightroom Classic CC and Lightroom CC. I realise these names can get a little muddled up, but bear with me.

Lightroom Classic CC is the tried and true version of Lightroom most of us remember. Adobe calls it the “desktop-focused” version of Lightroom, and what many of us moved from when we switched to the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan.

Lightroom CC is the new cloud-based version of the Lightroom we knew previously. While it’s a boiled down, more streamlined incarnation of the classic Lightroom, it still has all the tools we know and love. And it’s the software we’ll use to sync with our Lightroom Mobile app.

So you need to have Lightroom CC installed on your computer to sync your develop presets with your mobile version of Lightroom. You also need to have the Lightroom Mobile (Lightroom CC) app installed on your mobile device.

How to Sync

Getting your develop presets from Lightroom Classic CC to Lightroom Mobile is incredibly easy once you understand a few simple steps. In fact, the process is almost automatic once your install Lightroom CC alongside Lightroom Classic CC.

Once you installed and open Lightroom CC, your develop presets and profiles will sync automatically through your Adobe Cloud account. Keep in mind that while you can sync catalogs from your Lightroom Classic CC software, your develop presets won’t sync to Lightroom Mobile until they’re synced to your Lightroom CC software.

Once you have your presets in Lightroom CC, sync your devices by clicking the cloud icon at the top right.

When your develop presets appear in Lightroom CC, it’s time to open your Lightroom Mobile app.

Open an image, and scroll to the develop presets icon.

You should now see your newly synced develop presets from Lightroom CC (and thus Classic CC) available for use on your Lightroom Mobile app.

Final Thoughts on Syncing Develop Presets to Lightroom Mobile

Whether you love it, hate it, or just want to get on with your processing, the fact we photographers can now work more readily on the go can’t be ignored. We no longer need to get back home, or even back to a waiting laptop, to begin processing our images. Whether or not it’s a good thing is entirely up to you.

Being able to use our develop presets across all of the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan platforms will make our photographic lives even easier. If you use Lightroom Mobile regularly, be sure to share your thoughts about this newfound mobility in the comments below.

The post How to Sync Your Develop Presets to Lightroom Mobile appeared first on Digital Photography School.