Photosmith 2.0 Is The Closest Thing To Having Lightroom On Your iPad

I hear people asking for ways to integrate their iPad into their photography workflow. Things light tethering, image review, portfolio, tagging, etc. come up quite a bit. Lightroom for iPad sounds like a natural, but today it doesn’t exist. What does exist is the next best thing and that is Photosmith 2. Now before we get too far ahead of ourselves, there are several technical limitations preventing developers (like Adobe) from bringing full on tethering and Camera RAW support to the iPad. If you think about it for a minute, there would be a dozen or more tethering Apps out already if it were doable. Therefore Photosmith 2 will NOT allow you to connect your camera directly to your iPad and shoot tethered. With that out of the way, let’s see what Photosmith 2 IS…

Think of Photosmith 2 as the Lightroom Library Module on your iPad

Photosmith 1 allowed you to bring your images in via the Apple Camera Connection Kit or the cool M.I.C. All-In-One SD/Compact Flash Adapter. This means that you could bring in your RAW or JPG files directly from your camera/memory card right into the App and begin the process of tagging, rating and organizing your shots into Collections. Photosmith 2 brings native Eye-Fi card support to the table! This means that you can shoot WIRELESSLY directly to your iPad and even better directly into Photosmith 2. After you’re done tagging, rating and organizing you can sync what you’ve done to Lightroom on the desktop. This truly means that you have an iPad to Lightroom workflow for working in the field and then getting that work to your desktop with that tap of a sync button. Photosmith 2 also adds 2-Way Sync support via a Lightroom Publish Collection. Yep, you can drag images into the Collections on your iPad and sync images right back to the iPad. This is great for getting those images that you’ve adjusted in the Develop module on the desktop version of Lightroom or edited in Photoshop back to your iPad.

Photosmith 2 looks GORGEOUS! They really spent some time in this release making the interface LOOK BETTER! Not to mention making the app faster and manage RAM better. You can batch tag as well as use your existing iPad Albums as a source for importing. Great loupe and full screen support makes this a natural for showing off your images too. It just may become a candidate for my iPad Portfolio App of choice!

Wirelessly sync your unsorted backlog from Lightroom with our free plugin
Sort and filter your photos
Organize them into collections
Apply star ratings and color labels
Apply keywords and IPTC metadata individually, in groups, or with presets
Share highlights and rough selections to Facebook, Flickr or by e-mail
Support for RAW, JPG, or RAW+JPG
Support for 100% zoom for many cameras
Native support for Export and Publish Services in Adobe Lightroom
Directly receive from Eye-Fi cards
Very powerful sync options, allowing workflow customization

If you’re a Lightroom user and have an iPad, you want this app!

http://www.seanmolin.com Sean Molin

Too bad my D800 RAW files would fill a 64GB iPad in 1500 shots… and that’s if there’s *nothing* else on it.

Is there a practical external storage solution for the iPad that would work with this setup?
- Nico
  
  Hi Sean,
  
  2.0 was going to launch with support for Seagate’s GoFlex wi-fi drive, which would serve exactly that need. Shortly before launch, though, inadequacies in the GoFlex API were discovered which could lead to data loss. The developers are actively working with Seagate on a solution, but in the meantime, the feature is being withheld so that Photosmith under no circumstances ever collaborates in the loss of a user’s photo. Stay tuned!
Zac Grimaldo

Could this app tie in some way with the new G Tech G Connect wireless drive? A 500GB wi-fi drive?
http://bbalfour.com/ Brad Balfour

Terry: Did they finally solve the issue of deleting photos from the ipad that have been imported via the connection kit and then flagged as rejects in photosmith? On a 2 week vacation w/ just my iPad and my camera, I have enough storage for the raw files on my SD cards, but the 64 GB iPad can’t hold enough if I don’t delete the rejects. And marking them in photosmith but then finding the same shots in the iPad photo app and deleting them manually is too error prone. Especially with shots that are similar.
- http://www.grahamrose.ca Graham R
  
  Brad,
  
  There is a limitation in the IOS api’s that prevent developers from deleting photos from the photo application. This hits any apps that will end up in the app store. Unfortunately apple also restricts access to the USB port, so there is no way to import from the camera kit i can find and bypass the photo’s app, and therefor remove that limitation.
  
  one of the developers will likely chime in with some other potential workarounds, i saw mention of using an eye-fi card directly, but until apple laxes up this is something that impacts all apps on the ipad (and will make ingestion/sorting while travelling light a much harder workflow without a laptop to offload to in the evening)
  
  One of my fav new apps pulls in all the screen shots you have taken to its own gallery, but because of this limit it can’t delete or move them to a folder after you are done. Frustrating on Apple’s end.. Frustrating…
http://www.CarlLicari.com Carl Licari

I bought this app when it first came out and have the updates. Although buggy at first, they have refined it to a usable tool. My problem, and maybe it’s been fixed, is the iPad “Photos”, where all files are imported to, is unable to delete more than ONE FILE at a time. After I upload my shoot to Lightroom I’m stuck with the entire raw shoot to delete one at a time. Why has this not been addressed by Apple or Photosmith???
- Mark
  
  Carl said “After I upload my shoot to Lightroom I’m stuck with the entire raw shoot to delete one at a time.”
  
  While this isn’t a perfect answer, it at least helps…
  
  If you two-finger-tap to select photos, you can drag (two-finger-drag) across multiple photos and select the all. Only helps if the photos you want to select are next to each other, but better than having to tap each one.
http://Andrew.knots.net Andrew Macpherson

Thanks for the recommendation, I wonder if you could share your experience a little more please?

The key wording looks like a good match for he way Lightroom seems to expect people to use it, including that absolutely infuriating delete unused keywords mis-feature. I’m a great believer in the use of structured keywords, and have my own structure and the commercial “Controlled Vocabulary” hierarchies loaded into Lightroom, and always save keywords as Lightroom structured keywords untill final publication. Am I able to do import of a keyword library here too? For me that’s the deal maker

Thanks (would have asked on the App site but didn’t spot were one could)
- http://photosmithapp.com Chris Horne
  
  Andrew-
  
  This is Chris, one of the co-developers of Photosmith here.
  
  Yes, we spent a great deal of time making sure we support a complex keyword hierarchy, including using the 12,000 keyword Controlled Vocabulary in our tests. There was an initial bug that has been fixed (waiting for approval by Apple now as 2.0.1 update) where duplicate keywords would be created during sync in some instances, but has been addressed.
  
  We’ve disabled the comments on our own blog for the time being, due to the load over the past week, but please feel free to send an email to support@photosmithapp.com with any questions.
  - http://Andrew.knots.net Andrew Macpherson
    
    Thank you Chris, that’s a buy decision now
Steve Zaiontz

I am still looking for an APP to use to rename a file when I bring it into my iPad? I still have to go through that process when I import into LR. So my iPad is a backup storage device and viewing device. I am so busy when on vacation or relaxing, I have little time to stylize my pictures.
http://www.morganmoller.com Morgan Moller (@morganmoller)

I love the idea behind the app but have some questions :
Say I’m out shooting on location, and import those photos on my field laptop running Lightroom. I then sync my laptop photos to my ipad, and review, flag, rate & tag them on the plane back. Once home I can sync that metadata back to LR? It will interpret those changes as .xmp files then?

How much room does it take on the ipad if I shoot RAW? Does it purge ipad cache after resync’ing it to your laptop (after you’ve rated, tagged etc on the plane)?

Cheers!
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Photosmith 2.0 Is The Closest Thing To Having Lightroom On Your iPad

Think of Photosmith 2 as the Lightroom Library Module on your iPad

Photosmith

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