Which iPad for Lightroom CC

[mikep81489855]

I am considering buying an iPad to replace an aging Android tablet. The most demanding application will be my mobile Lightroom CC workflow. I have tried this workflow on my 3 year old Android tablet (hopeless), and on my work Surface Pro 4 (better, but apalling battery life). I also tried it on my wife's iPad 9.7 2017 which seemed very promising, but a bit laggy occasionally.

Just about all of the reviews of Lightroom CC on iPad are on a Pro. With the new iPad 2018 9.7 having a similar processor to the Pro, but 2mb memory vs 4mb, I was wondering  if there is much difference in how LR CC runs between the two models. Considering that the 9.7 is half the price of the Pro, is it good enough?

[selondon]

I think it depends what you are using it for and maybe the size of the files.

I shoot mainly jpg and do light editing so the 2017 iPad 9.7 is as you say, pretty good.

If I was shooting mainly RAW, heavy editing and using it professionally then maybe I would upgrade. It has a better screen as well, doesn’t it?

iPad 2018 come with support for Apple Pencil also.

[mikep81489855]

Thanks. Shooting RAW and the iPad would be mostly for travel photography. I very much a keen amateur! Sounds like the 2018 would suffice, and the screen is certainly good enough based on the 2017 being the same.

Would be great to hear if anyone has experience with the new one.

[MontyMontgomery]

I am using a 10.5 iPad Pro.  I shoot jpg.  No performance issues.  The iPad is very fast.

Be aware that at this point Apple does not allow direct access to a connected USB drive or SD card.  Photos on my connected SD card are imported into Apple Photos.  From there the photos can be imported into LRCC.

I hope that changes in iOS 12.  I would love LR to be able to impout directly from my SD card

Monty

[Jao vdL]

Will you be importing any raw files through the sd card reader directly to the iPad? It's already been mentioned that you get the duplication issue because of the inability of Lightroom to directly access the card reader (Apple's problem), but there is a secondary issue in that only some iPads allow for better than USB 2 speed in copying off the sd card.  The 9.7" iPad pro for example only does USB 2. USB 3.0 speed is supported on the 10.5 and 12.9" Pros. It is unclear whether Apple supports USB 3 speeds on the newer non-pro iPads. Also, you can only get USB 3.0 speeds on newer versions of the sd card reader. This makes a big difference in how long it takes to import.

[mikep81489855]

Thanks. Will check on USB3.

It was this kind of walled garden crap that pushed me to Android a few years ago! Got to work out if I can live with the double import to get the smooth experience with processing.

[pawelwach]

Any confirmed news about new iPad 9.7 USB3 support and performance with Raw files?

[Jao vdL]

According to this:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/05/compared-2018-ipad-versus-the-original-129-inch-and-97-inch-ipad-pro

the new 9.7" still only supports USB 2 and only the large iPad Pro supports

3.0

[mikep81489855 · Accepted solution]

So, I bought it and and can now report from experience!

Fiirst of all, it is worth noting that Apple Stores offer a 14 day money back gaurantee, so there is little risk.

The preformable is exceptionally good! Can’t believe what has been achieved with 2GB of RAM considering how the desktop version struggles.

I just imported 70 RAW photos from my Oly EM1 using the Apple SD card reader. The import into IOS Photos (the necessary evil step), and that took less than a minute. I don’t understand the USB2 vs USB3 argument, it is a Lightning connector after all, but this must be faster than USB2??  This is substantially faster than my desktop.

I am not sure exactly how Lightroom pulls them in from there. I opened Lightroom, got briefly distracted, and when I looked back they had been imported. Again, this would have taken less than a minute.

I was then ready to edit. No waiting around for Smart Previews. I was straight in. By the time I had done a first pass through the pictures (maybe 5 mins) they were uploaded to the cloud! There was no lag in editing them whatsoever.

So compared with all the other methods I have used - a powerful Windows desktop, my Galaxy S7 with the Android app, and (worst of all), my work Surface Pro, this wins hands down. Unbelievably good!

[mikep81489855]

And one more thing...

On the Surface Pro, this could not be done on battery. It would die within an hour. On the Ipad, the import and about an hour of editing was less than 10% of the battery.

[Jao vdL]

mikep81489855  wrote

I don’t understand the USB2 vs USB3 argument, it is a Lightning connector after all, but this must be faster than USB2??  This is substantially faster than my desktop.

On the non-pro iPads supposedly the lightning connector implements USB 2 to connect to the sd card reader and has all the limitations of USB 2. This means that the maximum speed is somewhere around 20 MB/s. If you routinely import a 1000 raw images or so it will take 25 minutes to do that. 5 minutes for 70 images therefore sounds reasonable for USB 2. So if that amount of images is what you normally do, this should work fine. The faster connector on the iPad pro will cut the time needed in half depending on what speed sd card you use. On my desktop, importing is many times faster using a fast card reader than on my relatively glacial iPad with the standard sd card reader. The difference is huge. Then the uploading will take hours normally but I usually deal with around 1000 images to import every time indeed so my use case is quite different.

[stefanw21315169]

Hi mikep,

do you need an internet connection to import photos to Lightroom CC? At least on my Android tablet I can't add photos to my library as long as I don't have an active internet connection.

Cheers,
Stefan