I like to upload images from my Sony a7R III to a MacBook Pro when traveling. There, I tag them, and from there, I back them up on an SSD. Rarely, I do some preliminary editing to find out what's in an image. I wonder whether for this limited usage I could spare myself schlepping a MacBook around and confine myself to a current iPad Air with USB-C? Which is to say, is it possible to upload raw images at full resolution from the camera to the iPad via a USB-C cable, look at them and tag them in Adobe Lightroom, and back them up incl. the tags, again at full resolution, directly via USB-C on an SSD without its own power supply? Does anybody have experience with this?
On the road, I have only been using an iPad Pro for the last few years. 1tb model is enough for me with additional back up to the cloud so when I do get home, everything is there for me on my MacBook Pro.
I use an iPad almost exclusively. All of my images start in LRM…. That is the ingestion point 100% of the time for me. my iPad is a “pro M1” model from a couple of years ago. My workflow is this:
1) Take RAW images on a Fuji x-t4 (also an iPhone …. But I will leave that camera out of this as you are asking about a Sony)
2) put the SD card into an apple SD card reader
3) open Lightroom Mobile on the IPad
4) plug the reader into the IPad
5) import all the raw images into Lightroom from the “camera device” (I.e. the card reader)
From there, all of the images get loaded into Lightroom and will head, in full resolution (raw, in this case), to the cloud when you are connected to WiFi (and LR is active/ipad is on/not sleeping).
While the loading to the cloud is going on you can also edit the images, tag, and make a lot of robust edits too (LR mobile is not fully featured like LRC but it still has a LOT of features). An Apple Pencil will really help you with the LRM interface and usage.
I’ve been doing pretty much this for several years. I use Fuji (and previously MFT) cameras, and don’t use Lightroom though.
I copy full-resolution files to my iPad Pro (though any USB-C iPad will work) — either to the Files hierarchy or, in my case, to the Photo Library. I edit (cull) and process those images.
Yes, I can export full-resolution copies to an external device. My workflow is based on Apple’s iCloud Photo Library so I don’t generally need to do this unless I want another backup while off-grid. I currently use a 500GB SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD which requires no external power. I also have the option to copy images directly from a card reader (or camera) to the SSD using the iPad and a small dock. This bypasses the iPad storage completely. (No processing though — purely an archive/backup.)
Most of this functionality is also available using my iPad Mini with Lightning port, but transfers are much slower. I generally use it only to receive and archive images from the camera/card. I can process them too, but I’m not copying back off the iPad directly.
My only concern is your tags. I assume you can backup the Lightroom sidecar file too, or maybe Lightroom offers an option to write tags to the original file — but am less familiar with this part of your workflow. It’s been a minute since I used the Adobe suite.
Happy to address any specific questions you may have.
I always use my ipad pro for photo work when traveling. It's pretty old but it handles the tasks well. I import from camera card into LR Mobile on the iPad. I keep the cards as my backup: I don't erase or reformat the cards when traveling. If I have good wifi I let the images back up to Adobe cloud (this is the only thing I use Adobe cloud space for, so I do OK without buying more). I do some editing in LR or possibly PS. When I get home I basically just set the iPad and computer up so that the iPad photos sync to LR Classic. When everything is in place at home I remove the transient photos from Adobe cloud, and eliminate them from the iPad. (If I have done no editing on the road at all, I just download from the cards to the computer instead of fooling with the sync process). Either way, I don't reformat the camera cards till I'm sure everything is where it belongs on the desktop system and backed up. Basically I'm using the iPad as a temporary computer space to read/edit/hold images till I am home and can incorporate them into the desktop system. I have not tried incorporating an SSD into the mix.
Thanks to all who answered - I'm happy most of my concerns seem to be unfounded :) However, it seems as if none of you do heavy tagging on the iPad or have cameras that produce massive RAW images? I wonder both whether tagging using, say, Lightroom for iPad is as comfortable as on a Mac, as well as how a current iPad Pro handles thousands of huge RAW files of up to 80 MB each? When I tag on the iPad, would these tags be synchronised to my Mac at home?
What is massive? The RAFs from my Fuji are over 50 MB. Modern iPad is, if anything, overpowered. It won’t have any issues with the larger files from your Sony. Video producers are working with much larger files on a regular basis.
Your tags will definitely carry over if you sync Lightroom Mobile to Lightroom using Adobe’s cloud conduit. I don’t know for certain if they will sync if you copy the files from your iPad to the computer because I don’t know if Adobe offers and option to write information to original files.
50 MB counts in my book - I thought you're talking about an APS-C Fuji. I wasn't so much wondering about the CPU or GPU of the iPad but about the RAM. But your question suggests that you never encountered problems with performance on your 50 MB images?
I am talking about a 26 MP ASPC Fujifilm X-S10. The three uncompressed RAF files from the camera that I just checked at random are 56.4, 58.8 and 58.5 MB. RAF images take some time to sync to iCloud but locally the iPad never notices them. My iPad Pro precedes the use of the M1 processor. My iPad Mini is a gen 4. It doesn't hesitate either.
That's a killer tip indeed, thank you. Incidentally, a mere hour ago I found out about this problem trying it out myself using my old iPad: Exactly as described, keywords were once transferred to the iPad from LrC, but afterwards no sync from mobile or once more from LrC to mobile was happening. It was sort of a rediscovery because I already found out about that like 4 or so years ago but forgot about it in the meantime, and it totally breaks my use case. I cannot believe that Adobe didn't address this issue in all these years.
Sorry, I should have really been more precise about 'massive'. I guess that besides the sheer size, resolution also matters. But I guess you're right in that a new iPad Pro M2 would be overpowered.
TL;DR Several people in this discussion tried to follow exactly the same workflow regarding key words as me 4 years ago, had exactly the same issue with sync'ing, and up to now nothing happened from Adobe's side to fix this.
I consider it an exceedingly common use case to tag images with key words on the road - if I return from a 5-7 weeks travel, I wouldn't want to assign key words for several thousands of images even if I'd readily remember the key words I'd like to assign. I have to admit that I'm disappointed, concerning the fact that software companies usually argue pro subscription model with continuous updates, among other things.
While I don’t do keywording all that much anymore (not especially needed in my workflow), I too think that it is a major issue for some…. If they use LRC …… if they only use LR, everything syncs.
But, I think that it’s even worse than you might think it is….. why?
I seem to recall that you can’t “batch” keyword in LRM. I.e. you can’t select multiple images and apply the same keywords to all of them. I could be wrong on that but, that is what I recall. If you are doing thousands of images, I assume that you are doing many in batches.
What is your workflow now?
Take image
Load into LRC on your MacBook into a specific catalog
Keyword, edit, whatever….
And when you get home you import that catalog into your main machine with LRC?
My workflow is also hindered by Apple not supporting keywords (or smart albums, or titles) in the iOS versions of Photos.
To work around this, I use my time on the road to add location data (as needed), write captions and create both ‘working’ and permanent albums. I’ll even process images if I have time — but not at the expense of the experience.
I do my keywording (admittedly less and less as searching becomes ‘smarter’) on the Mac when I get home. Using Houdah Photo Workbench I can batch apply a keyword set to every image in a ‘working’ album and, as albums don’t have to be forever, and an image can appear in multiple albums, I can create working albums for all the major keywords for that trip while on the road. (If there’s time. 😉)
Yes. I would like to create and use keywords, smart albums, and titles on mobile. Still, the benefits of the tablet outweigh the disadvantages. For me.
FWIW, you want to participate in the Adobe Support Forums generate calls for, and cast votes there for the features important to you. I have it directly from a source I trust at Adobe that those votes are tabulated, and the squeakiest wheels do get attention.
Yes, this is exactly my workflow, which I hoped to replicate using an iPad. (Actually, my MacBook has become my main machine, but abroad I use a separate catalogue.)
And, yes, you're exactly right about "batching" keywords, and that's also my second grasp re. keywording with the iPad. There is a poor man's batching, in that you can copy all the keywords from one image and copy them to another one with one button, but it's not nearly as flexible as on LrC. I think it could work if I'm not doing thousands of images but just those of the day, but it'd probably still be annoying. My issue is that I usually tag before I cull, because for final assessment I want a large display, so there can easily be 50-100 images using the same keywords, even when if we're just talking about images from a single day.
Are you using the keywords that you create for “external” uses (I.e loading the images to Stock agencies, etc) or are the keywords for your own personal use “searching/finding” images? If it’s the former, I see no work around for you other than to do what you are doing.
But, if you are using keywords for the latter only, have you tried the search functions in the LR ecosystem? They are actually quite good these days and, if good enough for you, would save you a bunch of time with keywording.
