Could an iPad Pro alone be all you need to edit photos in Lightroom? It’s a simple question with a simple answer (it’s not):
Can Adobe Lightroom on iPad give you everything you need to edit your photos?
Before diving into trying to answer this question for you, I’ll share my experience so far. For the first time since COVID-19 hit, I was planning to travel outside of my area and I wanted to be able to back up my photos from the memory card while still being able to browse through them if the occasion presented during my travel, I also modified some of the photos.
I considered bringing my 16-inch Macbook Pro because I don’t have an iPad yet, and I was worried that learning how to set up a brand new Lightroom would mean I wouldn’t be able to build out my established workflow and (what I consider) efficient. At the end of the day, however, I decided not to take Apple’s heaviest laptop with me, but instead for a much lighter and more portable alternative. Before diving into the details, I’m very pleased with my purchase, and even though I’ve been home for a few weeks, I’ve never once used my laptop for photo editing – I opted for the iPad My Pro 11″.
Apple iPad Pro and Adobe Lightroom
The answer to the standing question is quite simple: “It depends.” For every photo I take on the trip, editing on my iPad covers all my needs. Of course, there are things Lightroom on the iPad can’t do that can be done on a laptop or desktop computer. These restrictions simply did not affect my photos for this special occasion. So let’s start with what the iPad version of Lightroom (i.e. the mobile version of Lightroom) can do. For starters, let me say that almost anything you can do with Lightroom Classic can be done with the mobile version of Lightroom. There are a few things that Lightroom Mobile can’t do, although some of those things can be very important to many photographers.
Editing tools in both
- White balance (temperature and tone)
- Lighting (exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks)
- Tone curve (global channels and red, green, and blue)
- Hue (vibrance, saturation)
- Texture and clarity
- Hue, saturation and hue
- Color gradient
- Texture, Transparency, Opacity, and Vignette
- Sharpen and reduce noise
- healing brush
- Selective editing (radial filter, linear filter, and selective brush)
Editing tools not available in Lightroom Mobile
- Brightness Mask
- HDR Photo Collage
- Synthesis of panoramic photos
Will Lightroom on iPad be all you need?
If you’re the type of photographer that frequently needs or wants to use a luminosity mask, then just using an iPad won’t be for you. The same is true if you frequently merge photos. I suspect this shortcoming disproportionately affects landscape photographers, for whom these techniques are fairly common. If these techniques aren’t a hit or miss for you, I doubt you’ll find editing with an iPad very enjoyable.
Before I picked up the iPad, I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy editing as much as I do on a computer because I was worried that the raw files from my Sony a7R II would be too much for the iPad and I would experiment with it a bit. delays in editing or Lightroom for mobile would be too different from what I know. I was also worried that I wouldn’t want to draw on the photo myself when using the Selective Brush.
In short, I have nothing to fear. Lightroom reacts very quickly to any changes, maybe even faster than my MacBook Pro. Being able to interact more with photos through the touch screen is great and helps me feel more connected to the process. Also, while Lightroom Mobile is a bit different from Lightroom Classic, it’s more like it than it is, so switching between the two shouldn’t be difficult at all. Finally, one thing that makes the experience better is that the Lightroom profiles that I use regularly on my computer are also available on mobile Lightroom.
Other benefits unrelated to photography
With all this said about Lightroom, you’d think that’s the only reason why you might love and enjoy buying an iPad, but that’s not true. If you fly frequently, the ability to download movies and shows for offline viewing can become a plus. Almost all (if not all) streaming services allow you to do this with most or all of their content. When you travel a lot, you’re bound to experience annoying delays here and there, and being able to stream content to avoid frustration and boredom is pretty cool.
Plus, if you have an Adobe Photography subscription, you can also have Adobe Fresco, which is awesome. If you are more talented at drawing and painting than I am, you can do great creative work. If you’re more like me and prefer “drawing” on tracing paper rather than drawing from scratch, you can upload a photo and paint over it, turning layers on and off just like you would in Photoshop. The result is a great creative way to pass the time that gives you another outlet to enjoy some of your photos.
Conclusion
I can really recommend an iPad with Adobe Lightroom for your photo editing needs. That said, it’s probably best to add a laptop or desktop as there are some limitations that can hold you back in some cases – this is especially true if you’re a photographer. landscape and often collage or use shading. For me, it’s a much better travel option than my 16-inch Macbook Pro due to its size and weight. In the future, when I try other apps for photo editing, I suspect that I might like it even more 바카라사이트.
And you? Have you ever used an iPad to edit photos? How do you think this compares to using a laptop or desktop computer?