Can you run Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop on tablets and smartphones?

Our mobile devices, especially smartphones and tablets, have become so powerful that they are no longer just a medium to consume content. Smartphones and tablets are taking over as the primary way of content creation these days as well. With the support for RAW photos on our mobile devices, there is an avenue to not only shoot pictures on them but also edit them. And for editing, of course, the most popular apps out there are Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.

However, Adobe’s suite of creator-friendly applications is associated with demanding hardware and desktops in particular. If you are a creator who depends primarily on your smartphone or tablet, then you may be wondering whether you can run Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop on them.

Well, we are here to not only answer that question but also to help you understand Adobe’s creative suite for mobile devices.

Well, can you run Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop on a tablet?

The one-word answer to that question is yes. You can indeed run Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop on a tablet as well as smartphones. While you would use Adobe Lightroom on your devices running Windows and macOS, for tablets and smartphones, Adobe offers a separate version called Adobe Lightroom for mobile on smartphones, which is a free app available on both, iOS and Android.

Adobe Lightroom for mobile supports any iPhone or iPad that runs iOS 15.0 or later, and in February 2024, Adobe brought the iPad version of the app to Apple’s Vision Pro Mixed Reality headset as well. Lightroom for mobile also supports phones running Android 8.x (Oreo) and later. In addition to the Android version though, Adobe says users must ensure that the device has at the very least, a quad-core CPU based on ARMv8 or x86_64 architecture, 4GB RAM, and 32GB storage.

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Lightroom for mobile is a free app that offers a simple yet powerful solution for capturing, editing and sharing your photos. However, you will need to upgrade to premium features to get precise control with seamless access across all devices, including mobile, desktops, and the web. While Lightroom for mobile allows you to easily edit your photos, Photoshop is the tool when you want to do transformational edits such as compositing or fine retouching.

Android users can download Adobe Photoshop Express on their tablet, but if you have an iPad, Adobe has an even more useful application. Adobe Photoshop for iPad is the most well-known photo editor tailored for use on tablet screens. It supports seamless workflows with Photoshop for desktops, using cloud documents and support for the Apple Pencil. There is also layer support, editing and compositing, but it does require learning new gestures.

How to try Lightroom for mobile on iOS and Android

Here are the steps you need to follow to get started with Lightroom for mobile on your smartphone:

1. Download the Lightroom for mobile from the App Store or Google Play Store. 

2. Open the app and log in with your existing Adobe ID or create a new account. 

3.  Click on ‘Device’ (iOS) or ‘Gallery’ (Android) to access all the images that are there on your device. The Device/Gallery tab will display images as they appear in the Apple Photos app or the Android Gallery app. 

4. Click on a photo to open the image in the ‘Edit’ view. This is where you can tweak your photos using Adobe Lightroom. 

5. Once you have completed editing, tap the back arrow in the upper left corner. If there are any edits, then the image will be added to Lightroom. If there are no edits, then the photo will not be added to Lightroom.

You can also import multiple photos from your device by clicking on the ‘More’ menu (three dots) in the upper right corner and choosing all the photos you want to add to Lightroom. Tap ‘Import’ at the bottom of the screen, and then choose ‘Import into Lightroom’ or ‘Import & add to Lightroom album.’ Your photos imported into Lightroom will be displayed with Lr badge on the thumbnail.

Adobe Lightroom for mobile: Premium features

Our smartphone cameras, especially the likes of iPhone 15 Pro, Google Pixel 8 Pro, and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, capture great photos. However, the result is often dependent on the image pipeline supported by those devices and thus results may become inconsistent. One way to overcome this challenge is to shoot in RAW and then edit it yourself. For RAW editing, however, you will need a premium subscription  to the apps, called the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.

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With an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, you will get the ability to sync your Lightroom photos on all your devices including your computer, a customised website to showcase your photos and the ability to access the photos you have in Lightroom, in other Adobe mobile apps as well. There are also sync presets and profiles, healing brush, selective adjustments, sensei search, geometry tools, batch editing, and more.

So, to reiterate, you can use both Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop on your tablet. While Adobe Photoshop Express is for Android tablets, iPad users get a more powerful application in the form of Photoshop for iPad. Adobe’s Lightroom for mobile is a mobile-centric application for iOS and Android.