While flying to Colorado for a little vacation, I watched Adobe Premiere Rush First Look and decided I’d give it a shot with whatever I captured. I went in with the mindset of capturing video, but sadly only captured a whopping two clips. Not exactly what I’d call a solid foundation for learning an app. That being said, I did put something together, and I’m ok with it. Editing on an iPhone wasn’t the hard part, it was the magnetic timeline Rush uses. I’d been wanting to play around with something the uses a magnetic timeline, and while it was fun to kick the tires on it for a bit, I can’t see myself using it for professional work, but it does indeed make me want to take a look at LumaFusion, to really push what’s capable with touch. The project bellow was edited for Instagram, please take a gander and let me know what you think.
A RAW Vacation
When Lightroom CC (LR CC) was released for iOS it had my curiosity, when I found out it could capture and edit RAW photos, it had my attention. The app then proceeded to sit on my home screen, for months, waiting for me to capture something worthy of editing, something more than an Instagram post. In December I found out I’d only have to wait a couple of months, we booked a 5-day stay in the Dominican Republic!
It’s hard to decide what to take a photo of when everything is idyllic. The most excellent part about staying somewhere 5 days, you don’t have to rush yourself. One day after breakfast, I walked around with Lightroom CC finally open on my iPhone Xs Max, taking some RAW photos. Once I had about 60, we went back to the hotel room and locked my iPhone up in the safe. It was a conscious decision to not have my iPhone or Apple Watch accessible on vacation, it’s the best decision I could’ve made!
After a few days of decompression, and coming to terms with vacation being over I started to edit my photos. A couple of decades in a desktop environment lead me to believe that was the proper procedure. Oddly enough, it took me having a couple of fits of throwing in the towel and right-clicking to edit in Photoshop, to step back and reevaluate my approach. I went back to Lightroom CC on iOS, and it was intuitive, and fun. Stepping back, getting a better understanding of the mobile version of Lightroom CC, helped me understand the layout of the desktop version. This was entirely new for me, and given the Marzipan applications in the future, this will be a go-to method to forgo headaches and fits.
I was comfortable enough with the desktop Lightroom CC, but I completed the photos on iOS devices. Pulling back shadows to reveal details, reducing highlights without damaging exposure and setting the white balance, all non-destructive edits made on an iPad. As advanced as the hardware and software get, I’ll probably always be the guy dumbfoundedly saying “I can do this with a phone!”
I decided to share the photos via iCloud, which meant exporting them from Lightroom CC to the Photos app, which was super simple, and with an iPad Pro, pretty quick. Having them in my photos app also let me gather them into an album which I could set as a screensaver for my Apple TV. Seeing these photos every day, on a screen this size, is possibly the most rewarding aspect of the entire project!
Editing 60’ish RAW photos with an unfamiliar program, on multiple size screens was an excellent exercise in being out of your comfort zone. I had to remind myself to chill, and there was no deadline. I’m so thankful that I did because I’m thrilled with the results! I’m confident that I wouldn’t have been able to get photos like these with default camera and editing options. That being said, the default camera will also remain my default camera. I’m keenly aware that not every photo needs to be captured in uncompressed RAW, or at least not all of mine. However, when something stunning pops up, Lightroom CC will be my go-to app.