Lessons
Lesson Info
Capture and Import
So let's get right into it and let's talk about it. But before we start editing photos, we have to actually take them, and get them into the system, right? Okay, so, hence I brought a camera with me. And so this camera has a card, actually two cards in it, so I'm gonna show the camera here. We got two cards right here. There's a CF and an SD card. And most professional bodies nowadays will have two cards in them. If you only have one card, you're shooting all your eggs into one basket. And, boy, I'll tell you what, if something happens to that card, you're gonna hate yourself for it. So be very careful with those kinds of cameras. Not saying, that if you're not professional, and you're just shooting and having fun and whatever, and you lose those, it's not like you're gonna sue yourself. You're gonna be upset with yourself, but you're not gonna sue yourself. I am a professional, and I have to have a backup of everything, and so I have an instant backup. So I don't use this. I don't sho...
ot to this card, then shoot to this card, and use it as extra space. I shoot a full raw image to this card, and a full raw image to that card, so that I have two copies of every shot that I take. Then I simply can either take this card out, so I can pull this card out, and I can put it in a card reader, either on my laptop, or, if I'm traveling, I can put it in a card reader that's built specifically for my iPad, or my iPhone. And it's just literally a card reader that has a little dongle on it, stick it in. But I'm gonna warn you against that, because at least the Apple card reader that they make, is really slow, like horribly, horribly slow. And so, I'm gonna show you a different way, because it takes, if I were to put this card into the Apple card reader, we would waste 15 minutes waiting for the card, the images to show up, so that I could then choose the ones I wanna import. So we don't wanna do that. So instead, we're gonna actually use my camera as the card reader. Plus that means I don't have to have as many things with me. I just need a cord. That's all I need. So if I have my cards in my camera, I'm going to grab two things. And by the way, all of this can fit in this handy little Think Tank bag, just right here, see. So I can put my iPad in there. I put all my cords and dongles and stuff in there, and then this can sit with me on the plane while my bag's underneath the chair, and I can work on photos the whole way home, or the whole way back. Plus, if I have some kind of power pack with me, I can just run the whole way. Or if I'm on a modern plane, usually they have a charging port or whatever, so I can just keep going. And by the way, this little unit right here actually has a USB 3. This is the, the power of this unit right here, it's a dongle, it's lightning on this end, and it's USB 3, which is why it's faster. And this camera is USB 3, it's a 5D Mark IV from Canon, and so I'm connecting with USB 3, but also, it has a power port. So if I'm gonna be working for a while, I can charge this thing while I'm importing things, so that I don't lose power. So this is a really great unit, doesn't cost very much, and that's what we're gonna use to import our stuff into our computer. So I take a USB 3 cable, and I plug it in, and then I'm gonna plug it into my camera. So we're just gonna plug it into here, like that. Make sure the camera is on. And then it's a matter of plugging it in here. But I'm gonna show you, we're gonna have an error here. We're gonna have a problem, and I'm gonna show it to you because I think everybody needs to know about this error, which is a weird one, but it's, nonetheless it is. So if I'm just looking at my iPad, and I plug in a camera that's on, and I plug it in with this dongle, the resident software that looks at photos is going to pull up. And it's gonna show you a bunch of squares, but it's not gonna show you any images. And you'll think something's wrong. But what's wrong is that you have two cards in your camera. And apparently, and I can't tell where the culprit is, but I think that it's just that this can't power two cards at the same time maybe? I don't know. So, try again. What I do is I pull out one of the cards. So I'm just gonna pull out the CF card and leave it to the side. Now that there's only one card in the camera, and it doesn't matter which one you pull out, but now I'm gonna plug it back in, same thing's gonna occur, but now you're gonna start to see images come in instead. See those images are coming in. And you see how fast they come in. Now, I want you to notice that there are green checkboxes, and those of you who are on an Android device will have a different experience. Your Android importing photo process will take over. But in our case, we're on a Mac product, and so the Mac takes over. But notice that there are some that are green, and some that have no checkboxes. The reason for that is that I was shooting, and we're just all pretending here, right? So this is in a place called San Marino, which is a little micro-state inside of Italy. So if I'm shooting, and I get to lunch, and I want to import the images that I've been shooting, and I shot up to this point, and I imported 'em all, but I leave them on the card, and I stick the card back in, and I keep shooting the rest of the day, when I come back at night and I'm at dinner, I'm gonna plug it in and I'm gonna see this. Those are the ones that are already in the system, and these are the ones that I haven't imported yet. So it still remembers, you already imported these, these you didn't. So that's really useful. So now what I can do is go through, and I could either say, import all, or I can pick and choose, and say, well, I wanna import this one, and I wanna import that one, and I wanna import this one, and I wanna import that one, and that one. That's it. That's all I wanna import. So I'm just trying to find the ones that I'm interested in. The rest I can import later, or maybe not at all, I just take 'em home, but really the ones that I think are most important. And if there was a photo shoot, and there were 30 images of a model that I was photographing, I would get all 30 so I could pick 'em. But in this case, I kinda know what I'm looking for. So, now I'm gonna hit the import button, and I can either import all or the selected. I'm just gonna import the selected. And notice that the blue turns to green checkboxes, or checkmarks. So as soon as it's done, it sends this. Do you want me to just delete the images that I had, or keep them? The answer is keep them. So I'm gonna keep those, which means now I have two copies, one on this card, one in the camera itself, one on here, because it imported the full raw photo. So if you're on a modern IOS device, and you have the software up to date, it functions with raw imagery. So it will import your raw imagery. It's not a JPEG. Now, some of you might be thinking, well, but that Mark IV camera has Wi-Fi built into it. So I could just turn on the Wi-Fi here, turn on the Wi-Fi here, use the Canon importing software, and import the photos from here to here. And it's actually quite a nice little experience to do that, but I can't possibly fathom the reason for this, but Canon has seen fit only to import a JPEG version of that raw image. So the camera literally is crunching a JPEG for me of, the JPEG doesn't exist, but it's making a JPEG inside the camera, and then sending it over and giving me the JPEG of a raw image that they could've just transferred. I can't figure it out. It's lunacy. But that's the way that software works. So you'll have to look at your camera and decide. 'cause your camera might actually have a Wi-Fi-enabled camera that actually has a software that will bring over the raw, then go for it. But otherwise, this is the quickest way to get your raw images from your camera to your iPad or to your iPhone. And it'll work on your iPhone just the same way.
Ratings and Reviews
Steve61861
Jared is my favorite instructor on Creative Live. He is a great instructor, super knowledgeable, and fun to to watch. I ALWAYS learn a lot from his classes. Highly recommended!
user-ca78ef
Glad to see a Mobile LR class now based on the updates. Great job Jared!
Esther Beaton
Just brilliant. I was worried that it wouldn't be relevant to today, April 2020, but it is. It's still valid for use with Lightroom 2020 (for mobile) and for the latest iPad Pro (2020). There is much much more to using both of these tools, but Jared covered the most relevant bits, those most suited to professional travelling photographers. I particularly enjoyed his demonstrations with Adobe Mix and Fix and Spark, tools which I have been under-utlizing.