Excerpted and Summarized from Advanced Portrait Editing: Lightroom Mobile & iOS Apps with Lisa Carney (iPhone Photography Conference 2024). To watch the whole clip, check out the video below!
Join Lisa and 13 other industry experts for this year’s iPhone Photography Conference. Plan your conference schedule and secure your spot today to save $150.*
Professional entertainment and advertising retoucher Lisa Carney demonstrates a game-changing tip for photographers on the go: adding logos and textures directly from your phone using Lightroom Mobile!
The Power of Cross-Platform Editing
“The power of Lightroom mobile is pretty spectacular,” Lisa exclaimed. “You can do cross-platform editing, meaning you can edit on your mobile device, on your phone, or your iPad, and then go back to the studio and work on your desktop. You’ve got really sophisticated editing tools in your hand.”
Just one of the useful things you can do directly in Lightroom Mobile is add logos or other graphics to your images while you’re on location. This is a really handy thing to do because you can deliver social content, client thank you notes, client content for websites all while you’re—heckfire!—still standing in the water. Plus, you can add textures for that extra creative oomph!
How to Add Your Logo (or Texture!)
It’s easy as heck! Lisa provided these steps:
- The Share Function: In Lightroom Mobile, start with an image and tap the “send button” (as Lisa calls it) to bring up the sharing options.
- Export As is Key: “When you do save a copy to device or share that outputs a JPEG. If you go to export as you have an option to what kind of file type and what size. So for most of y’all, you might want to be looking at export as as opposed to save a copy or share.”
- File Type Matters! “With your file type, there’s original, JPEG, TIFF, and DNG. If you want to add a logo and or texture, it has to be either a JPEG or TIFF. This is really, really important. You cannot add a logo to a DNG.”
- Customize Your Watermark: In the “Export As” window, tap the watermark button and select “Customize.” Here’s where the magic happens!
- Text or Graphic? You can use text or a pre-loaded graphic. “The graphic you have to preload onto your device. Let me say that one more time. You have to preload that onto your device. So before I go out on a shoot, I put my logos or text or messaging already on my [iCloud] Drive so that I can access it from my phone. I want to be really clear about that.”
- Textures Too! Want to add a texture? No problem! Just make sure it’s a transparent PNG file pre-loaded onto your device. Treat it exactly like a logo, selecting it under the custom watermark graphic option.
Putting it into Practice
Lisa demonstrated how to navigate to her iCloud Drive, where she keeps a folder called “logos,” and selected a logo to add.
She showed how to change the size and vertical offset, noting, “It’s a little limited, but that’s okay!”
She then showed how to add a tintype texture, cautioning that the size needs to be right for your image.
Important Reminder
Remember, the changes will only appear on the exported image, not the original in Lightroom.
With this tip, you can add professional branding and creative flair to your images directly from your phone, no matter where you are!
Join us for iPhone Photography Conference, happening online on March 4th & 5th. Our industry experts will teach you how to master lighting, composition, editing, and more—all with the device already in your pocket. You’ll discover how to transform everyday photos into works of art, and learn insider tricks that’ll change the way you shoot forever. This is your chance to learn from the best, hone your skills, and start creating the kind of work you’ve always admired. Reserve your spot today! Get your ticket for only $149* during Early Bird Pricing (a savings of $150)!
*Early Bird Price Expires March 4, 2025, 11:00 am EST
