How to Use Lightroom on iPad

What is Lightroom?

Lightroom is the professional Adobe app for anyone who wants to edit their photos on the iPhone or iPad. In this post I’m going to tell you about the advantages of this app on the iPad, but of course, these benefits and functions are exactly the same in the iPhone app.

As I was saying, Adobe Lightroom is a photo editing application that can be used by both beginners and professionals, as it has a really simple interface, very powerful and varied tools, and a very nice appearance. In addition, within the application itself you can find inspiration to edit your own photographs and even training to gradually learn how to take your images to another level.

Without a doubt, now that the social network Instagram has gained so much importance in the world of photography, this application seems ideal to me to, little by little, professionalize and raise the level of your profile thanks to all the possibilities that Adobe Lightroom offers you.

Basic functions to get started

First of all, I’m going to give you a rundown of the basic functions of this application, so that all of you who are just starting out in this world know where to start when editing your first photo in Lightroom.

Edit – The first thing you need to control

In this first section you have the most basic aspects when it comes to starting to edit photographs. Firstly, you can modify all the parameters related to light, which are:

• Exposure.
• Contrast.
• Illuminations.
• Shades.
• Whites.
• Blacks.

Once you have modified the light sections of your photograph, you have to continue with the editing of the colors, where, again, you have different settings available that you can modify as you wish:

• Temperature.
• Hue.
• Intensity.
• Saturation.

In addition, in this section you also have available the option of Color Mixing and Color Gradients, perhaps two functions for a more advanced user in photo editing.

We now move on to the available effects, parameters that can also provide that distinctive and professional touch to your photographs. In this section you have the following parameters to modify:

• Texture.
• Clarity.
• Clear fog.
• Vignette.
• Midpoint.
• Roundness.
• Dispel.
• Illuminations.

Time to touch on the details, parameters that will give a special touch to each photograph you want to edit. In this case you have the following parameters available:

• Approach.
• Noise reduction.
• Color noise reduction.

In the optics section you can modify the following parameters.

• Maybe AC.
• Lens corrections.

Finally, we come to the Geometry section, where you can modify the geometry of the photograph, if you will excuse the redundancy, by editing the following parameters:

• Restrict cut.
• Distortion.
• Vertical.
• Horizontal.
• Rotate.
• Aspect.
• Scale.
• X-shift.
• Y-shift.

Presets

On many occasions you don’t want to make your life too complicated and you’ll opt for trying a quick photo edit, in that case you have to pay special attention to the Presets section, where you’ll find different preset edits, which we could classify as filters that you can apply to your photo depending on the type of editing you want at that moment. One of the most outstanding points, from my point of view, of this application, and more specifically of this Presets section, are the User Presets, where you can customize and create adjustments to your liking, but I’ll talk about that later.

Trim

A basic aspect when editing a photograph is the cropping power we have over it, since, depending on where we want to show it or what we want to convey with it, the format or appearance of it will be different. For example, the ideal format for Instagram is 4×5 and with Lightroom you can adapt all your photographs to this format to capture people’s attention when they are scrolling through their feed and find your photograph.

Advanced Features

It’s time to talk about functions that are perhaps more focused on a professional audience, but that have tremendous potential and, above all, can be very useful at many times.

Concealer Brush

An application of the Adobe Lightroom category has to have a tool like this, a Healing Brush with which you can subtly eliminate those defects that you find within your photograph, whether it is a pimple on the face that no one has invited or a stain on the floor that draws too much attention and diverts your audience to a side of the photograph that does not contribute anything, well, you can eliminate all of that with this Healing Brush.

Selective Edition

Another essential feature in a professional photo editor is selective editing. The ability to edit the parameters we want, but only in part of the photo, gives the user tremendous potential to develop their creativity and create true works of art.

Go back whenever you want

There may come a time when you have been editing a photo for a while and you realize that the tones or the feeling it conveys are not exactly what you were looking for for this photo. Well, don’t worry, Adobe Lightroom also has a function that will allow you to go back, whether you want to return to the original photo or if you want to go back to some of the previous edits you have made until you reached the point you are at that moment.

Own or external presets

One of the things I like most about this app, as I mentioned before, is the ability to create and adopt presets, those that are already available in the app itself, which is no different from other apps, but also those that, first, you can create in a completely personalized way, and second, those settings that you can download or adopt from other creators who make them available to the public. This way you can make a series of photos have the same editing and therefore, adopt a regular batch editing line, something very interesting to, in my case, give a more professional touch to my Instagram feed.

Adobe Lightroom Pro version

Initially, the Adobe Lightroom app is free to download from the App Store, however, there are some features that are only available in the Pro version of the app, which you will have to pay a subscription to use. In my opinion, one of the most notable things that this subscription offers you is the fact that your photos will be synced across the iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps, making it easy to start an edit on the iPad and continue it on the iPhone or Mac without any problems.

Also, it is vitally important to mention that the Adobe Lightroom subscription for iPad also works for iPhone, however, if you want to enjoy the Pro benefits on the Mac, you will have to pay extra for it.