Automating import of iPhone photos to Lightroom

One of the things I’ve been exploring this week is that now that Lightroom has ProRAW support in it, how can I get images out of my iPhone and the Photos app into Lightroom for processing, in an easy (preferably turnkey and automated of course).

It turns out this is a horror show. I do not understand why this is so complicated. Well, to some degree, I do…

Here’s what seems to be the best option, assuming you’re subscribed to the Adobe subscriptions and have current software:

• Download the IOS Lightroom App

• Set up the IOS app to automatically import photos

• Connect it to Adobe Cloud, and sync your IOS lightroom collection to it

• Connect your Lightroom Classic to Adobe cloud, and sync the cloud to your local device

• Remember to open up IOS Lightroom when you want images to sync (because it won’t in the background).

I can begin my thoughts on using a workflow like this with, um, inelegant? The first issue I have with it is just how many copies of the photos end up being duplicated along the way, which is just asking for confusion and muttered manual cleanup. That one copy is on Adobe Cloud is another. I did a bit of experimenting with this, and, well, no.

But the reason it’s this way is — Adobe owns Lightroom, and really wants us using the Mobile/Cloud app. Those of us still hanging on to Classic, we can consider things like this another nudge in that direction. I won’t gripe loudly about this, I see the logic behind it — it’s just not what I want.

Enter Automator

Instead, I turned to Automator, with a goal of finding a way to export the original RAW files and import them into Lightroom. I sort of kind of almost maybe got part of the way there, in that I can script the Photos app to export things and put them in a place I can import them into Lightroom. Here’s my Automator workflow:

This isn’t exactly what I want, and it’s something I have to run manually, but I’m okay with that. What it does it look for a specific album in Photos, pull out the HEIC originals from it, and store them in a folder I have reserved in my import area for Lightroom. I can then switch to Lightroom and do the import, and once that’s done, delete the files out of Photos (or at least the folder). You could alternatively use the action “Get Selected Photo Items” instead of selecting the album, and you could click on and select a number of images and export those, but this allows me to build that collection over time and then import them all at once. I could, of course, automate deleting them after export, but I love belts and suspenders, so manually deciding to delete them is my preference.

There is not, unfortunately, a way to select, say, images newer than the last run or within the last N days that I see, but in fact, I prefer choosing which images to import because I won’t be using all of them in Lightroom. So this may actually be the most elegant way to do this. And I could, absolutely, just do this manually from the menus while using Photos — but this way, I don’t have to remember the process every time I do it.

So I’m satisfied with this solution (for now), and it reminds me that Automator can be handy to consider when trying to find a way to get something done…. And given how little useful info there is on processes like these online, I figured I’d share my solution with all of you.

Update (3/29/2021): Jan Erik Moström recommended the Mac App Photosync as an option here, also.