Q2 & iPad Pro & LR

[paul.bridges.3388]

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A useful combo?  Currently on MacBook but wanting to lighten my load.

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The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[Jared]

Yes, it’s an excellent combo for routine image editing.  Especially with the new features due in the next release of iOS later this fall and the possibility of Photoshop before the end of the year.  

It’s quick.  It’s fun to edit on the iPad.  Lightroom Mobile is actually quite capable now.  And Affinity Photo is quite good for most things requiring layers and more sophisticated editing.  It’s a great combo for travel photography.  If you add the 1 TB of online storage with Lightroom it’s also a good way to backup and share images.  Not perfect, but highly recommended.

So what are the downsides? Lightroom Mobile does not yet do everything Lightroom Classic does.  Also, there is no Photoshop yet.  It’s coming soon. Certain specialty applications are not available for iPad yet (like Starry Landscape Stacker which is one I use).  Printing is basically not supported, at least not if you want a color managed workflow.  Poor support for external monitors.  And the file management is terrible till the next version of iOS.

[Jared]

Yes, it’s an excellent combo for routine image editing.  Especially with the new features due in the next release of iOS later this fall and the possibility of Photoshop before the end of the year.  

It’s quick.  It’s fun to edit on the iPad.  Lightroom Mobile is actually quite capable now.  And Affinity Photo is quite good for most things requiring layers and more sophisticated editing.  It’s a great combo for travel photography.  If you add the 1 TB of online storage with Lightroom it’s also a good way to backup and share images.  Not perfect, but highly recommended.

So what are the downsides? Lightroom Mobile does not yet do everything Lightroom Classic does.  Also, there is no Photoshop yet.  It’s coming soon. Certain specialty applications are not available for iPad yet (like Starry Landscape Stacker which is one I use).  Printing is basically not supported, at least not if you want a color managed workflow.  Poor support for external monitors.  And the file management is terrible till the next version of iOS.

[Vov]

I use Lightroom mobile with Q2 DNG files for quick edits but unfortunately it starts to lag after a few photos have been edited. That is, there is a delay between slider movements and displaying of those changes. Also, share options are severely limited and the maximum resolution rendering seems slow considering the power in a 3rd gen iPad Pro. 

I still use it because I have not discovered anything better. Hopefully with future updates it will run smoother. It supplements my desktop but does not replace it as of now.

[Vov]

I use Lightroom mobile with Q2 DNG files for quick edits but unfortunately it starts to lag after a few photos have been edited. That is, there is a delay between slider movements and displaying of those changes. Also, share options are severely limited and the maximum resolution rendering seems slow considering the power in a 3rd gen iPad Pro. 

I still use it because I have not discovered anything better. Hopefully with future updates it will run smoother. It supplements my desktop but does not replace it as of now.

Edited September 7, 2019 by Vov

[Jared]

3 minutes ago, Vov said:

I use Lightroom mobile with Q2 DNG files for quick edits but unfortunately it starts to lag after a few photos have been edited. That is, there is a delay between slider movements and displaying of those changes. Also, share options are severely limited and the maximum resolution rendering seems slow considering the power in a 3rd gen iPad Pro. 

I still use it because I have not discovered anything better. Hopefully with future updates it will run smoother. It supplements my desktop but does not replace it as of now.

I agree it’s not yet a desktop replacement.  There are workarounds for the “share” limitations that I expect will improve with the next iOS.  You can open edited files in Affinity Photo, for example, and resize to your heart’s content, choose additional file formats for saving, change color space, all that sort of thing.  It cheesy, but it works if you want a particular resolution or file size.  

For the slow edits, have you tried working with local files or leaving the network off?  That should take care of the issue so adjustments will be quick again.  

Full resolution rendering is stupidly slow. Even with a locally stored full res image.  Not sure why.

Overall, I’m still much happier doing work away from home on the iPad vs the MacBook.  Neither compares to a good desktop monitor, though.

[Vov]

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1 hour ago, Jared said:

For the slow edits, have you tried working with local files or leaving the network off?  That should take care of the issue so adjustments will be quick again.  

Overall, I’m still much happier doing work away from home on the iPad vs the MacBook.  Neither compares to a good desktop monitor, though.

Thanks for suggestion. I use local only and still get lag. I think there may be some memory issues when switching between multiple apps. 

But I agree that iPad is preferred over MacBook. I also tend to edit photos differently when going from desktop (old Mac Pro) to iPad. On desktop I strive for accuracy while on iPad I end up trying give the photos a more filtered look, for better or worse.

[Vov]

1 hour ago, Jared said:

For the slow edits, have you tried working with local files or leaving the network off?  That should take care of the issue so adjustments will be quick again.  

Overall, I’m still much happier doing work away from home on the iPad vs the MacBook.  Neither compares to a good desktop monitor, though.

Thanks for suggestion. I use local only and still get lag. I think there may be some memory issues when switching between multiple apps. 

But I agree that iPad is preferred over MacBook. I also tend to edit photos differently when going from desktop (old Mac Pro) to iPad. On desktop I strive for accuracy while on iPad I end up trying give the photos a more filtered look, for better or worse.

[davidginNYC]

I've actually had the opposite experience.  I was using LR on the iPad for the last ~18 months, and I found it very frustrating.  

A minor inconvenience was that there's no real way to cull photos before you import them into LR.  And with lots of files, LR was crawling, despite lots of free memory on my iPad Pro.

For me the bigger issue was that LR Mobile only syncs directly with LR CC on the Mac.  And LR CC just isn't my cup of tea.  My biggest complaint is that you cannot print directly from LR CC, and since I don't typically post photos online, printing is my preferred output.  You can sync your libraries from LR CC to LR CC Classic, but that is a very clunky, and incredibly slow, process.

So what I'm doing right now is I'm using the native Photos apps on iOS and MacOS as my primary libraries.  If I want to do quick edits on the iPad, I use Raw Power.  But I'm back to doing my "heavy" processing for my selects on the Mac, and I'm starting to use Capture One for that.  So to sum up, I'm managing all photos in the Apple Photos libraries, and for the few selects that I want to process and print, I export DNGs and put them in a Capture One library and edit and print from there.  Also, when I can I use PhotoMechanic to do initial culling, so that I can weed out the bad shots before they ever hit the Photos library.

Not the best, but it'll do for now I hope, and I'll see what possibilities the new iPadOS opens up over the next few months.