Automatically Transfer Photos from a Phone to a Computer with Lightroom

Your phone’s camera roll is likely filled with photos and videos of important memories you would like to hang onto forever. If you have an iPhone with iCloud enabled, your photos are likely in Apple’s iCloud. With iCloud syncing, the Photos app on a computer provides you can access images from the iPhone. However, the Photos app doesn’t provide a convenient or automatic way to download everything at once to your computer. Adobe’s Lightroom system does. If you have a Creative Cloud subscription, you already pay for this service, so why not take advantage of it? Plus, let’s face it, Apple is making lots of money selling iCloud storage to millions of users around the world. There is no incentive for Apple to provide an easy way to move iPhone photos to a computer. Using Lightroom instead of iCloud may save you money. Follow this guide to transfer phone images easily and automatically from a phone to a computer with Lightroom.

Start with Lightroom on the Phone

Use Lightroom on your phone to upload photos and videos to the Lightroom cloud. After successfully uploading to Lightroom’s cloud, it is safe to delete them from the device camera roll. This will clear up space in iCloud or on your device and possibly saving you money.

Lightroom mobile phone setup

If needed, install the Lightroom app on the phone. Lightroom is available for free from your device’s app store. Launch Lightroom on the phone and sign in with your Adobe ID. A Creative Cloud All Apps Plan or a Photography Plan unlocks Premium Lightroom mobile, providing access to Lightroom’s cloud ecosystem. Choose whether to auto add photos from the phone. I recommend deselecting this option (Figure 1).

Tip: The phone should be connected to Wi-Fi to enable a seamless upload process. To add photos, tap the picture icon found at the bottom right. (Figure 2) Then tap From Camera Roll to see the images in your device’s camera roll. Tap an image to select it, or swipe to select multiple images. Try selecting just a few images to start. More can be added after confirming the upload process is working. Tap the blue Add button in the lower right corner. The photos are added to Lightroom and begin uploading to the Lightroom cloud. Tap the Recently Added collection to see the newly added photos. If you don’t see Recently Added in the Library View, tap on the disclosure triangle on the right side of All Photos. (Figure 3) Tap on one of the recently added images to select it, and then tap on the cloud icon in the upper right. When the upload process is complete, it says Original under Cloud Backup in the upper right corner. The cloud icon will also display a green checkmark. (Figure 4) Continue adding photos from the camera roll until every desired photo and video has been added. You may not want to transfer everything. Add only the images that are worthy of archiving. For example, you may not want to keep photos of meals you ate or where you parked your car. Leave the Lightroom app open on the phone for the uploading process. Closing the app or turning off Wi-Fi will pause the upload.

Lightroom on the web

Confirm that all photos have successfully uploaded to the cloud at lightroom.adobe.com. Sign in with your Adobe ID. The Lightroom website shows the contents of your Lightroom cloud. Every photo and video shown here is safely in the cloud.

Finish with Lightroom Classic on a Computer

Lightroom Classic is a catalog database system for computers. Lightroom Classic manages photos and videos that live on local hard drives. Classic requires everything in the catalog to be on a hard drive. When a Classic catalog is connected to the Lightroom cloud system by turning on the sync function, Classic acts like a vacuum to pull down what it finds in the cloud. Classic will continue automatically downloading images as it finds new ones.

How it Works

Lightroom on the phone uploads images to the Lightroom cloud. Lightroom Classic on a computer downloads images to a hard drive. This transfer happens automatically when the apps are open and connected to Wi-Fi.

Lightroom Classic Setup

Your phone photos and videos are now in Lightroom’s cloud and ready for download to a computer. Decide where the photos should live before you start downloading them. By default, Lightroom will download photos to the user/Pictures folder. This is not ideal. I recommend storing photos on an external hard drive to avoid filling up the computer’s startup drive. Create a new folder on an external hard drive and name it something appropriate, like My Phone Photos. If needed, install Lightroom Classic on the computer using the Creative Cloud application. Make sure to choose the correct Lightroom application. The Lightroom Classic app icon says LrC. Don’t install Lightroom (Lr). (Figure 5)

Open Lightroom Classic. The first time Lightroom Classic is launched, a new catalog is automatically created. You can use an existing catalog if you have one. There is no need to create a new catalog for this process. Open the Lightroom Classic preferences, Lightroom Classic > Preferences (MacOS), or Edit > Preferences (Windows). Click the Lightroom Sync tab at the top of the preferences panel. (Figure 6a) Under Location, enable the option Specify Location For Lightroom’s Synced Images (Figure 6b). Also enable the option Use Subfolders Formatted By Capture Date. Choose a date format from the menu on the right side (Figure 6c). Click Choose and navigate to find the folder created for the phone photos. Select the folder and click Choose again. You may be warned about moving the location of synced images. If so, click Move. If the catalog was previously synced to Lightroom, any downloaded photos will move to the new folder location. This is a good thing. If the catalog is brand new, nothing will happen. This is fine, too. Close the Preferences dialog box and click the cloud icon in the upper right corner of Lightroom Classic. (Figure 7) If you don’t see the cloud icon, click the disclosure triangle along the top center edge to reveal the top panel group. Click the start syncing button. This starts the process of downloading photos from the cloud. Leave Lightroom Classic open until the download process completes. Keep track of the sync progress by viewing the Activity status bar in the upper left corner or viewing the cloud icon panel (Figure 8)

Do a Happy Dance

Confirm the transfer has completed by checking your hard drive. You should see dated folders filled with the phone images inside of the folder you created for downloaded. The phone photos and videos are now copied and organized by date on the computer or external drive. They are also imported into the Lightroom Classic catalog. You can edit and further organize the photos with Lightroom Classic or simply be happy knowing they safely transferred to the computer. Every time you open Lightroom Classic it will query the Lightroom cloud for new content and begin downloading anything it finds. This article is for members only. To continue reading, please log in above, or sign up for a membership today! Thanks for supporting CreativePro!