This article is applicable to Photosmith v1 only.  It is not relevant to Photosmith v2 and newer.

Photosmith can sync your photos and metadata over the WiFi connection. But it’s slow – WiFi can only move the data so fast, and if you have many RAW files, this can take quite a while.

—
NOTICE: This process has very specific requirements that must be met before it will work. That is why we call it “advanced.”

1. Use JPGs or RAW formats that are fully supported by Photosmith.
2. You cannot use auto-convertion to DNG on import.
3. You cannot auto-apply metadata on import.
4. Lightroom’s setting to “embed metadata in files” must be turned off.

If you don’t meet all of the requirements above it might work but you’ll probably end up with duplicate images with some or no metadata applied to the images.
—

In the typical scenario, the workflow goes something like this:

1. Take pictures
2. Plug in Camera Connection Kit, and allow the built-in Photos App to start
3. Import the photos from the camera or card
4. Start Photosmith
5. Do your tagging / keywords / collection manipulations / etc on the iPad
6. When you’re ready to sync to Lightoom, start Lightroom, run the plugin, and import directly from Photosmith
7. The images and all the settings are transferred over WiFi and added directly into your catalog

But there’s also an *advanced sync * option. In addition to the above procedure, you can import a faster way- directly from the iPad and then sync with Photosmith.

1-5. [Same as above]
6. When you’re ready to sync to Lightroom, plug your iPad into your desktop using the standard Apple cable
7. Import the photos directly from the iPad into Lightroom using the standard Import screen in Lightroom
8. When done, run the Photosmith Lightroom plugin and sync those same photos. Photosmith will detect those photos (as long as they’re in your catalog) and apply the metadata to them – no downloading needed

By using this method, you can make the sync process much faster AND retain your photo’s original filenames (or even a custom filename if used in Lightroom).