Adobe has announced that its Lightroom 5 companion app, Lightroom Mobile, has finally arrived on Android. Previously the app was only available on iOS, but now Android owners can download the app for free from the Google Play Store as long as they have Lightroom 5.4 or above, which is available as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud service and Creative Cloud Photography Plan.
You'll also need an Android phone with a quad-core 1.7GHz processor with ARMv7 architecture (which includes almost all current Qualcomm Snapdragon processors), 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage and either Android Jellybean, 4.4 KitKat or 5.0 Lollipop.
Using Adobe's cloud environment, Lightroom Mobile lets you edit, organise and share your images on the move, letting you manage your desktop from afar. You can also automatically import any images from your smartphone gallery and sync them back to your Lightroom catalogue on your desktop and vice-versa, pulling images from your desktop down to work on your smartphone.
Any changes you make in Lightroom Mobile will then be automatically synced and updated on your desktop version of Lightroom so you can carry on where you left off.
For raw editing on the go, Lightroom Mobile uses Smart Previews, which are based on the DNG file format and are limited to 2,560 pixels on the long edge. In other words, it's simply a smaller version of the original raw file, but you can still use them to make adjustments when the original files aren't available locally. Adjustments you make will then be applied to the original file once they're available again.
The Creative Cloud Photography plan costs £8.57 per month and gives you access to Lightroom 5, Photoshop CC and Lightroom mobile, as well as prompt updates as soon as they're released. If you want to give Lightroom Mobile a try, you can download a free 30-day trial instead. However, anyone who wants continued access to the service must sign up for a Creative Cloud subscription.
