iPad Pro Photographers using iPP for Lightroom: Does 16GB offer a good bump?

[Eradik]

Curious on people’s thoughts that use Lightroom on an iPad. I have a 45mp camera and frequently dump 2000+ photos. Looking for something to use while traveling.

512GB is plenty for my needs, but is there a decent performance bump in 16GB of ram with Lightroom to make it worth it?

 

[apostolosdt]

I take it your problem won't just be the specs of the iPad, but the fact that the LR iPad version probably is a poor downgrade of the LR in your Mac. A 45mp camera will produce RAW files of more or less twice that size in MB. Doing proper digital processing on TIFF from such RAW is quite demanding, let alone attempting on an iPad.

I once installed a PS version on my iPad, but installed it after the first runs on images from RAW of roughly 35 MB. On the other hand, a 45mp camera must offer decent in-camera processing functionality, I guess.

 

[cupcakes2000]

I take it your problem won't just be the specs of the iPad, but the fact that the LR iPad version probably is a poor downgrade of the LR in your Mac. A 45mp camera will produce RAW files of more or less twice that size in MB. Doing proper digital processing on TIFF from such RAW is quite demanding, let alone attempting on an iPad.

I once installed a PS version on my iPad, but installed it after the first runs on images from RAW of roughly 35 MB. On the other hand, a 45mp camera must offer decent in-camera processing functionality, I guess.

The iPad would cope perfectly well with that, and depending on the type of edits required - I wouldn’t so easily just dismiss LR on the iPad either.

 

[sparksd]

The iPad would cope perfectly well with that, and depending on the type of edits required - I wouldn’t so easily just dismiss LR on the iPad either.

I do some editing with LR on my M1 12.9 - Canon RAW images (30+MB) - and find that while it is not a full-up LR, it is quite satisfactory for use. I've been using Lightroom since its Beta release on desktops & laptops and it is my primary processing app.

 

[ihakim]

8gb of ram on my iPad M1 Pro does just fine with craw files from the canon r5 which is the camera I assume you are referring to

 

[darngooddesign]

I take it your problem won't just be the specs of the iPad, but the fact that the LR iPad version probably is a poor downgrade of the LR in your Mac. A 45mp camera will produce RAW files of more or less twice that size in MB. Doing proper digital processing on TIFF from such RAW is quite demanding, let alone attempting on an iPad.

I once installed a PS version on my iPad, but installed it after the first runs on images from RAW of roughly 35 MB. On the other hand, a 45mp camera must offer decent in-camera processing functionality, I guess.

My 1TB M1 iPad has no problem with my 40MP Fuji Raws in Lightroom. I haven’t noticed any real difference compared to my 26MP Fuji Raws.

 

[cupcakes2000]

I do some editing with LR on my M1 12.9 - Canon RAW images (30+MB) - and find that while it is not a full-up LR, it is quite satisfactory for use. I've been using Lightroom since its Beta release on desktops & laptops and it is my primary processing app.

I find that although it’s clearly missing functions from LRC, and for some stuff it’s a pain workflow wise, for edits and the quality of them, including masking, it’s identical result wise.

 

[bradman83]

I take it your problem won't just be the specs of the iPad, but the fact that the LR iPad version probably is a poor downgrade of the LR in your Mac. A 45mp camera will produce RAW files of more or less twice that size in MB. Doing proper digital processing on TIFF from such RAW is quite demanding, let alone attempting on an iPad.

I once installed a PS version on my iPad, but installed it after the first runs on images from RAW of roughly 35 MB. On the other hand, a 45mp camera must offer decent in-camera processing functionality, I guess.

Lightroom for iPad is largely at feature parity with desktop Lightroom CC for editing. All of Adobe's latest updates like advanced masking and color grading are there. The two main missing features are panorama and HDR merging, both of which are due to memory limitations on older iPads. It's not like Photoshop which has a dramatically reduced feature set on the iPad version. (Note that this is in comparison to Lightroom CC, not Lightroom Classic, though Lightroom CC has largely caught up to Classic in most areas for editing tools).

An iPad Pro with an M-series chip and 8 GB of RAM is more than suitable for running Lightroom and occasionally exporting TIFFs for more fine-tuned editing to either Photoshop or Affinity Photo. Remember Apple added virtual memory support in iPadOS 16 for M-series models so they can access an additional 16GB of memory swap.

 

[apostolosdt]

Thanks, bradman83, good to hear that LR offers a better experience on iPads than the analogous PS version.