At last Adobe have remembered the Android users out there. After spending the better part of a year on iOS, Adobe has finally relased Lightroom for Android.
Lightroom is a well known piece of software in the photography community, offering both photo processing, as well as the ability to organise your photos into collections and sync your photos to the cloud. Lightroom for Android supports full RAW images from your DSLR, as well as photos taken from your phones photo gallery.
Lightroom mobile will sync via the cloud so that important data such as image reviews, image edits completed on your mobile device and collections are available on your mobile or pushed back (mobile photography) to your cloud account, remaining synced across devices. Where the mobile software gets impressive is the capability to create a compressed preview of the RAW image which runs at approximately 5 percent of the original image size saving you time, data and valuable money when working from a mobile device on the go.
The release of a phone version of Lightroom, while welcome, begs the question of why the larger screen format – which one would think is more suited to photo editing – is so far behind in development. Adobe has acknowledged that the larger screen optimised version is on its way though, but remained quiet on an actual time-frame for launch.
The Lightroom for Android app is considered a companion to the desktop version rather than a stand alone photo editor. To that end, a copy of Lightroom 5, as well as a compatible Adobe Creative Cloud plan are required to use the app, although Adobe is offering a free 30-day trial.
It’s also poigniant to note that this is a phone-only release (for phones running Android 4.1 Jellybean or higher), with a tablet version still a work in progress. A minimum system requirement is also in place if you’re looking to run Lightroom for Android, with Adobe advising a minimum Quad Core CPU with 1.7 GHZ, 1GB RAM and 8GB of Internal storage (no microSD cards here) are required.
Perhaps a tentative, but welcome first step into mobile photo editing on Android for Adobe, which will likely be well received by those who utilise their Lightroom software.
Is lightroom mobile something that will help your photographic adventures, or a clumsy step by Adobe not going to tablets first?
Completely useless for me. They don’t make Lightroom for Linux.
“Creative Cloud plan are required to use the app”
eg this is a waste of space unless you already have CC on a desktop, in which case, what’s the point of this phone-only app?
Silly adobe
Yeah, Adobe’s insistence that people use LR mobile solely through a CC subscription is really irritating. Especially when you consider Light Room is one of the few exceptions to this rule on non-mobile devices.