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Best apps for annotating PDFs and editing photos on iPad Pro?

M

macbook123

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 11, 2006
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I'm buying the iPad Pro mostly for reading and annotating PDFs as well as viewing and editing photos.

Which are some good apps that would allow me to sync my PDFs and photos with my laptop/desktop?

Ideally this would work via Dropbox.

I use Adobe Lightroom as my photo library and editor.

Thanks.
 
PDFpen and PDF Expert (by Readdle) come to mind. They are both available on iOS and OS X and allow for syncing via iCloud. PDF Expert can be combined with Documents which you can then use to also access the photos in iOS (sync those via iCloud or iTunes). Dropbox can be used as an alternative (both PDFpen and PDF Expert/Documents).
 
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I use Papers 3 for PDF annotation and collection. It has Dropbox sync.

I use the iOS Photos for my photo sync now. I used Lightroom's sync as well. Depending on your export settings, Apple Photos will pick up all of the metadata.
 
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nevheatley3 said:
I use Papers 3 for PDF annotation and collection. It has Dropbox sync.

I use the iOS Photos for my photo sync now. I used Lightroom's sync as well. Depending on your export settings, Apple Photos will pick up all of the metadata.
Click to expand...

In Papers 3, how do you store annotations made with the Pen? For me they disappear the moment I switch from annotation to another mode (which is necessary to turn pages, etc).

More generally, how do you sync files with Dropbox? In a separate folder or the original folder?
 
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nevheatley3 said:
Check this out, this should help: http://www.papersapp.com/ios/
Click to expand...

Hey, this doesn't seem to work very well. Have you tried it? I figured out how to annotate and make the annotations stick, but can't access files across devices. The way Papers stores files on Dropbox is also extremely confusing: it puts a large number of associated files in a subdirectory "papers" and it's unclear what role each of these have.
 
Having tried Papers and PDF Expert on my iPad Pro, I have issues with both. With Papers, my main issues are:
-- can't erase (partial) annotations. E.g., when I write a large formula or drawing and screw up midway through, there's no way to erase part of what I wrote. I have to erase everything and start over. That's really annoying.
-- I can't view a PDF annotated in this app with any other app, because it's hideously buried and spread out over multiple sudirectories of the "papers" directory.
-- I can't click hyperlinks ,i.e., navigate to webpages shown in an PDF.
-- The "Undo" and "Redo" buttons both don't work.

My one issue with PDF Expert so far (and btw there is now an OS X app, but it costs extra $'s) is that it doesn't support muti-page view. The iPP is perfect for viewing two pages of a PDF document at once. PDF Expert is therefore suboptimal for the IPP (each book page is way too big).
 
macbook123 said:
Having tried Papers and PDF Expert on my iPad Pro, I have issues with both. With Papers, my main issues are:
-- can't erase (partial) annotations. E.g., when I write a large formula or drawing and screw up midway through, there's no way to erase part of what I wrote. I have to erase everything and start over. That's really annoying.
-- I can't view a PDF annotated in this app with any other app, because it's hideously buried and spread out over multiple sudirectories of the "papers" directory.
-- I can't click hyperlinks ,i.e., navigate to webpages shown in an PDF.
-- The "Undo" and "Redo" buttons both don't work.

My one issue with PDF Expert so far (and btw there is now an OS X app, but it costs extra $'s) is that it doesn't support muti-page view. The iPP is perfect for viewing two pages of a PDF document at once. PDF Expert is therefore suboptimal for the IPP (each book page is way too big).
Click to expand...

Email Readdle and make a suggestion. They have a form on their website where you can do that. I already emailed them with a suggestion for their Documents app. Surprisingly I've had good luck with emailing app developers in the past and have had some of my suggestions implemented in future versions.

The iPad Pro just came out a few weeks ago, and there are going to be some growing pains while the developers figure out how to best update their apps for the bigger screen. Best thing we can do as consumers is to tell them what we want.
 
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Just found out a rather cool feature in PDF Expert: tap and hold the Undo button to reveal 15 Undo/Redo steps.

IMG_0017.jpg
 
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macbook123 said:
Having tried Papers and PDF Expert on my iPad Pro, I have issues with both. With Papers, my main issues are:
-- can't erase (partial) annotations. E.g., when I write a large formula or drawing and screw up midway through, there's no way to erase part of what I wrote. I have to erase everything and start over. That's really annoying.
-- I can't view a PDF annotated in this app with any other app, because it's hideously buried and spread out over multiple sudirectories of the "papers" directory.
-- I can't click hyperlinks ,i.e., navigate to webpages shown in an PDF.
-- The "Undo" and "Redo" buttons both don't work.

My one issue with PDF Expert so far (and btw there is now an OS X app, but it costs extra $'s) is that it doesn't support muti-page view. The iPP is perfect for viewing two pages of a PDF document at once. PDF Expert is therefore suboptimal for the IPP (each book page is way too big).
Click to expand...


Though this won't help you with annotation, there is an app called CloudReaders which seems to be really great for viewing PDFs in a multi page of you in landscape mode on the iPad Pro. Check it out. ! My guess is PDF expert will soon implement this function though.
 
I'm sorry about your issues with Papers. I guess the difference between my use case and yours is that I have the desktop application also. However, I believe it is not readily shareable. I use it extensively for writing and research though.
 
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macbook123 said:
My one issue with PDF Expert so far (and btw there is now an OS X app, but it costs extra $'s) is that it doesn't support muti-page view.
Click to expand...
I haven't seen many others do that for PDF files either. eBooks are no problem though (but these are made for things like this, they allow for easy scaling/sizing).
 
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