Leaving The Laptop At Home; Using An iPad Pro Instead Of A Laptop For Cataloging And Editing When Traveling

Apple iPad Pro and Apple Pencil (Image Courtesy of The Verge)
Image for Educational Use Only

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I have to admit that, at times when traveling, I tire of carrying a backpack with me whose only function is to carry my 15" Windows 10 laptop, AC adapter, 2 USB 3.0 portable hard drives, Wacom tablet, power strip, extension cord, and the various chargers and cords for my wife's and my electronic devices.  Not only is it a pain and require extra space to bring all this along, each night it has to be unloaded from the car and taken into the hotel then loaded back into our car each morning.   

My normal nightly travel procedure is to take the laptop and support stuff out of the backpack, plug it all in, boot up the computer, attach the 2 external hard drives, attach the Wacom tablet, open Lightroom (LR), then upload and backup all of the images I may have taken that day.  I don't upload them to the computer's hard drive (a 1TB SSD), but to one of the portable USB 3.0 hard drives.  The other portable hard drive is purely a backup medium for insurance.  Sometimes it seems it takes as much time to set everything up as it does to actually upload my images!  It shouldn't be that way, should it?

When traveling, I create a separate LR travel catalog for each trip.  As I import all of my images, I create folders that mimic the folder structure in my master LR catalog at home,  keyword each image (important for stock photography as well as searching and finding specific images in the future) and apply any "import" preset I may feel appropriate, such as the one that contains my contact data and copyright information.  When I return home, and this is where it is very convenient to use the portable USB drive instead of the computer's hard drive, I merely take the portable USB drive, connect it to my desktop, open LR CC Classic, then "import from another catalog."  This puts all of my images, file structure, keywords, import preset, i.e., everything just as I saved it directly into my master LR catalog.  I then delete the travel catalog and the backup images from the two portable hard drives and reformat my SD cards (Never before I have at least 3 copies of all of my images saved).

I've been very successful with this procedure as uploading images each evening, especially if I am on an extensive trip, allows me to file and keyword my images while the locations and subject matter is fresh in my mind.  Coming home after 4 weeks on the road and trying to think about where a particular image was made or details about a particular image can be a bit daunting.  

However....

My backpack, laptop and perifpherals I always have taken with me when traveling so I can upload, keyword and
catalog my images each night. The iPad and pencil above is a nice alternative if?   (click to enlarge)

I wanted to find out if there is a viable and simpler alternative to my tried and true procedure by using an iPad.  I took an iPad Pro with me on the recent road trip my wife and I made to Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.

For my birthday earlier this year, my dear wife bought a 12.9" iPad Pro with 512gb of storage for me.  My daughter and her husband bought the Apple Pencil as well.  Gee, I wonder where they got the idea that I wanted these?  Hmmmm.  Lol.  Of course, the reason is that I made it known that I wanted to try and find an alternative method for dealing with my travel images and leave the laptop and associated paraphernalia at home.  I have a wonderful family!  :-)

Before leaving, I studied the capabilities of the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil as well as the image editing apps available.   Also I learned how Adobe's Cloud automatically synchronizes your images from your portable device with your computer.  Now, this is not a comprehensive review or in-depth assessment of how an iPad Pro works as a portable photo imaging editing platform.  This post is intended to give you some information from my recent foray in using my iPad Pro instead of a laptop with the sole intention of ascertaining if an iPad Pro is a viable substitute for a laptop.

Here is how I used the iPad Pro instead of my laptop, my preliminary thoughts, what pros and cons I discovered and my initial conclusion.

Apple Lightning to SD Card Reader
Image courtesy of Amazon.com
For Educational Use Only

1) At the end of each day, I attached the Apple Lightning to SD Card Reader (view it here) to my iPad and uploaded the day's images into my photo roll.  A slow process, slower than LR's import! (I think it is about USB 2 speed)

2) I then opened Lightroom CC (used to be called Lightroom Mobile) on my iPad and copied just the uploaded images into this app.  I did not copy all of the images in the photo roll into LR CC.

3) As soon as the images are in LR CC and if you already have LR Classic on your computer set up to sync with mobile, the images start to sync through Adobe’s Cloud.  Before I left home I enabled my Lightroom Classic to sync with my mobile devices.  It is important to set that up before you leave home.  It is easy and straightforward to do.

4) If you have left your computer at home turned on and LR Classic open, the images go right into LR.  If you don’t, they stay in Adobe’s Cloud until the next time you open LR Classic.

5) Your images don't disappear and are not deleted from the iPad when synced.  You can also edit them on the iPad in LIghtroom CC if you desire.  You may want to do this if you want to send out an image or two and/or post to social media.  After editing, you can save a particular image back to your photo roll so you can send it out if you desire.  

Editing will be familiar and can be pretty easily done with or without the Apple Pencil.  The editing controls and sliders are the same as in Lightroom Classic, but you don’t have all of the editing features you have in Classic and Photoshop so there are limitations.

6) Whenever you edit an image, it is automatically updated through the cloud to your home computer as well.

7) Before I left home, I did something I normally don't do but wanted to make sure this system worked as I thought it was supposed to work.  I didn't want any surprises.  I left my desktop computer plugged in and LR running to ensure the images would synchronize successfully.  Since then, I learned I don't need to do this as the images will stay in Adobe's Cloud until I return and open LR.  In the future, I will unplug all of my electronics as I normally do when away from home.  Even though all of my electronics run through heavy duty surge protectors and backup batteries, my fear is that a lightning strike or a power drop will somehow get through and destroy everything.

To continue, once I saw the images had finished syncing (in the upper right corner of the iPad screen there is a little cloud icon with a + in it if images are syncing), I deleted the images from Lightroom CC, which in turn removed them from the Adobe Cloud.  They do remain on my home computer.  This freed up my limited free cloud space for future uploads.  

This is important.  If you don't have your computer at home up and running LR as I did, you don't want to delete your images in Lightroom CC on your iPad as it will delete them from the cloud as well.  Leave them there until they are actually on your home computer.

8) Since I had my images on the two camera SD cards (primary and simultaneous backup), the second portable hard drive and now in the Adobe Cloud, I  deleted them from my iPad's camera roll as I didn't need to keep another additional copy.  Also, I wanted to free up space on the iPad itself for future imports.  If your iPad has lots of memory, or you don't have two memory cards in your camera, you certainly can allow them to stay in your camera roll until you return home.

That is about as easy as it gets.  I found the process pretty straightforward but it has drawbacks as well.  Here are the pros and cons I initially discovered.  There may be more.  If you know of others, please leave a comment so we all can benefit from your knowledge.

Pros...

The LR CC mobile app is free.

The procedure is easy and straightforward.

This allows you to leave your laptop and all the supporting stuff at home.  You save as lot of space, time and energy.

Your iPad automatically imports your images when you connect the dongle (either all or you can select which ones).

You can edit, color correct, crop, sharpen, use the brush and graduated filter tool, etc. with the iPad and those changes are immediately updated and sent over the cloud to your home computer.  Not all controls are in the mobile version of LR CC but a good number are there for you to do a majority if not all of your preliminary editing if you want to send some of your images out immediately.

The Apple Pencil works best with the brush and gradient tools in Lightroom CC to edit small portions of an image.  However, I found it is easier for me to use my finger to adjust the sliders for exposure, highlights, shadows, color, clarity, white balance, etc.

At the end of each day, using this methodology I can have as many as four copies of my images stored in different locations.  Each memory card from the camera, on my iPad and either in Adobe’s Cloud or in my Lightroom Classic at home.

Cons...

Import into you iPad is painfully slow!  I suspect is is about the speed of USB 2.

I haven't found a way to set up a file structure with this procedure to mimic my main catalog's file structure on my desktop.  All images synced are in one folder on your home version of LR Classic.  Because I travel frequently, my file structure is based upon geographic location.  For example, I have a folder for each of the 50 United States.  Under each folder, I have a folder for each city, county or town in which I make images.  In those sub-folders go my images by year and date.  I can't find a way to mimic this in the mobile version of Lightroom CC.  

You can’t use an import preset containing your copyright information, name, address, phone number, website, etc. and automatically put into the EXIF data as we can do in LR.  Don't forget to add it when you return home.  Some cameras have this information built into the EXIF data and you can set that in your menu but other cameras do not.

Cannot add keywords. That is crucial for me.

There is no perspective correction in the cropping tools, just basic cropping.

When I return home, I have to bring up all of the images, add copyright and ownership information, add keywords, create the file structure, then physically move them from the one synchronizing folder to their proper folders in my main catalog.  Lots of work.

As I said, these are the pros and cons as I initially found them.  But there are some solutions to some of the cons.

For the tools lacking in Lightroom CC, you have the option of several excellent apps that have those missing tools.  I have Photoshop Express and Snapseed on my iPad.  Both, I believe, are free and have many of the tools that are missing in Lightroom CC. They work well.

Affinity Photo is almost an exact copy of Photoshop.  From the tutorials I've watched, I don't see anything missing in the Affinity app that I use when I have to go into Photoshop.  It is a very powerful and very comprehensive app for your mobile or desktop environment.  The cost for the mobile version is only $19.99 US.  Unbelieveably reasonable.  The desktop version is $49.99 US.  Another terrific bargain.  

Will I adopt this procedure and leave my laptop at home in the future?  Maybe.  Short trips may work better than longer ones due to the limitations.  For longer trips I think, for me, it depends upon the ability to create some sort of file structure and add keywords in a mobile environment.  If I can't do that, the work when returning home becomes almost overwhelming.  I may have a few thousand images that would have to be recalled, cataloged, keyworded, etc.  That is a huge task.  Despite the extra gear, weight and effort in taking my laptop and associated support stuff, it is much easier to sit each evening for a short time and while things are fresh in my mind, than to try to do all of this after returning home.

I hope you found this interesting and helpful.  Also, I hope someone out there has some additional answers to the cons I mentioned.  I like using the iPad as compared to the laptop and all of the stuff I have to bring with it as the iPad is small, lightweight and easy to use but right now the drawbacks outweigh the benefits.

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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