Using Adobe Lightroom mobile camera app for enhanced smartphone photography

Welcome to my latest blog in which I explore the use of the Adobe Lightroom mobile app camera. This won't be a comprehensive 'how to guide', just a taster that I hope encourages you to dig deeper into this useful smartphone accessory.

If you've read my previous blogs you'll know that I use the Snapseed photo editing app in preference to any other editing app, and that includes Lightroom. However, if your smartphone camera doesn't offer you the ability to adjust the shutter speed, exposure value, or the aperture, then you're going to find the camera that comes as part of the Lightroom mobile app a useful tool for your smartphone photography. 

I subscribe to the Premium version of the app, but all the features I describe here are available in the free version. The paid-for version is less than £5pm and comes with additional editing tools, which I must confess I use very occasionally.

Once you've downloaded the Lightroom mobile app you'll need to create your account. 

Next, at the bottom of your phone screen you'll see three options, tap on the middle one, the one marked 'Lightroom'. This will bring up a camera icon in the bottom righthand corner, as in the image below.

Tap the camera icon, this launches the camera. At the top of the screen you'll see 'JPEG', which can either leave as it is or you can tap it, which gives you the option to switch file options. I set mine to DNG, which is Adobe's version of the RAW format and which is the best one for editing your photos because none of the data captured by your camera's sensor is lost in RAW, whereas the JPEG format of a photo has already had some editing carried out by the camera's clever tech. 

At the bottom left you'll see that the camera is set to 'Auto', which is fine, but to realise the full capabilities of the Lightroom camera you're going to tap the Auto to give you the option to set the camera to 'Professional' mode.

A new menu should now appear across the screen, with all options set to Auto. In order, from left to right, these are:

'SS' is the shutter speed, which is useful if, for example, you want to photograph, say, a waterfall or moving traffic at night with all the lights, creating silky water and light trails.

'ISO' adjusts the sensitivity of the camera's sensor and hence the exposure, ranging from under exposed to over exposed.

'WB' allows you to adjust the warmth or coldness of the image according to the surrounding or background lighting.

'Auto' gives you the option to adjust the depth of field, which is like adjusting the aperture to bring objects that are closer to you into sharp focus.

To the right of the menu I have just been talking about you'll see three vertical dots, which if you tap on them pulls up another menu (see image below), that is, from left to right:

Aspect ratio options are first. I set my camera to 1:1, but there's also 16:9, 3:2, and 4:3 to choose from.

The little clock icon is the timer, for taking those shots with you in the picture!

Grid options to assist with composition: rule of thirds, halves, golden ratio. Rule of thirds is my preferred option, although I have experimented with the golden ratio before. There's a horizontal spirit level guide as well, which if you can't shoot straight is a great help.

Last, there's the Settings options, which includes setting up your phone's volume buttons as your shutter release, geotagging your photos, and whether you want to save unprocessed HDR photos, which I am going to discuss more in the next section.

If you go back to the opening screen of the Lightroom app and go to the top left, to the three horizontal lines, tap on them, then go to Early access, on the next screen toggle the HDR capture mode so it's active. (See image below.) HDR, or high dynamic range, is a great option for enabling the camera to get the exposure right in those photography tricky moments when you have very dark areas and very light areas in the same composition. With HDR turned on your camera will take three photos, one slightly under exposed, one slightly over exposed, and one that the camera thinks is correctly exposed. The camera does some clever tech stuff to then product a reasonably exposed image. 'HDR' appears on the bottom left of the camera screen, the same place as you'd see Auto and Professional settings. If you select HDR you can't then alter the exposure settings in Professional, and vice versa.

Back on the camera screen, extreme bottom right is a three overlapping circle icon that enables you to shoot in black and white rather than colour. Next to this is a padlock, which is the Auto Exposure Lock. Say you have a photograph you want to take and you want the exposure set to one particular part, say, a darker area, then just tap that part of your screen, then tap the padlock, this will lock the camera's exposure to whichever exposure you have selected.

Make sure to reset your settings to Auto after every session so you can reset them for your next shoot.

Having been made aware of the Lightroom camera and had your eyes opened to its potential, go away and play with it, experiment, explore, practice, that's what photography is all about 

I came across an extremely useful Udemy course called, 'Mobile Photography iPhone and Android complete Master class', which shows you how to set up the Adobe Lightroom mobile camera, how to get the best from it, plus great tips on editing in Lightroom, and how to include Snapseed editing into your editing workflow. I regularly watch this video course just to refresh my memory. I can really recommend it to you. 

One of the things about photography is that it's a neverending process of learning, whether it's about some new piece of gear, the latest technical innovation, hacks and tips, or just someone bringing something to your attention that you're not aware of. I hope that my sharing the Lightroom camera app features has been of benefit to you.

You can follow me on Threads and Instagram at smart_phone_photographer_53, and follow my Facebook page 'Words and Frames'. 

I look forward to you visiting my next blog.

© Mike Young 2025.