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Adobe releases Lightroom mobile for Android

Adobe releases Lightroom mobile for Android

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Adobe is releasing Lightroom mobile for Android today, bringing its powerful photo editor to another major mobile platform. Lightroom for Android is just shy of identical to Lightroom for the iPhone and iPad — all of which are streamlined versions of the desktop app meant to let photographers take their photos on the go, make basic changes, and easily sync all of that back and forth with their other devices.

Lightroom mobile is identical across iOS and Android

Like on the iPhone, all of Lightroom's basic editing tools are here, so you can work with exposure, highlights, shadows, composure, and so on, but you can't dive into anything so complicated as tone curves. Some basic presets are included, too, though you still can't sync in your beloved VSCO filters. Nonetheless, it's a really impressive app that lets you do a lot of work on high-res photos — you can even sync nondestructive changes back to a RAW file. You may still need to use the desktop app to finish up, but there's enough in Lightroom mobile to lock in the basics of an edit or make some quick changes.

Lightroom mobile will work on Android phones running Jelly Bean, KitKat, or Lollipop. It isn't optimized for tablets yet, but Adobe says that's on the roadmap. During a brief test on a Galaxy Note 3 running Jelly Bean, the app performed fairly well, though it did have a slight stutter that isn't present in Lightroom on the iPhone 5S. Unfortunately, you will need to be a Creative Cloud subscriber in order to use Lightroom mobile — though it's included in the $9.99 per month Photoshop and Lightroom package.