iPad Pro iPad Pro Visual Artists Photographers etc

[drewsdiner]

Hey all,

I have been hoping to find a specific thread reading opinion from Visual Artists, Photographers, Graphic Designers and the likes who happen to own an iPad Pro 9.7, 12 or both even?

Myself having the usual dilemma particularly with the screen size as I am a visual artist who plays in many mediums I.e. Installations, drawings, photomontage, photography. The main thing about the pro for me is the drawings and photoshop work. At the moment I am leaning towards the 12" pro for my work because of more screen real estate but are there creatives who can pull off their work using the 9.7"?

There are many pros and cons like 12 will be amazing for work specifically and how does the general iPad usage experience fair? but the same time I like the smaller iPad the fact it's a more compact machine for work and general usage too but then the smaller screen could feel a lot cramp? Needing to zoom in more?

I did play with both iPad at Apple Store today but wish I could spend a week with one each...

Would love to hear from the experiences creatives as it could be valuable to me

 

[sjleworthy]

for me, also a visual artist, it's a complete no brainer. 12 inch all the way. i've used a regular ipad for the last 5 years most successfully, but the large Pro is a thing of joy and a beauty to behold.

i have found it isn't much use for image creation for me personally, on a professional bases at least, but the portability and client wow factor alone using it as a portfolio and gallery screen when meeting clients out and about is second to none. really really amazing.

pros and cons are a most personal thing. how do you use tech? what is your workflow? what exactly is your preference in content creation?

for me personally i'm a staunt pc/windows man. laptops and ipads are a bit of eye candy. impossible to help in my daily image creation grind. but wonderful things for admin and client presentations.

 

[Loveandterror]

Are there any good photo editing apps for the iPad Pro???

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Are there any good photo editing apps for the iPad Pro???

You could use Photoshop Fix, Procreate (for certain comping and painting on top) and Pixelmator.

But right now none can really take over the desktop equivalents even though the horse power is available.

 

[drewsdiner]

for me, also a visual artist, it's a complete no brainer. 12 inch all the way. i've used a regular ipad for the last 5 years most successfully, but the large Pro is a thing of joy and a beauty to behold.

i have found it isn't much use for image creation for me personally, on a professional bases at least, but the portability and client wow factor alone using it as a portfolio and gallery screen when meeting clients out and about is second to none. really really amazing.

pros and cons are a most personal thing. how do you use tech? what is your workflow? what exactly is your preference in content creation?

for me personally i'm a staunt pc/windows man. laptops and ipads are a bit of eye candy. impossible to help in my daily image creation grind. but wonderful things for admin and client presentations.

Thank you for your input here. I feel the same here it's a no brainer to get hold of a 12 inch screen as I know will be perfect for my work as I would be working a lot on it, a good upgrade from my Wacom bamboo tablet. My only standstill is the fact I will be forking A LOT out on the 128gb 12" along with a pencil.

I also want to be very comfortable using it as a daily consuming device for social media, browsing, communication on days I am not working so it doesn't just sits on the desk gathering dust.

I think it should be GRAND and need to stop worrying really as it will do the job all round. Still much lighter than my MacBook Pro.

Was hoping to hear from more creatives regarding what they have and their inputs. One artist on Twitter makes brilliant work using his 9.7 iPads alone but did mention more screen real estate won't hurt.

 

[dmcnickle]

I use my 12.9" iPad Pro for all of my photo artistic composition work. I use a combination of apps to accomplish what I want and have not used my laptop for a long time. You have to learn to be flexible and willing to use more than one app to get the effects that you want.

I use several different apps to prep my photos. Leonardo is my go to app for assembling my compositions. It allows me to use and rearrange many different layers. There are times I use 10+ different versions of my photo, created to different apps, to get a very unique look.

The Apple Pencil is wonderful. It is great to be able to edit directly on the photo instead of a Wacom looking at the screen. I also use a Sensu brush stylus when I want to do lighter type masking or brush strokes.

The size is not a factor in the iPP portability. I love being able to go to a local coffee shop, put on my headphones and create for hours.

One thing on charging - last night I was working on some compositions. My battery drained to less than 10%. I plugged it in and continued to work. Contrary to what some have been saying, my iPP did charge as I was using it. By the time I finished, my battery level was up to 38%. I was using 3 different apps and doing some heavy artistic work. I was using the charger that came with my iPP. I have never had any issues with the battery life or charging.

 

[stevemiller]

I got the 9.7 for art leisure. I don't doubt that the 12.9 is a better workspace. But my real workhorse is my 15" mbp for 3D, motion graphics, compositing. Seeing as the iPad isn't replacing that tool anytime soon I opted for the less expensive, and more portable option as a supplementary tool.

I will say that even on the 9.7, the digital painting experience is so much more engaging and rewarding than the Wacom intuos that I never fully embraced.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

Hey all,

I have been hoping to find a specific thread reading opinion from Visual Artists, Photographers, Graphic Designers and the likes who happen to own an iPad Pro 9.7, 12 or both even?

Myself having the usual dilemma particularly with the screen size as I am a visual artist who plays in many mediums I.e. Installations, drawings, photomontage, photography. The main thing about the pro for me is the drawings and photoshop work. At the moment I am leaning towards the 12" pro for my work because of more screen real estate but are there creatives who can pull off their work using the 9.7"?

There are many pros and cons like 12 will be amazing for work specifically and how does the general iPad usage experience fair? but the same time I like the smaller iPad the fact it's a more compact machine for work and general usage too but then the smaller screen could feel a lot cramp? Needing to zoom in more?

I did play with both iPad at Apple Store today but wish I could spend a week with one each...

Would love to hear from the experiences creatives as it could be valuable to me

I've found my 12" iPP to be very nice for sketching ideas on-the-go in Procreate and Sketchbook Pro. But I gave up trying to use it for finished professional work because it's just not large enough. I was trained to use my entire arm when sketching/painting, so a 27" Wacom Cintiq monitor/tablet has been a much better fit even though the Wacom tech is a lot less line-accurate.

If you're comfortable drawing that small, you can get an app called "Astropad" that lets you use it as a wireless drawing screen for a Mac.

For normal iPad stuff, like reading or web browsing, the larger Pro is a pain. Comics can be read at 1:1 size, and movies are a pleasure to watch in bed with the wife. But for everything else it's heavy and awkward to use. You can get shells for it that include keyboards and the like for taking notes (which works well), but then you're carrying around something as large/heavy as an iPad Air that will annoy you because there aren't actually that many non-drawing productivity apps available. Even then, you have to use your finger, or the pencil (held by the cap-end like a chopstick as you tap the screen with the tip) to replicate mouse clicks. But then you have to put the pen down when you want to type.

This all means that I end up carrying around a MacBook Pro AND the iPad Pro when traveling for work. Which is annoying, as each does 95% of what the other does. It's the missing 5% of functionality that gets you.
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Are there any good photo editing apps for the iPad Pro???

Drawing and painting? Oh yes. Photo editing and tweaking? Nope. Even the color-correction apps intended for photographers are a mess.

Procreate is probably the most Photoshop-compatible. It can at least read/write PSD files.

 

[thunng8]

Drawing and painting? Oh yes. Photo editing and tweaking? Nope. Even the color-correction apps intended for photographers are a mess.

I don’t agree with that.

Affinity photo is great and has all the features of the desktop version. It is also super fast on an iPad Pro.

Lightroom is also good. Has most of the feature of the desktop version and is also fast. It uses the same raw processing engine as the desktop version so everything should be the same.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

I don’t agree with that.

Affinity photo is great and has all the features of the desktop version. It is also super fast on an iPad Pro.

Lightroom is also good. Has most of the feature of the desktop version and is also fast. It uses the same raw processing engine as the desktop version so everything should be the same.

I haven't used Affinity, but the last time I tried using Lightroom I gave up in frustration at its slowness in processing (hell, just previewing) 24mp RAW images.

 

[sparksd]

I haven't used Affinity, but the last time I tried using Lightroom I gave up in frustration at its slowness in processing (hell, just previewing) 24mp RAW images.

I much prefer Lightroom on my desktop for processing my RAW images. I want the mouse, the larger screen, my custom presets, and the greater horsepower. I've tried with LR and Affinity on my 10.5 iPP and just find it too inefficient from overall ergonomic and workflow perspectives to process anything more than a few images.

 

[thunng8]

I haven't used Affinity, but the last time I tried using Lightroom I gave up in frustration at its slowness in processing (hell, just previewing) 24mp RAW images.

Lightroom for me runs faster (actually much faster) than my laptop which is a 2017 13” MacBook Pro using 36mp raw images. So either you are using a slow iPad ( I have a 2017 12.9”) or a really old version of Lightroom.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

Lightroom for me runs faster (actually much faster) than my laptop which is a 2017 13” MacBook Pro using 36mp raw images. So either you are using a slow iPad ( I have a 2017 12.9”) or a really old version of Lightroom.

I'm using the original iPad Pro from 2 years ago.

 

[thunng8]

I much prefer Lightroom on my desktop for processing my RAW images. I want the mouse, the larger screen, my custom presets, and the greater horsepower. I've tried with LR and Affinity on my 10.5 iPP and just find it too inefficient from overall ergonomic and workflow perspectives to process anything more than a few images.

Yes workflow is a bit of a hassle in terms importing images. Affinity however is working on direct import from sd card in next version. Hopefully that will alleviate the kludge of importing to photos app and then affinity and having 2 copies of same file.
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I'm using the original iPad Pro from 2 years ago.

Maybe you should try again with new version of Lightroom? It is fast on mine so shouldnt be that much slower in previous iPad Pro. Also having a pencil helps a lot with manipulating ui interface elements

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

Maybe you should try again with new version of Lightroom? It is fast on mine so shouldnt be that much slower in previous iPad Pro. Also having a pencil helps a lot with manipulating ui interface elements

I might try it again if I used a JPEG workflow, but the read performance from the lightning card reader was not anywhere near fast enough to work with dozens of 30MB RAW files. I'd futz with it for half an hour and only finish tweaking 3-4 images.

 

[sparksd]

I might try it again if I used a JPEG workflow, but the read performance from the lightning card reader was not anywhere near fast enough to work with dozens of 30MB RAW files. I'd futz with it for half an hour and only finish tweaking 3-4 images.

Talking about downloading from the SD card itself? If so, are you using the new reader that supports USB 3 speed? I updated form the old reader and it's a world of difference.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

Talking about downloading from the SD card itself? If so, are you using the new reader that supports USB 3 speed? I updated form the old reader and it's a world of difference.

How long has that new reader been out?

And does it work under the latest iOS? I'm seeing lots of complaints about it not working anymore after the update.

 

[sparksd]

How long has that new reader been out?

And does it work under the latest iOS? I'm seeing lots of complaints about it not working anymore after the update.

Came out about Dec 2015 - it has a slightly different shape from the older one -

https://9to5mac.com/2015/12/12/review-apple-usb-3-lightning-to-sd-card-camera-reader/

It is much faster and it works for me with JPEG & RAW on my iPP 10.5" running 11.2.2.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

Came out about Dec 2015 - it has a slightly different shape from the older one -

https://9to5mac.com/2015/12/12/review-apple-usb-3-lightning-to-sd-card-camera-reader/

It is much faster and it works for me with JPEG & RAW on my iPP 10.5" running 11.2.2.

(measures adapter...) Ok, that's the one I have. I even have LR and Affinity Photo installed/updated already.

1) Having to import RAW files into Photos, and then copy them again to Lightroom/Affinity is still a fundamentally broken workflow. I thought that the iOS 11 update was supposed to give us a real file system with direct access to files...

2) Loading of thumbnails is faster now. Basically on-par with the card reader on my 2017 MBP. iMac is 2x faster though.

3) Lightroom is faster than it was, but still annoyingly laggy at displaying color changes. Probably due to my slower A9X chip. UI sucks, but I don't even like the desktop version of Lightroom. I always use Adobe Camera Raw instead.

4) Affinity is very fast/smooth, and just became my preferred RAW program for the iPad (to the extent that I'll ever tweak more than half a dozen snapshots on the thing). But comparing it to Photoshop is quite a bit of a stretch. Still, it would work well enough to tweak an image intended for paint-overs in Procreate.

Overall: Good enough for students I guess, but I still don't see it as a viable option for real pro work. Especially for large shoots where I need to make color corrections across 20-100 RAW images at once and kick out JPEGs quickly for a fast slide show display at the event. The MBP will still be the portable tool for that.

 

[thunng8]

(measures adapter...) Ok, that's the one I have. I even have LR and Affinity Photo installed/updated already.

1) Having to import RAW files into Photos, and then copy them again to Lightroom/Affinity is still a fundamentally broken workflow. I thought that the iOS 11 update was supposed to give us a real file system with direct access to files...

2) Loading of thumbnails is faster now. Basically on-par with the card reader on my 2017 MBP. iMac is 2x faster though.

3) Lightroom is faster than it was, but still annoyingly laggy at displaying color changes. Probably due to my slower A9X chip. UI sucks, but I don't even like the desktop version of Lightroom. I always use Adobe Camera Raw instead.

4) Affinity is very fast/smooth, and just became my preferred RAW program for the iPad (to the extent that I'll ever tweak more than half a dozen snapshots on the thing). But comparing it to Photoshop is quite a bit of a stretch. Still, it would work well enough to tweak an image intended for paint-overs in Procreate.

Overall: Good enough for students I guess, but I still don't see it as a viable option for real pro work. Especially for large shoots where I need to make color corrections across 20-100 RAW images at once and kick out JPEGs quickly for a fast slide show display at the event. The MBP will still be the portable tool for that.

I disagree with that. I've processed 100+ raws in lightroom and have no issues with it. I'm used to Lightroom though and prefer it over the camera raw interface.

As for Affinity Photo - I think its great and getting more feature all the time.

You'll be glad about the workflow changes in the next version off affinity. The next version will be able to directly import from camera (via USB) or from SD card.

Here are the changes in the beta:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/52001-affinity-photo-beta-for-ipad-167-beta-2/

Hopefully Lightroom will also gain those features - because it definitely can be done.

 

[sparksd]

I disagree with that. I've processed 100+ raws in lightroom and have no issues with it. I'm used to Lightroom though and prefer it over the camera raw interface.

As for Affinity Photo - I think its great and getting more feature all the time.

You'll be glad about the workflow changes in the next version off affinity. The next version will be able to directly import from camera (via USB) or from SD card.

Here are the changes in the beta:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/52001-affinity-photo-beta-for-ipad-167-beta-2/

Hopefully Lightroom will also gain those features - because it definitely can be done.

It's looking to be an interesting alternative to Lightroom on iOS, as does the non-subscription PC version for $49.99. I picked up the iOS version for half-price and I will keep up with it.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

I disagree with that. I've processed 100+ raws in lightroom and have no issues with it. I'm used to Lightroom though and prefer it over the camera raw interface.

So you're able to tweak 100+ images simultaneously in Lightroom for iOS? And then export them all in one go to... someplace useful?

I'll keep an eye on Affinity Photo.

 

[sparksd]

So you're able to tweak 100+ images simultaneously in Lightroom for iOS? And then export them all in one go to... someplace useful?

I'll keep an eye on Affinity Photo.

I picked up Affinity for PC trial version yesterday and so far I haven't seen anything that will really encourage me to move from Lightroom. File management is painful and performance lags Lightroom. Definitely a work in progress - as on iOS.

 

[thunng8]

So you're able to tweak 100+ images simultaneously in Lightroom for iOS? And then export them all in one go to... someplace useful?

I'll keep an eye on Affinity Photo.

I’ve already said I have. What issues do you have with Lightroom?
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I picked up Affinity for PC trial version yesterday and so far I haven't seen anything that will really encourage me to move from Lightroom. File management is painful and performance lags Lightroom. Definitely a work in progress - as on iOS.

Affinity photo is not a DAM so aren’t competitors. I still use Lightroom and Open Affinity when I require features that Lightroom doesn’t have.

Agree Affinity for Mac is a bit slow (2017 13” MacBook Pro) I get better performance on my iPad Pro

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

I’ve already said I have. What issues do you have with Lightroom?

You’ve not been specific enough to reassure me. Can you select a dozen or more images and edit/save them all AT THE EXACT SAME TIME? Because I don’t see a way to do that. It looks like you can only edit one image at a time, which is not useful to me.