Apple’s iPad, with its Retina display, is a great way to carry a high-quality portfolio around with you in a small package without having to pay for prints. Keeping the portfolio up to date is not as complicated as it might seem, if you use Lightroom and iTunes in combination to set a folder on your computer to be synchronised with your iPad.

The first thing you need to do, in Lightroom, is create a Hard Drive Publish Service, called iPad. In the Library module, down at the bottom of the left-hand column, right click the ‘Hard Drive’ bar and select ‘Edit Settings’. This will display the following window:

Since mine has already been set up, the folder location can’t be changed, but under the ‘Export Location’ heading you can define the location of the folder which will contain all your iPad photos.

You can use the same settings I have picked, or something else (if you are using the iPad 1 or 2, for example, you may want to use 1024 pixels for the image sizing instead of 2048). The resolution figure is irrelevant, of course, for display on digital devices. The sharpening, metadata and watermaking I’ll leave to your discretion.

Once you’ve created the publishing service, it will be listed in the Library side bar as follows:

You can then add sub-folders according to your needs, thus:

Add photos to these folders and publish as you would any other publishing service in Lightroom. Once they are all published, switch to iTunes and ensure your iPad is connected.

Select the iPad from the list of devices, and choose ‘Photos’ in the top bar. Select ‘Choose folder’ from the drop-down menu next to ‘Sync photos from:’

Then navigate to the top-level folder your Lightroom Publish Service is connected to, and select ‘Open’. The next time you synchronise your iPad, the photos will all be copied across and will be visible in the Photos app under the headings defined in your Lightroom Publish Service: