Photo editing / lightroom / affinity and waiting for photoshop: what ipad?

[zerostarr]

Hi everyone, i have bought an ipad air 3 and i’m happy with it, i need it mostly for some photo editing when im not on my macbook (2011 that I definitely need to upgrade soon) using lightroom / affinity and photoshop when it will come out. Today I was editing a large raw file in lightroom, and when i tried to clone a portion of the photo, the ipad started to go very slow showing probably some hardware limits. Is it better to return it for a 2017 iPad pro? Unfortunately the 2018 pro is out of budget.

 

[AutomaticApple]

Hi everyone, i have bought an ipad air 3 and i’m happy with it, i need it mostly for some photo editing when im not on my macbook (2011 that I definitely need to upgrade soon) using lightroom / affinity and photoshop when it will come out. Today I was editing a large raw file in lightroom, and when i tried to clone a portion of the photo, the ipad started to go very slow showing probably some hardware limits. Is it better to return it for a 2017 iPad pro? Unfortunately the 2018 pro is out of budget.

Would the extra GB of RAM make a difference?

 

[zerostarr]

I don’t know, probably the better gpu will make a difference, i’m just not sure how big the difference would be

 

[EugW]

Hi everyone, i have bought an ipad air 3 and i’m happy with it, i need it mostly for some photo editing when im not on my macbook (2011 that I definitely need to upgrade soon) using lightroom / affinity and photoshop when it will come out. Today I was editing a large raw file in lightroom, and when i tried to clone a portion of the photo, the ipad started to go very slow showing probably some hardware limits. Is it better to return it for a 2017 iPad pro? Unfortunately the 2018 pro is out of budget.

Dunno if the iPad Pro's 1 extra GB of memory will help in that specific context, but obviously it can't hurt.

However, it should be noted that the 2017 iPad Pro can support USB 3, whereas the 2019 iPad Air 3 is USB 2 only.

So if you have tons of RAW files to bring into the iPad, it's going take a lot longer on the iPad Air 3. AFAIK, it tops out at somewhere around 20 MB/s for the USB 2 iPads, but for the USB 3 iPad Pros, I've been able to get 70 MB/s, and that's with an old CompactFlash card. However, to get USB 3 on a 2017 iPad Pro, you need the right dongle and USB 3 peripheral or cable, since the Lightning cable that ships with the 2017 iPad Pros is only USB 2.

tl;dr:

2019 iPad Air 3 can only support USB 2.

2017 iPad Pro can support USB 3, but you need the right adapter and cables.

 

[zerostarr]

Dunno if the iPad Pro's 1 extra GB of memory will help in that specific context, but obviously it can't hurt.

However, it should be noted that the 2017 iPad Pro can support USB 3, whereas the 2019 iPad Air 3 is USB 2 only.

So if you have tons of RAW files to bring into the iPad, it's going take a lot longer on the iPad Air 3. AFAIK, it tops out at somewhere around 20 MB/s for the USB 2 iPads, but for the USB 3 iPad Pros, I've been able to get 70 MB/s, and that's with an old CompactFlash card. However, to get USB 3 on a 2017 iPad Pro, you need the right dongle and USB 3 peripheral or cable, since the Lightning cable that ships with the 2017 iPad Pros is only USB 2.

tl;dr:

2019 iPad Air 3 can only support USB 2.

2017 iPad Pro can support USB 3, but you need the right adapter and cables.

I’m not worried about sd transfers, i never have to upload more than 100 raws and i can easily wait the time (the first batch i’ve uploaded through a 3rd party sd to lighting adapter was pretty fast for 80 raws + jpg files) i’m more concerned about editing in lightroom, affinity and the upcoming photoshop, since a clone brush in lightroom on a raw file made the software very laggy, so i was wondering if this ipad can handle these tasks

 

[RevTEG]

Do we have confirmation that the full Photoshop will be available on the non pro iPads? I could be totally wrong but I though the Photoshop promo was used as part of the pro iPad promotion during the keynote?

 

[EugW]

Do we have confirmation that the full Photoshop will be available on the non pro iPads? I could be totally wrong but I though the Photoshop promo was used as part of the pro iPad promotion during the keynote?

I didn't see anywhere that said it would be limited to the iPad Pro. Not sure I'd want to run it on a low RAM iPad though either, at least if you had a lot of layers to deal with.

 

[RevTEG]

I didn't see anywhere that said it would be limited to the iPad Pro. Not sure I'd want to run it on a low RAM iPad though either, at least if you had a lot of layers to deal with.

I don’t recall it being stated either. However, I do believe Photoshop was used to show off the power of the pro iPad. It seemed to me that the people presenting Photoshop was implying that the pro’s “now” had the power to run full photoshop, as if the other models hadn’t been able to.

 

[EugW]

I don’t recall it being stated either. However, I do believe Photoshop was used to show off the power of the pro iPad. It seemed to me that the people presenting Photoshop was implying that the pro’s “now” had the power to run full photoshop, as if the other models hadn’t been able to.

Well, I'd imagine a 9.7" iPad without wide colour gamut and with only 1 GB RAM wouldn't be high up on the list for a pro/semi-pro Photoshop editing machine.

But then Apple released 12.9" iPads with 4 GB RAM, and then updated the line to include wide colour gamut. Also, at the same time competitors for the lower end like Affinity started popping up, too. And of course, the current iPad Pros actually are competitive in performance vs the MacBook Pros, with as much as 6 GB RAM.

I think the fact that the 3rd gen iPad Pro is paired with Photoshop mobile for the presentation makes a lot of sense, since Apple wants to highlight popular pro software and wants to market its latest hardware, and Adobe wants the most powerful iPads out there to make their software look as slick as possible.

However, that doesn't suggest in any way it would be limited to the Pros, and in fact there are 3rd party previews out there that test it on older equipment. The tests I've seen are still Pros, but are the 4 GB 2nd gen iPad Pros, which are actually a bit slower than the iPad Air 3 (which has a respectable 3 GB RAM).

Current builds of Photoshop run fine on iOS 12 apparently. I suppose it's possible Adobe could limit support of the final version of Photoshop to iOS 13 or later, meaning no 1 GB iPads would be supported. In this scenario, the minimum would likely be the iPad mini 4 (A8, 2 GB RAM) and iPad Air 2 (A8X, 2 GB RAM). It will be interesting if they release the final version on iOS 12 though, since iOS 12 supports a lot of 1 GB iPads. However, if they do release it on iOS 12, it's also possible they could just say that the iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, and iPad Air are not supported.

 

[RevTEG]

Well, I'd imagine a 9.7" iPad without wide colour gamut and with only 1 GB RAM wouldn't be high up on the list for a pro/semi-pro Photoshop editing machine.

But then Apple released 12.9" iPads with 4 GB RAM, and then updated the line to include wide colour gamut. Also, at the same time competitors for the lower end like Affinity started popping up, too. And of course, the current iPad Pros actually are competitive in performance vs the MacBook Pros, with as much as 6 GB RAM.

I think the fact that the 3rd gen iPad Pro is paired with Photoshop mobile for the presentation makes a lot of sense, since Apple wants to highlight popular pro software and wants to market its latest hardware, and Adobe wants the most powerful iPads out there to make their software look as slick as possible.

However, that doesn't suggest in any way it would be limited to the Pros, and in fact there are 3rd party previews out there that test it on older equipment. The tests I've seen are still Pros, but are the 4 GB 2nd gen iPad Pros, which are actually a bit slower than the iPad Air 3 (which has a respectable 3 GB RAM).

Current builds of Photoshop run fine on iOS 12 apparently. I suppose it's possible Adobe could limit support of the final version of Photoshop to iOS 13 or later, meaning no 1 GB iPads would be supported. In this scenario, the minimum would likely be the iPad mini 4 (A8, 2 GB RAM) and iPad Air 2 (A8X, 2 GB RAM). It will be interesting if they release the final version on iOS 12 though, since iOS 12 supports a lot of 1 GB iPads. However, if they do release it on iOS 12, it's also possible they could just say that the iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, and iPad Air are not supported.

I agree and I do think Adobe would what Photoshop on as many capable iPads as possible. That would be more sales. It's not going to really matter to me since I have the 3rd gen pro. I actually figured Photoshop would have already been released by now. Wonder what the hold up is?

 

[EugW]

I agree and I do think Adobe would what Photoshop on as many capable iPads as possible. That would be more sales. It's not going to really matter to me since I have the 3rd gen pro. I actually figured Photoshop would have already been released by now. Wonder what the hold up is?

Hands-on demos from last year had completely non-functional features. Interface elements were there to indicate the features would be supported, but trying those features would do nothing because they hadn't actually been coded yet.

Even if it gets released in a few months along with the iOS 13 beta, I expect Photoshop for the iPad to be quite buggy.

Not that it really matters to me though, since I'm not a Photoshop jockey. I had older version of Photoshops for my Macs only because I got cheap institutional copies but only used a small subset of its features. I just purchased Affinity Photo for my 2nd gen iPad Pro and will try to learn that. It seems to have the bulk of the features I need, and is only $20.

 

[zerostarr]

I really want to try affinity photo as well to replace my lightroom + photoshop subscription, but i'd like to test the workflow when Photoshop comes out on iOS, i'm really holding the trigger on spending those 20€ on AP, i just don't want to end up wasting money on a thing that i'll be using just a few months

 

[Momof9]

Affinity photo is great! I thought it was $10 for IOS?. & I got my new iPad pro at launch, still no Photoshop for it. They are also Very quiet about it since Oct. announcement.

 

[zerostarr]

Affinity photo is great! I thought it was $10 for IOS?. & I got my new iPad pro at launch, still no Photoshop for it. They are also Very quiet about it since Oct. announcement.

Ive bought it, kind of a learning curve coming from photoshop but nothing crazy. It was 22€ on the app store, but i managed to design a flyer and edit some raws quite smoothly.

 

[Momof9]

There are a lot of tutorials- so easy to find out how to do things.

 

[zerostarr]

There are a lot of tutorials- so easy to find out how to do things.

Yes, i’ve check out a few to understand how to make a few things i needed, is a pretty solid app and so far i’m happy with it