Why use mobile Adobe apps vs. Desktop ones?

[kat.hayes]

I subscribe to Adobe CC and use Photoshop and Lightroom on my iMac and MBP, and have had all of the Adobe apps installed on my iPad Air 2 and now my iPad Pro. I like the idea of being able to edit photos on the iPad, though I think I've only opened them up a few times and only played around a bit. I guess if I was shooting a photo on my 6S+ I could use a LR mobile to make some quick adjustments, though what I'm curious about is actually transferring photos using some cloud service with the intention of making adjustments on an iPad. I know that you can tag and rate photos using LR mobile.

Just curious to hear from anyone who uses one of the Photoshop apps (can't keep up with the name changes anymore) or Lightroom. Do you use it to make quick adjustments to exposure, do you actually use tools to color correct, clone, heal, etc. What is your workflow? Even with the Pencil, I'm trying to figure out a workflow that would be beneficial for getting high quality images onto my iPad, editing them, and getting them back onto a Mac. I know I can keep files in Dropbox, though if I'm going to copy my photos into Dropbox why not just work on them on my Mac?

Looking forward to hearing reasons for using mobile Adobe apps VS. the desktop ones and your suggested workflow.

Thanks.

 

[sparksd]

I stick to desktop use of Adobe PS & Lightroom CC as I want to do my photo processing on a color-calibrated, larger monitor. I've tried Wacom stylus on a desktop but find I like using a mouse more so I'm not interested in using a pencil for this. In addition, the desktop provides more power and easier control, e.g. keyboard shortcuts. I should also note that I shoot RAW format exclusively, another factor making mobile processing problematic. Nor do I want to rely on cloud services as a lot of my travel puts me in areas with no or poor Internet connectivity.

 

[Synergie]

For me, its more when I am away from my desktop. If I have my SLR camera, take photos on site, I can then use the lightning to SD card reader to transfer them directly from my camera to the ipad and edit them on site. Then upload them to cloud, or email them, or post to social media, or import to a word document on the go, email that document, or send it to a BT printer etc. It just opens up a lot of on the go productivity. What I'd really like to see is a Dreamweaver mobile so I can also import those photos (via FTP) to the site, and make changes to webpages... right now I have coda, but it's not WYSIWYG - and I hate coding for larger changes. I can do it by purely code just to change some text etc though...

So hypothetically lets say your are at a community event. You have your SLR camera and ipad there. You have WiFi (or tether to iphone). You can take photos of the event, transfer using the lightning to sd reader, edit them somewhat professionally, and post the event to news or social media sites while still there and the event is still underway! (this is just one real world example).

 

[M. Gustave]

Sparksd is right on. For raw "pro" workflow, Lightroom mobile made little sense to me. You really need to be on the desktop, and use the iPad only for review or culling of jpegs I guess.

But if you shoot jpeg only, especially with an iPhone, the iPad is a really nice photography tool. The screens are just gorgeous, and there are many nice editing apps. But I wouldn't carry an Adobe CC subscription for it. I dropped mine 6 months ago, and haven't missed it.

 

[kevroc]

I'm a big fan of LR Mobile on my iPad. I dislike the desktop app, much too complicated for my casual use...

Both my wife and I take photos using iPhones or cameras with SD card upload to the iPad. Eventually, they all make it into a created album on my iPad. That way all the photos for a particular event or trip are all in one place. I use Apple Cloud syncing for my photos (phone to iPad) and have my wife setup with dropbox upload. Once her photos are uploaded to dropbox, I use Photo Transfer App to download her dropbox photos to my created album.

Once I have accumulated all the photos into one place, I go through and delete the bad ones or non-keepers. This saves me from having to do that in LR, although there will be more I delete, this is just the first pass.

Now I can create a collection in LR Mobile and easily upload all of the photos from the album into it. I know they'll sync to my PC automatically so I don't have to worry about transferring them later.

Once imported to LR Mobile, I make basic edits, straightening, crop, exposure a bit...mostly cropping though. I'll do some rejection / rating as well.

When I get back to my Desktop, the process is now much simpler, the photos are already there and the basic tweaking is done. The other plus, further changes I make sync back to LR Mobile. So when it comes time to show someone the photos, they are all right there with all of the edit made.

Pretty seamless and very helpful tool to have on the iPad.