LRPad

Control Lightroom with an iPad

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LRPad was introduced recently and allows control of Lightroom via an iPad. There's 2 parts to the program. First there's the iPad app itself, available from the iTunes App Store and then there's a plugin for Lightroom downloadable from http://www.lrpad.com

When you start LRPad, the first thing  you need to do is set the computer's IP address. The instructions are there in the Quickstart Guide, but here they are for ease of finding: 

On Mac OS X, start “Network Utility” (Applications/Utilities) and select “AirPort (en1)” interface. IP address is shown in interface information sections.

On Windows, start cmd (from Start/Run menu). Then type “ipconfig”, which will list all your active network interfaces, take a note of your wireless interfaces IP address.

In my case my Airport was actually (en2). I entered the IP address and LRPad started immediately. Once in you have a number of screens that control various options.

Basic lets you control the Basic Panel and the Tone Curve parametic points, along with Post Crop Vignette. Details covers the Detail Panel. Colour gives you the equivalent of the HSL 'All' View. Camera deals with Manual Lens Profiles and Camera Calibration. The final tab is Metadata, where you see the image metadata and can apply a Label. You can't edit the other metadata, unless I'm missing something.

With the features that are there, it's a quick way to edit with external hardware. That said there's a few little issues. Response time isn't immediate, but it's acceptable. Split Toning goes from -100 to 100 in the Saturation sliders for some unknown reason. None of the Tool Strip items are available, and Flags and Ratings are curiously absent.  

It's only just been released, so a lot of this is to be expected for a new product. What it does, it does really well. Hopefully in the future we'll get even more stuff, but despite the current limitations, I've no hesitation at recommending it, especially at the price. Other hardware solutions offer more, but at a much higher price. 

 

 

Comments

Under windows, Also try Paddy for Lighttroom (www.paddy-for-lightroom.com). Free Plugin for Key mapping, but if you spend some money on an external keyboard (any) or a Midi controller, you can use physical sliders to move the LR sliders. Some folks are using an IPAD Midi controller to then run LR. The software is free, any external keyboard or Midi controller obviously not.

Sean McCormack (Lightroom Blog)
Pixiq Expert

I wonder if people read my posts at all ;)

I've covered both Paddy and Knobroom before. As you say you need to have the hardware... but that's true for LR Pad too!

cooooooool
now all i need is an i pad

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