iPad Pro with Astropad

[Bbqthis]

I don't understand how people are still questioning how creative professionals can use the iPad Pro. Several people on this forum are already seeing that Astropad puts the iPad Pro as a serious competitor (imo, vastly superior one) to any Cintiq in the size range. I've used Astropad quite a lot and my only gripes I have with it at all are the ones related to the way the stylus interacts with the iPad. But if this is eliminated with the Apple Pencil, the iPad Pro seems like a steal compared to the Cintiq.

The entire iPad experience (but larger) + pixel perfect editing and drawing power for the same price as the cheapest Cintiq? And without the weird parallax that the Cintiq screen gives?

Seems like a winning combination.

 

[sfwalter]

Yes I totally agree. I have been toying with getting a cintiq for my photography work however everyone I talked to says don't get it. As its a low res, washed out display.

I'm going to order on day one to check out how it works with AstroPad. The folks who make AstroPad have already said they are working on a version to support the Pencil.

 

[Bbqthis]

Yes I totally agree. I have been toying with getting a cintiq for my photography work however everyone I talked to says don't get it. As its a low res, washed out display.

I'm going to order on day one to check out how it works with AstroPad. The folks who make AstroPad have already said they are working on a version to support the Pencil.

And honestly, cintiqs are not immune to lag! And you're right, their displays are not winning awards. I'm very excited to see Astropad running on iPad Pro

 

[sjleworthy]

I don't understand how people are still questioning how creative professionals can use the iPad Pro. Several people on this forum are already seeing that Astropad puts the iPad Pro as a serious competitor (imo, vastly superior one) to any Cintiq in the size range. I've used Astropad quite a lot and my only gripes I have with it at all are the ones related to the way the stylus interacts with the iPad. But if this is eliminated with the Apple Pencil, the iPad Pro seems like a steal compared to the Cintiq.

The entire iPad experience (but larger) + pixel perfect editing and drawing power for the same price as the cheapest Cintiq? And without the weird parallax that the Cintiq screen gives?

Seems like a winning combination.

I'm hearing all sorts of opinions about the Pro in general not being a useful tool in business, but not the Pencil. nobody knows yet.

personally, cant wait. Unfortunately for me being a Windows user i wont be able to use Astropad as it's mac only, but i'm sure there'll be other compatible apps with my workflow that are equally awesome and important.

 

[bubbagumpshrimp]

I've gone back and forth between the iPad Pro and Surface Pro 4 for photo editing. The ideal would be to use full photoshop on the iPad Pro using Astropad, but from what I've read, Astropad creates lag when tethering. I have a feeling the iPad Pro pencil will be more accurate than the Surface Pro 4 pen, but that benefit will be countered if Astropad creates lag.

 

[Bbqthis]

I've gone back and forth between the iPad Pro and Surface Pro 4 for photo editing. The ideal would be to use full photoshop on the iPad Pro using Astropad, but from what I've read, Astropad creates lag when tethering. I have a feeling the iPad Pro pencil will be more accurate than the Surface Pro 4 pen, but that benefit will be countered if Astropad creates lag.

Use Astropad with a usb cable and the lag problems will be from the stylus, not Astropad. I haven't had issues with it over wifi though.

 

[peterpan123]

Looks good! Better if I could use the iPad PRO as a tablet for 3D applications under Windows.

Is the reason he did not use Pencil because it was not available?

 

[aevan]

Astropad still hasn't received an update for Pencil pressure support (they are working on it), but can anyone tell me is it worth the money? Is the lag (not stylus lag, but the lag caused by transfer) acceptable? I'm thinking of getting it, but it's not a cheap app, so I'd like to know if it's worth it.

 

[anticipate]

Astropad still hasn't received an update for Pencil pressure support (they are working on it), but can anyone tell me is it worth the money? Is the lag (not stylus lag, but the lag caused by transfer) acceptable? I'm thinking of getting it, but it's not a cheap app, so I'd like to know if it's worth it.

I find it nearly lag free when thethered via USB and only slightly worse via wifi. I cannot however get it to work with wifi if I don't plug it in first (then unplugged via wifi is fine).

Pressure and angle seem to work just fine with Astropad and Apple Pencil currently.

 

[sjleworthy]

crying shame it isnt available on pc

 

[peterpan123]

crying shame it isnt available on pc

Will it work if we use Fusion? I do hope that it could work under Bootcamp Windows.

 

[peterpan123]

I find it nearly lag free when thethered via USB and only slightly worse via wifi. I cannot however get it to work with wifi if I don't plug it in first (then unplugged via wifi is fine).

Pressure and angle seem to work just fine with Astropad and Apple Pencil currently.

From the video, I cannot tell there is a lag.

 

[GrindedDown]

I was not sure I would be entirely satisfied with buying an iPad Pro, but seeing these videos and checking out Astropad has me 100% sold on the device. I can actually see that the iPP is much more worth the asking price than I initially thought.

Now, which one to buy

 

[yalag]

Does anyone know if astropad works with lighroom? I dont really use photoshop just lightroom

 

[Atomic Walrus]

Seems incredibly laggy to me even over USB, but I don't have a very powerful host machine (2010 MBP). Desktops are all Windows. Astropad has its own local predictive line it draws, but I wouldn't consider this a Cintiq-level experience at all. Maybe it works better with a more powerful system as the server.

 

[ara-mia]

Seems incredibly laggy to me even over USB, but I don't have a very powerful host machine (2010 MBP). Desktops are all Windows. Astropad has its own local predictive line it draws, but I wouldn't consider this a Cintiq-level experience at all. Maybe it works better with a more powerful system as the server.

Agreed on all counts! The response is reasonably quick on my 2015 MBP, but it's far from the instantaneous response of a traditional display such as a Cintiq, and there's still an appreciable amount of "mosaic effect" that occurs when the source machine is trying to push a lot of pixel changes very quickly. This effect is very easy for me to replicate by simply clicking a drop-down menu, but any large enough stroke will do it. I work with large canvases at a minimum of 300 DPI, so it's honestly pretty impressive that the Astropad devs have been able to achieve as much as they have. (It's a great app!) Perhaps when we're able to access those promised USB 3.0 transfer speeds, we'll see some greater improvements in that vein…?

It should be noted that there are bugs, as well, which may or may not affect you depending upon your preferred type(s) of mark-making. This is my thread on the Astropad forums:

http://community.astropad.com/t/glitchy-strokes-with-astropad-and-apple-pencil-ipad-pro/523

I've decided to keep a Cintiq as my main workhorse and am still deciding if the iPad Pro will fit into my workflow in a supplemental role. I think iPP may be able to displace Wacom tablets for a certain proportion of users, but I don't feel it's quite there yet for many others. That said, I'll be interested to see how the API and software will continue to evolve over the next year or so!

 

[Atomic Walrus]

Agreed on all counts! The response is reasonably quick on my 2015 MBP, but it's far from the instantaneous response of a traditional display such as a Cintiq, and there's still an appreciable amount of "mosaic effect" that occurs when the source machine is trying to push a lot of pixel changes very quickly. This effect is very easy for me to replicate by simply clicking a drop-down menu, but any large enough stroke will do it. I work with large canvases at a minimum of 300 DPI, so it's honestly pretty impressive that the Astropad devs have been able to achieve as much as they have. (It's a great app!) Perhaps when we're able to access those promised USB 3.0 transfer speeds, we'll see some greater improvements in that vein…?

It should be noted that there are bugs, as well, which may or may not affect you depending upon your preferred type(s) of mark-making. This is my thread on the Astropad forums:

http://community.astropad.com/t/glitchy-strokes-with-astropad-and-apple-pencil-ipad-pro/523

I've decided to keep a Cintiq as my main workhorse and am still deciding if the iPad Pro will fit into my workflow in a supplemental role. I think iPP may be able to displace Wacom tablets for a certain proportion of users, but I don't feel it's quite there yet for many others. That said, I'll be interested to see how the API and software will continue to evolve over the next year or so!

The USB 2.0 data rate should be more than sufficient. You could stream multiple BR videos simultaneously with 35 MB/sec. The issues must be on the host end, where the screen capture and encoding is going on.

You can get this to work pretty well in Steam Home Streaming, but it requires a solid desktop as the host with a modern GPU that supports something like ShadowPlay. Still adds 30ms of latency, but that's way better than Astropad on any setup I've seen.

I posted this before but the real solution is to involve dedicated video capture hardware. That way you can remove work from the host machine and just take the HDMI or DP output, send it through a piece of hardware, and then send that stream to the iPP. It would have to be a custom device designed to perform this task with minimal latency and produce a stream appropriate for USB 2.0 (unless it's going to be a 3.0 device of course).

That's more or less exactly how the Create Companion 2 does it, same as iMac target mode. Those devices simply have the video capture hardware inside and built-in video input ports.

 

[anticipate]

Seems incredibly laggy to me even over USB, but I don't have a very powerful host machine (2010 MBP). Desktops are all Windows. Astropad has its own local predictive line it draws, but I wouldn't consider this a Cintiq-level experience at all. Maybe it works better with a more powerful system as the server.

I'm testing against an 8 core D700 nMP with 64 GB RAM so maybe that has something to do with the smoothness.

 

[maflynn]

I don't understand how people are still questioning how creative professionals can use the iPad Pro.

The complaints I've seen are related to how the iPad pro is not a good fit for regular consumers and/or business folks. On the create side of things, the iPP is a very nice tool.

 

[DaniJoy]

How is it possible to send Retna resolution @ 24 bit, with pressure and tilt info over sub 3.0? It has to be sampled right? Downscaled?

I hookup up to a buddies rMBP today for fun, with astropad, it had allot of pressure issues, screen lag and image quality was not great. My bud was bummed he wants a cintiq experience on iPad pro, but it's far from it.

 

[c.s.]

My experience using Astropad on the iPad Pro is that the lag is directly proportional to the screen resolution used. If I try to use it with my 5k iMac at native resolution, it's a pretty bad experience. Paired with a MacBook it's much more responsive. Either way it's not perfect, but still pretty amazing.

 

[Bbqthis]

My experience using Astropad on the iPad Pro is that the lag is directly proportional to the screen resolution used. If I try to use it with my 5k iMac at native resolution, it's a pretty bad experience. Paired with a MacBook it's much more responsive. Either way it's not perfect, but still pretty amazing.

I'm using Astropad on the iPad Air 2 with a 5K iMac and haven't had any issues. Is that an iPP specific issue?

 

[Atomic Walrus]

I'm testing against an 8 core D700 nMP with 64 GB RAM so maybe that has something to do with the smoothness.

It's probably the GPU, which would be new enough to have the hardware video capture tech that video card vendors are installing for Twitch game streaming/etc. Spares cores wouldn't hurt either.

 

[M-5]

I just tried out astropad on my iPad pro tethered to a maxed out 2013 Mac Pro with the Apple Cinema Display. It worked well for me, although I did notice some lag. I've never used a cintiq so I don't have anything to compare it to. I still think it's well worth the $20 though, especially for professional use.

 

[c.s.]

I'm using Astropad on the iPad Air 2 with a 5K iMac and haven't had any issues. Is that an iPP specific issue?

When you open it on iPP it says the app is "beta" for the device, so I'm sure they're working to improve it. Drawing is fine, moving the image around with two fingers to reposition it is my biggest complaint.