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| On a hotel room desktop is the entirety of my ‘short’ travel photographic editing gear. I import into the iPad Pro using the SD card reader, edit in Lightroom Mobile with the Apple Pencil Pro and then backup my image files onto a Samsung T7 SSD drive connected to a USB-C hub. (click to enlarge) |
A couple of weeks ago I conducted an experiment to see how easily it is to import and edit my image files in Lightroom Mobile (LRM) on my new 13” iPad Pro. Needing to know if this workflow will work with all of my digital cameras, I shot several photos with each of them. I then opened LR Mobile on my iPad to import and edit them—at this point for practice only.
Before using this new set up on the road, I tried all three brands and two memory card types to ensure they were recognized by the iPad as well as just subjectively looked at speed of data transfer. I was especially interested in a) making sure that the iPad recognized each of the different brand camera’s raw image files, especially the Fuji raw files which, as you know, are a bit different from everyone else’s and b) making sure it recognized the CFExpress B card from the Z8. The good news is everything was recognized in all configurations I tried with the different readers/hub uploading the files quickly. Data transfer to the iPad Pro was satisfactorily quick enough for my purposes. It did not feel slower than using my laptop. I did not time anything, however. Purely subjective.
For importing image files on to the iPad I have an Apple USB-C (the iPad port) to SD Card reader (which works with my OM, Fuji and Nikon Zf image files) as well as a USB-C to CFExpress B Card reader (for use with the Nikon Z8’s image files). I also have a USB-C hub, which I normally use with my laptop when traveling. The hub has two USB-C ports (one of which can deliver power to the iPad or a computer as well), two USB-A 3.0 ports and an SD card slot. Using the hub I can plug it into the iPad and everything else, like backup hard drives, into the hub. The iPad, unfortunately, has only one port so using a hub makes it easy to upload as well as back up my files.
I spent about 45 minutes just playing in LRM, editing the images using the Apple Pencil Pro, trying to find and learn how each of the different controls LRM work and how they are different from LR Classic (on my laptop) and edit my files as I would at my desk. One feature that seems to work better in LR Mobile than in LR Classic, I think (I haven’t used it enough to make a final judgment), is the ‘Auto’ command in the Develop module. It really does a nice job analyzing the images and automatically adjusting them to look better than raw files would straight out of the camera. Other than dialing down the Vibrance (I don’t like my images artificially oversaturated with color) almost no other editing was necessary—on any of the various cameras’ files. That said, the sample of images were very small and it may not work as well on a larger and more diverse body of work. I may have to try using Auto more often as it can save a lot of time when dealing with a lot of images.
The editing went fine. Without any tutorials or research, I was able to find almost all of the controls I normally use in Lightroom Classic. If I couldn’t find something a quick internet search turned up the answer. The pencil worked well, better than a mouse. Or a rat. Or even a trained monkey! Lol.
A nice bonus is that the images imported into Lightroom Mobile will automatically upload to Adobe’s Cloud and then download to my laptop and LR Classic when I next open it. No backups, seemingly, necessary as Adobe’s Cloud will temporarily store a backup copy of each file. Being cautious, however, when I travel I will take a small 2TB USB-C SSD drive as a backup, just in case. So far, I am happy with what I’ve been able to do.
I’m experimenting with this new system because my plan is to continue to try to reduce what I normally take, photographically speaking (both cameras/lenses as well as editing gear), when I travel. As you have read in my blog over the years I’ve continually strived for smaller, lighter, less expensive but retain high quality. That has been my goal. I’ll admit I fail sometimes but that is always in the back of my head, so to speak. I can accomplish that now with my camera gear and hopefully, I think, I can also do that with my computer/Lightroom/backup procedures. The real test is when I next travel.
UPDATE:
I just returned from 5 days of travel with my wife. I took only one camera, 2 lenses, my iPad Pro and the accessories mentioned above. As I have done in the past when I have traveled with my laptop (which contains my Lightroom Classic catalog) as well as taking a Wacom tablet and stylus and two SSD backup drives, I uploaded my images in the hotel each night to the iPad and did some initial editing on some. Did it work? Yes! Wonderfully! No problems at all. Everything worked as I had hoped. I now plan to use this system in the future for shorter trips.
However, there is one downside I found that didn’t work quite as well as I had hoped. That is the speed at which the image files are uploaded from LR Mobile on my iPad to Adobe’s Cloud. At this point I don’t know if it was the speed of the hotel’s internet connection (notoriously and agonizingly slow upload speeds) or the speed of Adobe’s Cloud, but it was pretty slow. That said, I was working with 40mp raw image files from my Fujifilm X-T5 so the files were quite large. So there’s that. I wouldn’t want to count on uploading 200-300 or more images each evening unless I have time to let my iPad sit around with LRM open and showing on the screen. I say open and showing on the screen because it seems when you simultaneously open another app to use, a browser for example, the uploading stops until you bring LRM back to view. At least that is what I was consistently experiencing. I hope Adobe/Apple fixes that one day.
In the future, what I will most likely do is utilize the iPad method when travel is a week or so and the full laptop and peripherals when travel is longer. For example, on my 23-day road trip earlier this year, I shot about 6000 images over those 23 days. Using the iPad method for that many images would not be an efficient way to handle that volume of files. After returning home all of those images would have to be keyworded, folders created for each new geographic location in which I photographed and then the files moved to either existing or the newly created folders within LR Classic. Just trying to remember where each image was made and ensure the keywords were correct and filed in the proper geographic folder would be trying. (Keywording is available using LRM but I didn’t realize it at the time of this recent trip.) Nightly importing, keywording and filing using my laptop and LR Classic is much easier than trying to deal with thousands of image files all at once after returning home. The iPad method with that volume of image files would not be advantageous. However, if there are only a few hundred images, I think the iPad workflow is quite workable.
I would be interested in your thoughts about this new workflow of uploading and editing image files.
If you have any questions of comments, please do so below or you can email me. My email can be found on my website.
Hi Dennis, thanks for this, very interesting and answers my own questions about whether this would be viable if I were to wish to use an iPad instead of my MBP for travel, with camera in tow. I appreciate you taking the time, as always, to help others out by posting such well-considered and useful articles, as well as your artistic work, which I enjoy for completely different reasons!
ReplyDeleteJames, thank you so much for the compliments. I appreciate them very much. Knowing that I may have helped another keeps me writing and posting. Also, thanks for the kind words about my photographs. If I can answer any other questions about this travel and editing method, you can ask here or email me privately. My email address can be found on my website. ~Dennis
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