iPad Pro iPad advice (photography workflow)

[juanmaasecas]

I used to have an iPad Pro 10.5 that gave to my mother a couple of months ago when I went to my hometown for holidays.

now I’m thinking about buying a pro model (11, 12.9, or older gen second handed) and I’m undecided:

I work in a lab as a researcher and use it to take notes sometimes. Also the casual stuff at home (web, YouTube, etc).

im also a hobbyist photographer and take sone jobs sometimes (events), so I edit tons of pictures. I do that on my 15” MacBook Pro.

most of the time I think about going 11’ mainly for portability, but then I’d love to have the big screen to see my pictures better, as I’m very picky about color etc, in case I decided to start editing on the iPad, but my question about workflow is:

Can I connect the cfexpress card (I own a Canon R5) through the usb-c port with the adapter, Edit directly from the card without transferring the pictures to the internal memory, exporting from the iPad and then connect the same memory card to my laptop to transfer the raw to my storage hdd, while preserving the library data in lightroom (settings etc).

if I can’t have an easy workflow with the iPad, definitely I’ll go for the 11 inches, or even buy a second handed 11” from 2018 and maybe upgrading to a new 11” with oled screen (miniled) in a couple of years.

I use lightroom to edit in the MacBook 95% or the time. I read that typically what people do is to add the pictures in the computer and sync in the cloud, but doing that you only have access to the smart previews in the iPad, is it? I love pixel peeping to check sharpness etc. also i this requires a lot of extra time, and I’m afraid I’d end up by just using the computer…

 

[sparksd]

LR requires the files to be resident.

 

[juanmaasecas]

Really? Ok so then not worth it for me at all getting an expensive iPad.

 

[Slartibart]

A.) RAWPower, Pixelmator Photo and Affinity Photo let you edit photos on an external device. B.) Exif Viewer might be handy. C.) For File I/O (copying between directly between external drives, batch renaming, etc.) I recommend getting FileBrowser Professional. D.) while I agree that a big screen is nice - iPads Pro have an excellent display. IMHO there is something special editing photos with a pencil on a iPP.

My personal workflow for photos I take at work (basically macrophotography or “panoramas”, stacks, or HDR on a microscope) and private (mostly people and the occasionally flora and fauna), basically all RAWs (single photo between 20 - 50 Mb, depending camera) is this: I preselect and copy this RAWs from a SD card to a SSD (I use Samsungs T5 and T7) or on the iPad. Stitching, composing stacks, HDR compose, local editing using masks etc. I do in Affinity Photo... which is quite different to Adobes PS/LR. For developing and batch processing I prefer RAwPower and Pixelmator Photo - these programs are as integrated as it can get to iPadOS. RAWPower is developed by the former Aperture lead. I keep my sort of ”best of“ pictures on the iPad in albums and use FilebrowserPro to backup these albums as folders to a NAS at work or a SSD.
Some things are very, very different on an iPad compared to a laptop… some things are cumbersome… some things are incredible elegant - on the go, while travelling somewhere remote and the joy of using a pencil let me prefer and use an 11” 2020 iPP. I am in no way a professional photographer, you can take a look in the media section of my MR account, every photograph there is developed and edited on an iPad.

 

[cupcakes2000]

I preselect and copy this RAWs from a SD card to a SSD

Interested in which software you use for this.. File Browser Pro?

 

[arvinsim]

There is really no point going with the iPad for photography once we got the M1 laptops.

 

[Abazigal]

There is really no point going with the iPad for photography once we got the M1 laptops.

I imagine some people may prefer iPads for the display, and cellular connectivity.

iPad Pro M1 for Photographers — Travel Photographer - Austin Mann

Hey from Flagstaff! My wife and I just drove out here to spend time with her mom and family and I got to test the new iPad Pro with M1 as we made the journey. We took the scenic route and stopped in Great Sand Dunes National Park and Monument Valley — both beautiful places to photograph! I ingeste

austinmann.com

 

[juanmaasecas]

A.) RAWPower, Pixelmator Photo and Affinity Photo let you edit photos on an external device. B.) Exif Viewer might be handy. C.) For File I/O (copying between directly between external drives, batch renaming, etc.) I recommend getting FileBrowser Professional. D.) while I agree that a big screen is nice - iPads Pro have an excellent display. IMHO there is something special editing photos with a pencil on a iPP.

My personal workflow for photos I take at work (basically macrophotography or “panoramas”, stacks, or HDR on a microscope) and private (mostly people and the occasionally flora and fauna), basically all RAWs (single photo between 20 - 50 Mb, depending camera) is this: I preselect and copy this RAWs from a SD card to a SSD (I use Samsungs T5 and T7) or on the iPad. Stitching, composing stacks, HDR compose, local editing using masks etc. I do in Affinity Photo... which is quite different to Adobes PS/LR. For developing and batch processing I prefer RAwPower and Pixelmator Photo - these programs are as integrated as it can get to iPadOS. RAWPower is developed by the former Aperture lead. I keep my sort of ”best of“ pictures on the iPad in albums and use FilebrowserPro to backup these albums as folders to a NAS at work or a SSD.
Some things are very, very different on an iPad compared to a laptop… some things are cumbersome… some things are incredible elegant - on the go, while travelling somewhere remote and the joy of using a pencil let me prefer and use an 11” 2020 iPP. I am in no way a professional photographer, you can take a look in the media section of my MR account, every photograph there is developed and edited on an iPad.

But this is such a convoluted work. I am very picky for color and I use lightroom with my own presets and profiles. I bought pixelmator photo when i tried to edit in my ipad pro 10.5 some time ago but no, back to the computer.

I mean, maybe for one or 2 spare pictures sometimes the ipad can be nice, but i need to edit 1000-2000 pictures for some events, and finally export maybe 500-800 or so, so moving all files to the internal memory, then editing, then moving back to a HDD, nah, I will keep using the laptop better, I will still feel "claustrophobic" as I did last time I tried.
I thought with the higher speed of the usb-c port things would be easier nowadays with lightroom, but it seems that still due to the OS and software limitations it would not be ready for prime time despite the extra power of the M1, so better for me to just focus on it as a "tablet" and not to spend too much because I will end up by using it mainly for youtube and lab notes.

 

[sparksd]

But this is such a convoluted work. I am very picky for color and I use lightroom with my own presets and profiles. I bought pixelmator photo when i tried to edit in my ipad pro 10.5 some time ago but no, back to the computer.

I mean, maybe for one or 2 spare pictures sometimes the ipad can be nice, but i need to edit 1000-2000 pictures for some events, and finally export maybe 500-800 or so, so moving all files to the internal memory, then editing, then moving back to a HDD, nah, I will keep using the laptop better, I will still feel "claustrophobic" as I did last time I tried.
I thought with the higher speed of the usb-c port things would be easier nowadays with lightroom, but it seems that still due to the OS and software limitations it would not be ready for prime time despite the extra power of the M1, so better for me to just focus on it as a "tablet" and not to spend too much because I will end up by using it mainly for youtube and lab notes.

When I travel, if I intend to do much image processing with Lightroom (I shoot RAW all the time), I will take my Surface Pro 7 laptop. I find the flow there to be simple and exactly as at home. The i7 SP7 is nice as it is even lighter than my 2021 12.9 with attached keyboard and it's what I use at home with a 4K monitor.

 

[juanmaasecas]

When I travel, if I intend to do much image processing with Lightroom (I shoot RAW all the time), I will take my Surface Pro 7 laptop. I find the flow there to be simple and exactly as at home. The i7 SP7 is nice as it is even lighter than my 2021 12.9 with attached keyboard and it's what I use at home with a 4K monitor.

Yes I thought about that as well, the problem is I don’t trust colors in windows devices and no airdrop. I love the calibration out of Apple displays. Maybe with a good calibration that could be done on windows though…
color is basically why I have an iPhone and MacBook and I’m not using android nor windows anymore (although I still have a small windows laptop at the office).

 

[sparksd]

Yes I thought about that as well, the problem is I don’t trust colors in windows devices and no airdrop. I love the calibration out of Apple displays. Maybe with a good calibration that could be done on windows though…
color is basically why I have an iPhone and MacBook and I’m not using android nor windows anymore (although I still have a small windows laptop at the office).

I find the color in my SP7 to be comparable to the 12.9 Pro. I wouldn't use it if I didn't trust it - I have tens of thousands of processed RAW images.

Some samples - https://1drv.ms/u/s!Anc-Op_NG6YI2klZaxEkQ4vxCHYq?e=dwqPgu

 

[Slartibart]

But this is such a convoluted work. I am very picky for color and I use lightroom with my own presets and profiles. I bought pixelmator photo when i tried to edit in my ipad pro 10.5 some time ago but no, back to the computer.

I mean, maybe for one or 2 spare pictures sometimes the ipad can be nice, but i need to edit 1000-2000 pictures for some events, and finally export maybe 500-800 or so, so moving all files to the internal memory, then editing, then moving back to a HDD, nah, I will keep using the laptop better, I will still feel "claustrophobic" as I did last time I tried.
I thought with the higher speed of the usb-c port things would be easier nowadays with lightroom, but it seems that still due to the OS and software limitations it would not be ready for prime time despite the extra power of the M1, so better for me to just focus on it as a "tablet" and not to spend too much because I will end up by using it mainly for youtube and lab notes.

With RAWPower and Pixelmator you do not have to move your photos to the internal memory. I personally prefer not working on the SD cards for a variety of reasons directly (foremost reliability and speed), that’s the reason why I copy all “interesting” photos on a SD card directly to a T7 or T5. And then I develop/edit them there. In this scenario none of the photos is stored on the iPP internal memory.
Actually: I often copy the photos of a session just directly to the SSD and continue there. But then again I do only a few hundred photos per session... and try to reduce the number of final shots I eventually keep.

Presets and LUTs are available in RAWPower, something equivalent to to LR profiles is not. There are probably available in Affinity Photo (LUTs are for sure), but I treat AP more like a quite complete Photoshop substitute on mobile, RAWPower is my DAM of choice (but I adore the ML-based stuff in PP 😎).

But if LR is your preferred tool, well, at the moment there is no editing on external media, regarding that one is clearly better off with a Macbook or iMac.

 

[Slartibart]

Interested in which software you use for this.. File Browser Pro?

If I want to select and copy from SD card to an SSD FileBrowserPro it is. While Apple’s Files has improved in iPadOS 15, FBP is still -quite far IMHO ?- ahead.

If I just want to peek whats on an SD card RAWPower, PP or even Apple’s Files or Photos is fine. For me the main “annoyance“ (I admit this is a very, very, very privileged complaint ?) is the speed with which previews from RAWs are created on a SSD card. This can be adressed of course by saving RAW+JPEG preview when shooting right in your camera, but somehow I forget doing that ? (and then I would have to deal with 2 pictures for each photos in FBP)

 

[juanmaasecas]

If I want to select and copy from SD card to an SSD FileBrowserPro it is. While Apple’s Files has improved in iPadOS 15, FBP is still -quite far IMHO ?- ahead.

If I just want to peek whats on an SD card RAWPower, PP or even Apple’s Files or Photos is fine. For me the main “annoyance“ (I admit this is a very, very, very privileged complaint ?) is the speed with which previews from RAWs are created on a SSD card. This can be adressed of course by saving RAW+JPEG preview when shooting right in your camera, but somehow I forget doing that ? (and then I would have to deal with 2 pictures for each photos in FBP)

I typically do shoot jpg + raw. Agree that the speed editing directly from a sdcard might be slow, but I have now CFExpress with a USB-C reader and the speed is comparable to a SSD. That is why I don't want to be moving back and forth the files. It is so good to just edit from the card and then move to the external storage. It would be awesome if Adobe could keep track of that and sync between the libraries in both ipad and mac, so I can edit in the iPad, and then connect the card in the mac and move to the external storage while still in the same lightroom library...

I find the color in my SP7 to be comparable to the 12.9 Pro. I wouldn't use it if I didn't trust it - I have tens of thousands of processed RAW images.

Some samples - https://1drv.ms/u/s!Anc-Op_NG6YI2klZaxEkQ4vxCHYq?e=dwqPgu

The other issue of the Surface is battery life right? Not comparable to an iPad as far as I know...

edit: So no one is using here the cloud stuff? importing in the laptop and then editing from the ipad once it syncs in the cloud. Just to make sure you only use the smart preview or you can get the full thing and how fast it is...

And what about mirroring the display of the mac? I tried it with my old 10.5 but it was a bit slow...

 

[sparksd]

The other issue of the Surface is battery life right? Not comparable to an iPad as far as I know...

edit: So no one is using here the cloud stuff? importing in the laptop and then editing from the ipad once it syncs in the cloud. Just to make sure you only use the smart preview or you can get the full thing and how fast it is...

No, the battery life is not as good as the iPads but I have never done long-running work on any laptop (or iPad for that matter) without access to either a power outlet or battery pack.

I never use the cloud except for backup storage. I don't count on good Internet access when traveling.

 

[Slartibart]

edit: So no one is using here the cloud stuff? importing in the laptop and then editing from the ipad once it syncs in the cloud. Just to make sure you only use the smart preview or you can get the full thing and how fast it is...

A solution like iCloud - where “lowres” is kept on your device and “highres” is pulled from the cloud when needed - is based on having the pics on your device, that is at some point you have to have copied them on the iPad. And they are only available as long as you keep the “lowres”.

I’m based in scandinavia and we have fast reliable internet access almost everywhere therefore a solution like OneDrive or some other network mapped “drive” is probably a valuable solution. Things become quite different really fast when I just travel within Europe, so an SSD offers probably on average the faster access to a lot of highres photos. Admittedly I have no speed measurements done, so… ?

 

[Mahasamatman]

I use an iPad Pro 12.9 with Lightroom for all my photo editing, often on batches of up to 400 at a go with no issues. Lightroom on iOS is a first class citizen in the Adobe world fully able to import, stord and edit full raw images and some functionality is missing from the macOS version of LR that is present on the iOS version.

But either way, once a photo is in the Adobe cloud you can edit it on any of the attached devices whether they be macOS, windows, android or iOS…

Personally I’ve never seen editing a raw file on the card as being a good idea - where does the metadata go? Are the edits destructive or not and if not where are the edits stored and so on. That seems a lot more work to me than just importing to Lightroom and editing there.

My workflow also includes Affinity Photo and Adobe PS Express, photoshop being too much for me…

 

[cupcakes2000]

I use an iPad Pro 12.9 with Lightroom for all my photo editing, often on batches of up to 400 at a go with no issues. Lightroom on iOS is a first class citizen in the Adobe world fully able to import, stord and edit full raw images and some functionality is missing from the macOS version of LR that is present on the iOS version.

But either way, once a photo is in the Adobe cloud you can edit it on any of the attached devices whether they be macOS, windows, android or iOS…

Personally I’ve never seen editing a raw file on the card as being a good idea - where does the metadata go? Are the edits destructive or not and if not where are the edits stored and so on. That seems a lot more work to me than just importing to Lightroom and editing there.

My workflow also includes Affinity Photo and Adobe PS Express, photoshop being too much for me…

I use lightroom on the iPad in conjunction with lr classic on my mac. It’s a great app. But the absolute biggest problem with lightroom cc is that you are forced to use the cloud. Even with a fast connection, to replicate classics use I would need to upload some 2k raws to the cloud before I can cull and edit a big shoot.
That’s clearly absurd.
They should allow editing from external drives on iPad lightroom cc. It’s the biggest and only reason I cannot go ipad completely in my professional photography workflow. It’s frankly ridiculous and utterly frustrating!

 

[Mahasamatman]

I use lightroom on the iPad in conjunction with lr classic on my mac. It’s a great app. But the absolute biggest problem with lightroom cc is that you are forced to use the cloud. Even with a fast connection, to replicate classics use I would need to upload some 2k raws to the cloud before I can cull and edit a big shoot.
That’s clearly absurd.
They should allow editing from external drives on iPad lightroom cc. It’s the biggest and only reason I cannot go ipad completely in my professional photography workflow. It’s frankly ridiculous and utterly frustrating!

Why do you need to upload before culling? I don’t bother to sync until I’ve culled which reduces the upload to a minimum.

Editing on external drives feels more like a iOS limitation limitation but I guess you mean a local sync style with hard drives rather than via the clou…

 

[sparksd]

Why do you need to upload before culling? I don’t bother to sync until I’ve culled which reduces the upload to a minimum.

Editing on external drives feels more like a iOS limitation limitation but I guess you mean a local sync style with hard drives rather than via the clou…

It's not an iOS limitation - LumaFusion now supports video editing on external drives.

 

[juanmaasecas]

I use an iPad Pro 12.9 with Lightroom for all my photo editing, often on batches of up to 400 at a go with no issues. Lightroom on iOS is a first class citizen in the Adobe world fully able to import, stord and edit full raw images and some functionality is missing from the macOS version of LR that is present on the iOS version.

But either way, once a photo is in the Adobe cloud you can edit it on any of the attached devices whether they be macOS, windows, android or iOS…

Personally I’ve never seen editing a raw file on the card as being a good idea - where does the metadata go? Are the edits destructive or not and if not where are the edits stored and so on. That seems a lot more work to me than just importing to Lightroom and editing there.

My workflow also includes Affinity Photo and Adobe PS Express, photoshop being too much for me…

With the computer, I import in to the library, not moving the files and editing from the CFExpress card. After the editing and export is done, just by using the lightroom library I move the folder from the CFExpress card to the external slower HDD that I have connected for storage. That keeps of course all the files in the library with the edits etc, it is just that now they will be physically in the HDD instead of the card. I hope we could do that with the iPad. I feel it is stupid having to put all the files in the (small) internal storage of the ipad, editing, and then moving them back to the HDD...

 

[cupcakes2000]

Why do you need to upload before culling? I don’t bother to sync until I’ve culled which reduces the upload to a minimum.

Editing on external drives feels more like a iOS limitation limitation but I guess you mean a local sync style with hard drives rather than via the clou…

What do you cull using? I don’t have the space to import big shoots on my iPad directly.

Right now so long as I’m at home, I import into classsic, cull, sync smartnpreviews to the cloud, edit the smart previews on lr iPad, export jpegs from classic. Then I deliver the jpegs, but this sometimes means reimport jpegs in to cc, so I can add them to my website easily and deliver via Adobes sharing ability. It works but it’s a bit convoluted.

if I have no access to my Mac I star from an eternal drive using File Browser Pro, having transfered from the card to the drive using the same app. Then I import these starred ones into lightroom to edit, then export jpegs to deliver. I do this whole process with sync turned off because I never am anywhere that has a good enough wifi to support such a huge upload without making everything else crawl. Again. It works but it’s not ideal.

what would be ideal is the ability for lightroom cc to work from an external disk! It’s definitely possible as I do it with luma.

 

[Mahasamatman]

What do you cull using? I don’t have the space to import big shoots on my iPad directly.

Right now so long as I’m at home, I import into classsic, cull, sync smartnpreviews to the cloud, edit the smart previews on lr iPad, export jpegs from classic. Then I deliver the jpegs, but this sometimes means reimport jpegs in to cc, so I can add them to my website easily and deliver via Adobes sharing ability. It works but it’s a bit convoluted.

if I have no access to my Mac I star from an eternal drive using File Browser Pro, having transfered from the card to the drive using the same app. Then I import these starred ones into lightroom to edit, then export jpegs to deliver. I do this whole process with sync turned off because I never am anywhere that has a good enough wifi to support such a huge upload without making everything else crawl. Again. It works but it’s not ideal.

what would be ideal is the ability for lightroom cc to work from an external disk! It’s definitely possible as I do it with luma.

I use a 256GB iPad Pro so I import directly into LightRoom CC, with a preset applied. Then using a filter to show only in-ranked photos I work through them one at a time using the ranking screen and swiping down on the RHS of the screen to reject (x) anything that is not acceptable quality. This is a quick pass, followed by a slower one where I make some adjustments to determine if the shot is worth keeping before using the swipe up to mark those I want to work with further.

Shots that are rejected are then deleted - I shoot a lot of wildlife so it’s usual there will be shots that are clearly on the money and those that are not worth keeping - and permanently deleted before I enable sync, that keeps the number of shots I sync to the cloud down to the minimum.

Using an Eos R6, 1000 shots uses around 22GB of storage which is fine as only recent files are cached on my iPad along with smart previews - I have 80GB of local storage and 324GB of cloud storage in use. When I upgrade my IPP in as year or so, I may go for a 1TB model to keep all of my originals local but that’s for the future.

Finally, I do have access to an old MBP but do all of my non-work stuff on a 2020 12.9” IPP with magic keyboard and Logitech crayon…