Reviews on gear and software

Adobe Photoshop on the iPad my opinion

/in , , , /by

We all were waiting for the release of Adobe Photoshop for the iPad. In all honesty the main reason for me to switch from my Android tablet back to the iPad pro was in fact the announcement of Photoshop for the iPad. Of course the Apple pencil is great and I love LumaFusion a lot but the main reason for the switch was Photoshop. So when it was released I was over the moon, but still a lot of people were not. In this blog post I’ll give you my honest opinion and also the worries I have and the future I see.

Lets start out simple.
Was it what I expected
Well believe it or not, a bit.
Ofcourse I hoped to see a full blown Photoshop with all filters there and smart ports to use my favorite plugins like Exposure software, DxO, Topaz, Imagenomic etc. But let’s wind back.

When I see a lot of the reviews and opinions online it feels a bit like people expected this, and let’s be 100% real, that can never happen. First off all iPad OS is a very different beast from Windows or MacOS, it’s much more limited and it’s mostly touch based, so porting a program as complex as Photoshop to a mobile device is a task thought off in hell probably and they moved it to Adobe because they couldn’t do it.

So first off all, let’s lower those expectations.
You will probably “never” get a 100% mirror copy of the desktop app on the iPad pro for the simple reason it’s not possible due to the interface and the fact that for example Topaz or Exposure have no intentions (as of yet) to port their plugins to the iPad (let’s hope that changes, but I asked them and for now the answer varies between “no” to “let’s see what happens” and trust me that last one is not a “we are working on it but I can’t tell you yet” answer. They are really waiting to see).

So when we tone down our expectations what can we expect.
Well for a first release I’m also a bit underwhelmed, but not in a way that I feel bad, just that I know I have to wait a little bit longer to do what I want to do.

At the moment Photoshop for the iPad is the frame work, and that frame work works like a charm, it’s fast, the new touchdot (as I call it) is awesome and the time I worked with Photoshop for the iPad it just worked flawelessly (after the help update).

Missing filters
This one has me puzzled and I think has a lot to do with the negative feedback online. I’m not talking about missing filters inside of Photoshop by the way but the message “not supported on this device” which is incredibly weird seeing I’m running the latest iPad pro and I would expect that this device would have everything enabled, on a phone or older iPad or even lower specked device I can imagine some things not being supported but on the latest (greatest) I don’t find this logical. However I feel this will be changed soon and it’s more like a placeholder for the moment, in other words the text “coming soon” would have been much better and probably would have caused less “hate” online.

That being said, man I miss “curves” and the options to do “frequentie seperation” also things like object selections would be a nice added bonus if it would be there fast.

 

Aggression
Now normally aggression is a bad thing, but when a company like Adobe talks about an aggresive upgrade path I’m all in. When Adobe changed from a fixed price (every year or so) to a cloud membership I too was a bit skeptical but after a quick calculation it already was very clear that the subscription was the way too go and would save us money in the end. Another benefit was that Adobe announced during the Creative Cloud keynote that updates would be much more frequent and over the board and more and more apps would be added and all would talk to each other…. and let’s be honest Adobe did keep their promise. So I’m confident that every review you see from Photoshop on the iPad will be obsolute a few weeks later because Adobe will be pushing out updates in a fast tempo, at least that’s what I understand.

 

Is it usable?
According to some you should run to Affinity Photo on the iPad for the full Photoshop experience, and in some cases I would say “yes” but with all due respect to Affinity (because they make some really awesome things) For me Affinity on the iPad pro would not be the reason to leave my laptop at home. Creating a panorama takes over 20 minutes from my drone while Lightroom Classic does it in a mere 30-40 seconds. Also working with layers can be confusing because sometimes the layers don’t respond the way you expect or when you do something else and come back to the mask I can’t get it to work whatever I do. I won’t say it’s buggy but there sure are some things that don’t “work right”.

But in all honesty Affinity Photo is very complete and is at the moment much more a replacement for the desktop Photoshop than Photoshop for the iPad, however….. at the moment Photoshop for the iPad works smooth and fast with layers and switching back and forth between tasks and going back to masking didn’t yet cause me any problems in Photoshop. So for now I would say that Photoshop (although having much less feautures) looks smoother and faster than Affinity. It’s now up to Adobe to build upon the framework they created.

For now I feel they rushed the release a little bit, but they had no choice, in all honesty I expected a release at Photoshop world or at the keynote from Apple and my final show was indeed Adobe Max where I expected it. Seeing how it looks at the moment I think Adobe should have taken a few more weeks/months and release it later. For me personally I’m very glad they did release it earlier because people can now grow with Photoshop for the iPad and become real experts at the software.

Now for people that find that strange, read this…
When you get an app that has a gazzilion options you very quickly get overwhelmed and can’t do anything because it just is too much, an app as complex as Photoshop is now in it’s bare basics on the iPad so now learning how to use it is pretty simple and easy, from now on every addition that Adobe makes will be a new learning point and I think in the long run you will understand the app better which makes your workflow more easy.

You could say I’m just sugarcoating it and you are right for a bit.
I’m a huge Adobe fan/supporter but I’m also 100% honest to you guys. I was always 100% Apple fanboy till they did things I couldn’t use in my workflow and I switched to devices/software that could. So don’t mistake me being optimistic for being a blind fanboy.

It just works
One of the things I absolutely loved about Apple, everything just worked and worked together. For me having a proper working Photoshop on the iPad is not enough. I need to get there and I need to get out of there.

The combination Lightroom CC and Photoshop would be killer IF Adobe makes it possible to go from Lightroom CC directly into Photoshop, something I’m 100% sure off will happen probably sooner than later. This would mean, doing your stuff in Lightroom CC and for the clone/healing/skin/compositing and whatever you jump into Photoshop in a PSD/TIFF 16 bits Adobe RGB format and do the work, and when you hit save it’s in Lightroom CC. Exactly like on the desktop. This way you can very easily backup everything when you’re home, or simply continue work on the desktop.

And there we go.
That’s the cool thing about the way Adobe is now putting everything together.

Lightroom CC
Work on ANY device and have your images ready to store, retouch on every moment of the day, being it in the plane on your tablet or behind the desk with a large retouch tablet like the surface studio or Wacom.

Rush
Start your video on your mobile device and finish it on the desktop in premiere.

Photoshop
One of the key elements for Photoshop at the moment is the cloud based PSD solution and I think a lot of people will benefit from this more than they think. I think that at the moment we can see Photoshop on the iPad more as a “companion” app an app that can open your Photoshop files and you can do some finetuning while on the road, make some extra adjustments to mask, composition, color etc. And save for final retouching on the desktop. This makes it possible to create ideas/sketches or finetune artwork anytime and anywhere without having to save to a single flat file and work on that later (if you for example use snapseed)

That being said, I’m 100% sure Adobe has no intention to keep it a companion app, but Photoshop on the iPad will probably grow the same way that Lightroom CC has/is.

Remember
Lightroom Mobile
What a joke some people will say, and I agree.
Man I was over the moon when they showed it to me the first time, this was ground breaking, awesome and killer. However my joy was quickly changed to uther disspear, the intergration with Lightroom classic was bad, without internet you’re lost and don’t even try to use different catalogues, in all honesty it worked… but it didn’t.

But that Lightroom Mobile is now Lightroom CC and to be honest I can’t life without it anymore, it’s on all my devices and it’s used daily. The camera inside needs a lot of work to support more lenses (on android I still can only use one lens) but the software itself is pretty complete, in fact I dare to say that at the moment for MY work I can do a more complete retouch with Lightroom CC than with Photoshop. Mainly because skinwork with the structure slider in combination with grain, clarity and dehaze gives the retoucher a pretty complete skin retouching solution, but cloning and healing is still a dissaster for that kind of work in Lightroom I think.

Intergration and workflow
For the moment I figured out a pretty good workflow to use Photoshop and Lightroom CC with each other. I do most of my work in Lightroom CC for skin and tinting, and when I’m satisfied with the look I go to Photoshop for the Cloning and Healing and I’m done. So in essence we can now do a full professional retouch job on the iPad pro. But it’s far from fast or perfect.

First of all we really need that intergration between Lightroom CC and Photoshop because Photoshop does not yet open RAW files (which is not really necessary if Lightroom CC has the option to export to PSD straight into Photoshop) For now we can of course choose to export in TIFF but… wait a minute that’s only available on Android… I can’t find that in Lightroom CC on iOS, but I guess with iPad OS that will follow soon. And seeing Photoshop is only available on iOS this is a well needed addition to the export options for Lightroom CC.

At the moment Affinity Photo does open RAW files and can export as TIFF/PSD so for the moment one could opt for Affinity Photo in combination with Lightroom CC but the main problem in iOS is that Lightroom CC doesn’t export as highquality 16 bits files so we have a rather annoying bottle neck there, which can be solved rather easily I think when Adobe let’s Lightroom CC export in TIFF/PSD like on Android. For now we are left with a problem that is pretty serious.

There is no way to open RAW files in Photoshop
There is no way to get high quality 16 bits files from Lightroom CC to the filmrol or Photoshop (or Affinity for that matter), so I do understand a lot of the critical views on this release.

However, and just think with me…..
If Adobe just adds that option to work on 16 bits PSDs straight out of Lightroom CC and after retouching just puts them back into CC I think a lot of the issues would be gone, after that it’s simply putting out more and more updates to the Photoshop app to make it more complete.

My personal conclusion
Maybe it’s colored because I’m more in the Adobe camp but I really feel that Photoshop is a very smart release from Adobe, however it’s far from complete, but hey at least we have an undo option (something Photoshop 1.0 did not have).

Let me make my conclusion double.
First off I think it’s been released too soon, there is a framework that works like a charm and is smooth and it shows the potential, if there was no competition this would be labeled as a killer app, but in reality there is stiff competition from Affinity. And I really feel that although Photoshop feels a lot smoother than Affinity and feels also faster there is a LOT and I really mean a LOT that Adobe has to add to come close to a desktop experience, but do we really need that.

My personal opinion is that it really varies per person and what he/she needs to do if you can use software. Fresno is for example awesome for painters but for me… well it’s cool that I get it but in all honesty I don’t see me creating the nightwatchmen on it. ProCreate I doodled with a lot and absolutely love it, on the desktop I LOVE mangastudio which blows away anything I can do in Photoshop because it helps me as an inexperienced drawer. So if you are an artist that creates highly realistic paintings with a million layers and you need specialist brushes…. well maybe Photoshop on the ipad is not for you.

When I’m shooting street and travel photography I have to be honest that I hardly ever leave Lightroom, but when I’m retouching a model I really need more than Lightroom and (if that export is fixed) at the moment the combination of Lightroom CC and Photoshop on the iPad gets me pretty close to what I can do on the desktop, although I really miss my plugins like Topaz for that ultra sharp look, or Exposure for those cool film emulations, but most of these effects can be emulated with Lightroom CC’s structure and clarity and local adjustments, and of course curves/levels (RGB channels) in Lightroom CC and Photoshop on the iPad (levels).

So where am I faster?
At the moment I’m 100% faster on the desktop. But I’m used to the desktop. In fact my video editing has been much faster on the iPad compared to the desktop, so I have the full confidence that in the end my workflow on the iPad will also be closer to the desktop experience. And let’s look at it from an artists perspective, a Photoshop that is fully optimized for touch and pen is of course much better than one that is controlled by a mouse. And yeah I know most people use a Wacom tablet or Surface but I’m just saying, when Photoshop started out it was not working with the stuff we have now.

However, and this is where the power of the iPad comes in. How important is speed…..? when you take into account that with the iPad I can work in any location and situation. Yes I’m faster behind the desktop but I have to be behind a desk for that, and with an iPad or Phone I can work in the car, bus, plane, campground etc. and the battery runs for hours and the output is much higher which makes working outside much easier.

However some things we will probably not see soon, and that might even be something nobody thinks about yet….. when you hover over a Wacom or Surface product and don’t touch the surface you can see a pointer, for me this is super handy to make exact clones and healing actions, seeing there is no digitizer in an iPad (as of yet) you will not see anything untill your pen hits the glass, now the iPad doensn’t have a lot of paralax errors so in essence you will be ok, this is something that I miss. Add to this that Photoshop for a lot of people is not really Adobe Photoshop but more a mix of Photoshop as the centre and plugins that create their workflow it’s to be expected that people will have to change their approach and workflow.

Really the endconclusion
I was planning on a smaller piece, but I think you have to be complete with something like this, there are way too much people just bashing version 1.0 without thinking about the potential.

I think the first thing you have to do is be realistic.
Photoshop on the iPad is a first release, a version 1.0 meaning it’s the start and with software like this, things are added on a daily basis (at Adobe) probably even faster, updates will roll out continiously and what took Photoshop decades to achieve the mobile version will probably reach in 2-3 years. I’m ready for it, there is a load of potential out there with the Apple Pencil and the iPad pro series, let’s hope they add feautures very soon.

Personally in order of importance.
Export Lightroom CC to PSD or TIFF 16 bits
Intergration Lightroom CC to Photoshop and back
Photoshop Curves
Photoshop Frequenty seperation options

And finally open up Photoshop for intergration with third parties so they can create plugins. The future will tell what happens…. but at least we have the start and the start looks a bit pale but has a lot of potential.

iPad Pro current state ….. is it Pro or not?

/in , , , /by

If you have followed my work over the years you know it’s pretty much a one-man (and a woman) band. Meaning everything you see from photography, video and blog posts are done by me and behind the scenes, Annewiek helps with Tether Tools, Clickprop backdrops and simply put she helps me to do my work for you guys (she’s pretty awesome). Now I’ve been an entrepreneur my entire life and one of the things I quickly learned is “workflow control”, you can do a 12 hour workday in 6 if you have a perfect workflow compared to a shitty one, and when every hour is precious it’s very important to get the workflow down to perfection so there is also some time left for family, games, music etc.

Because we travel quite a lot and I give a lot of demos for companies, tradeshows, workshops etc. over the years we have a pretty solid workflow.
Up till a few months ago, I used the fastest laptop I could get, in my case often the Dell XPS series (present I’m running an i9) and before the Dell always the 15″ MBP with the almost fastest option (simply put the top end is just way too expensive). For tethering I’ve been using Capture One for ages and for storage and quickly editing street/travel photography Lightroom Classic is without a doubt, my go-to companion. For the more heavy editing…. well Photoshop of course.

Now I’m a bit of a workaholic when travelling but I also love to entertain myself on planes/busses etc with some movies, games etc. So when we travelled the standard stuff we brought were :
Annewieks MBP, my Dell XPS, a Wacom tablet, Annewieks iPad and I used a Huawei M5 tablet. This was a perfect outfit that could handle any situation…. except one….. very important one.

When we travel a lot is also done with our RV (when we are in Europe), and truth be told, we are on power a lot but it also happens (quite often) we are not, and editing the images of the day, writing a blog post and editing that day’s vlog on a laptop WITHOUT power… well that’s impossible, I love my XPS machine but when editing photos or video the battery life (of all laptops) pretty much suck, if I manage to get 90 minutes out of it I’m jumping with joy, but when I edit outside it’s more or less 60 minutes with the brightness on full power, and to be honest… it isn’t that bright to begin with when competing with the sun, and don’t even think about editing on a plane, it’s just too tight. My tablet I actually only used on the plane or buses and maybe sometimes in the evening or morning when we have a day where I didn’t shoot a lot.

So, in essence, we are travelling with a lot of gear which all does something, but doesn’t do all.
When Apple released the iPad Pro a few years ago I literally kept hitting the refresh button to order the gift to all creatives, the laptop replacing, powerhouse (I forgot to put magic in there somewhere but you know what I mean) iPad Pro, the real game-changer. Well, it did change the game I think for a lot of people, in fact, it even got me back into drawing again for a short period of time. But that Pro indication….. in fact it was just a blown-up iPad which in fact was a blown-up iPhone…. so why did I buy this thing…… yeah I kept wondering that for over a year after which I sold my iPad pro and never looked back. Over the years I progressed from iOS to Android (mainly due to the cameras and USB connectivity which drove me mad at times with iOS) and from macOS to Windows.

Surface series/Wacom Mobile Studio
In between my new (11″) iPad pro and the first experience I tested the Microsoft surface series twice.
The first time was a disaster, the machine kept crashing on me, the screen was way too small and editing video was… well impossible.
Of course we also had the Wacom mobile studio pro, I got the 15″ and loved it from day 1, but the lack of support and the lack of a proper stand made my love for this device melt like snow in a SoCal sun, I’ve put several videos out there to improve for example accuracy in Photoshop with the Mobile Studio but after every update something else seemed to break down so in the end I just gave up.

The second surface device I tested was “bingo” the surface book 2.
An amazing laptop with an awesome screen you can draw on, the main disadvantages were, however, battery life and the incredible drop in processing power when you went to tablet mode, and let’s be real, just for fun…. try editing an image in Photoshop without touching your keyboard…. impossible, and it’s even worse when you try to run premiere with just touch, it’s almost laughable if it wasn’t such a frustration. But in all honesty, the surface book 2 was the best laptop I ever used, and the only thing that held me back was the fact that there were a lot of “rumours” about a game-changing iOS and some plans with Adobe.

Adobe the Apple salvation?
Apple is not my Apple anymore.
When I see the keynotes I can’t really feel the same feeling I got when the iPad was released or the MacPro or…. Apple always had some cool stuff that nobody else did, integration between devices was flawless. The biggest letdown for me was actually the release of the touch bar MBP, getting someone from Adobe on stage to show Photoshop with her fingers on that HUGE trackpad, I just knew she would walk off and go back like Columbo/Steve Jobs and would say “oh just one more thing, from now on the touchpad is also compatible with the Apple pencil” I was so waiting for that moment but it never came…. I tried the keyboard, I tried to convince myself to be able to live without a card reader and HDMI and that 5000.00 wasn’t really……. ok that’s when I snapped out of it 5000!!!! are they fricking insane? I ordered my Dell XPS the day after for 2500.00 including 24 hours onsite support. I never looked back.

In this same period Microsoft, Huawei, Samsung etc. made HUGE progress in both cameras and connectivity between devices and now even between devices from different brands, almost everything that made Apple so awesome was now on the other side, but………

Lightroom CC and more
Lightroom CC on Android was a game-changer, I never liked Lightroom Mobile, but what Mobile did wrong CC absolutely did right, much better performance and finally, also a way to create your own presets and sync between devices without much of the limitations of Lightroom Mobile. At the moment I still think the Android version of Lightroom CC runs more smoothly on my P30 Pro than on my iPad pro, luckily Adobe finally did upgrade the iOS version to be able to batch edit images (something the Android version already had) so for me both are now about equal for what I need.

But Adobe didn’t stop there.
For video I always use my laptop in a workstation I created at home so I don’t spend all my time in the studio, but it’s still a fixed place. When I heard about Project Rush for the first time I was over the moon, finally some video editing that I can use for the vlogs and smaller educational videos, at that time I did try “Power director” for Android and although it’s pretty good it wasn’t really what I could use daily so Project Rush… bring it on.

A few months later we were together with Adobe at Photoshop World and I got the major hit…… Photoshop is coming to the iPad. Slowly I started to look at the iPad pro again but I also had a lot of doubts. How can you work with Photoshop and video if it’s a real pain to get your files on and off your iPad, especially when you don’t have internet or very slow internet. (for years we were stuck at 10mb/s down and 0.7 up (if the winds were right).

Slowly it’s getting together
With the announcement of iOS13 / iPad OS, I knew it.
Adding external hard drives and having a “real” file system that’s it, now we are talking.
So I ordered my brand new USB-C iPad Pro.
At first, I ran the beta version of iPad OS and am now on the final release candidate so I think it’s time for an update.

Software vs Apps
A lot of people will claim that an iPad pro will never be a replacement for the laptop because you don’t run full versions but apps. Well let me put that straight, it’s an excuse (in most cases) take for example the software Lumafusion (you might have heard that name before), Lumafusion is an insane video editor for the iPad pro that for me actually is debit to the fact I hardly use my laptop anymore. I loved premiere and could edit almost blind on it (for what I need) but having an iPad in my lap and being able to do everything with touch is unbelievable, in fact 99% of all the video you see online from us is edited on the iPad pro with a mix of Rush and Lumafusion. And of course the desktop app can do more but in most videos, we don’t use multi-cam and I don’t need face-tracking with object avoidance nuclear radar interpretations…. (although a stabilizer would be cool inside Rush or Lumafusion, but there are very good external apps).

Same goes for office applications, I don’t need the full-featured desktop experience, I need to be able to write, edit and read and that’s it. So apps vs software are in most cases a bit like range anxiety with Electric Cars, you worry about it when you don’t own one when you work with and own one you will quickly see that the benefits highly outweigh the negatives.

But is it really pro?
Well, what is a pro?
Let’s see when an iPad pro can really replace a laptop.
Travelling salesperson or manager: without a doubt
Consumers that surf, read, watch movies etc. : without a doubt
Heavy media users and gamers: without a doubt (but with other games and MUCH longer battery life)
People that love to draw: oh heck yeah, can’t think of any device more suited for that
People that vlog: yep, without a doubt, unless you feel you have to Spielberg
Podcasters: oh yes, without a doubt, in fact, it would be my favourite thing I think.
People that do photography and video:……… you might expect yes but it’s different from that.

I don’t want to say yes or no, let’s just see what I think and experience.

Adobe (again)
Adobe for me is a company I love. I know they get a lot of hate about subscriptions but I would rather get updates weekly and pay 12.00 a month that get an update once a year and pay 199.00 for that update, often people seem to forget that without a continuous income stream you can’t do research and development. That being said, I’m a bit disappointing up till this point on a few key elements that actually make me wonder if I will continue with the iPad pro.

Lightroom CC
Lightroom CC is my mobile world, I can’t stress how much I love this app. It’s on all my devices and it’s the perfect companion when travelling, and because I only use it when travelling even the 100GB cloud space is more than enough, even when I save all the images I take during a 2-week trip. I love how I can work on every device and when I arrive back home all my images are already in Lightroom Classic and the only thing I have to do is check my edits on a calibrated BenQ monitor and I’m done. Absolutely awesome.

However……
Lightroom CC is incredibly crippled by one simple thing.
Why the heck can’t we rename images?
Now I understand Adobe wants us to move everything to the cloud but did they ever think about people (like me) that often don’t have good internet in hotels (try uploading images with 0.07 up) and that being said, I just want to be able to name my images the way I want them and not the way Adobe wants it.

Not being able to rename means that during travels you can’t really export any images to clients because the moment I’m home I’m renaming all my files in Lightroom Classic so I can never find something back on a filename that I send out on the road. Something that’s so essential should be in the software. But let’s not blame Adobe…

Batch renaming part II
So it doesn’t work in Lightroom CC, ok we can work around that right?……
Well…..
Silence…..
No we can’t.
And I’m still a bit flabbergasted by this.
How can Apple call a device Pro and a file system let alone a laptop replacement if in the WHOLE Apple ecosystem (including apps) there is not ONE option to batch rename images? what’s going on here? this is the first and most important thing I do in my workflow, rename images by location and date. I searched high and low and can’t find ONE app that allows me to batch rename images (if someone does please let me know). In the end I did find a solution via automation but that’s also not really a solution you can work with, it’s a lot of steps and it does take some time. And time… well we don’t have that much.

To be honest this is the biggest problem I have (such a small thing).

Ok so what does work
Let’s be fair, I love my iPad pro and as mentioned before there are always cons and pros, and if the pros outweigh the cons you go for it. So let’s see:

Presentations:
Works like a charm, it did took me a while to find the proper remote but it now really works like a dream. Even editing presentations is fast and almost just as powerful as on the desktop. At the moment I’m mostly using KeyNote but also Powerpoint works great on the iPad.
CHECK 100%

Shooting tethered:
Mixed bag.
When I use the Sony app it can work like a charm, but it can also frustrate the heck out of me. I’ve had situations where images took 4-20 seconds to come in and I’ve had situations where they only would come in when I was 1 meter away from the iPad Pro. For a while, I tested the CamFi (I’m shooting Sony so Camranger and case air don’t work at the moment) and that was a totally different experience, everything came in blazingly fast and even at Photoshop World from a distance of over 30 meters it still didn’t miss a beat. In a few week a new Tethertools product is being released with even better performance (and for Sony) and I can’t wait to test that one out.

Still, I really want a solution where I can also shoot with an USB cable. Let’s be honest wifi is still a risk you take and I just can’t afford to be somewhere and say “sorry… we don’t have images coming in but they are awesome, trust me”. I do believe however that with the opening of the USB-C port it won’t take long before someone will pick this up. And with a rock-solid wifi connection, I’m willing to wait for this (in case of emergency I have a solution on my phone that works with USB-C tethering, and as long as the people see the images it’s fine).
CHECK 80%

Media consumption and comics/reading/gaming
Duh, not even gonna talk about that
CHECK 100%

Video editing
With both Rush and Lumafusion I almost dare to say that unless you want to create something really special 99% of the edits can be done in Lumafusion and a lot in Rush. Main advantage of Rush is that you can start mobile and do the final edits on the desktop.
CHECK 90%

Music creation
Oh man…… I just can’t express how much I love the iPad for this.
Garageband is insane, combine it with apps like ToneBridge and iRig and you can lock me away for months and I will not get bored for a second. If you want more? there are several Pro DAWs on the app store ranging from ok priced to rather cheap. Also try to connect your iPad pro to your desktop DAW for some cool slider action.
CHECK 100% +++++

Photography
Ok there we go, the moment you’ve been waiting for.
Let me forget about that renaming thing.

For a good conclusion I have to do it slightly differently.
If you’re a traveller and do most of your edits in Lightroom I would say that the iPad Pro is amazing and will without a doubt replace your desktop. Lightroom CC is fast and multi-device (which for travelling is so cool and handy), add to this the fact you already have a backup in the cloud and you can see that this is a winner.

I would say for the travel/nature/street photographer
CHECK 99%

Ok, now we need a bit more.
Panoramic shots
I’m flying my drone and I want a panoramic shot (this would also go for the previous one btw) at the moment Lightroom CC doesn’t stitch, and also the just released Photoshop doesn’t. But don’t worry, there is another app out there called Afinty Photo and believe it or not that one does stitch panoramic shots. But…. the last time I tried it it took Afinity over 20 minutes to do it…. editing a complete vlog in 4K took less render time, so that’s next to useless unless you only have 1-2 panoramic shots.

FAIL 10% (it can be done)

Ok now we take a look at the photos that need editing
On the desktop most of my edits are done in Photoshop with my model photography.
Although with the new texture slider Lightroom can do some good skin smoothing, running a plugin like Portraiture is no competition. Also tinting with Exposure software, or making an image pop with Topaz studio/Luminar is a breeze and very fast. When we take a look at the iPad Pro we have a few options.

  1. Afinity Photo
    This is the best thing you can get at the moment that mimics Photoshop. It’s a mix of frustration and love I have for Affinity. Somehow when I follow my workflow to the letter it “kinda” works, but I’ve had a lot of struggle with layer mask and reselecting them, also merge visible or selected doesn’t work and don’t even try to open something else on iPad iOS 13.2 because somehow they broke multitasking so all your work will be gone.Overall I can almost anything in Afinity, including some pretty good skin work, healing and cloning however feel awkward and although it gets better it’s still very work-intensive compared to the desktop
  2. Photoshop
    Just released so it’s not really fair to give my opinion, but I still going to do it.
    We’ve been waiting for a year (even longer for some) and to be honest the release does disappoint me a bit. I love to tint my images via curves and seeing that there is no curve option just made me sad, I can do it with levels in a similar way but …. come on no curves?
    Also I have a lot of things that simply don’t work, messages like “this is not available on your device” sorry…. what? I’m not running Android where there is a difference between devices, this was designed for the iPad pro and I’m running the latest one…. why?, how?
  3. Snapseed
    We all love snapseed, and I mostly use it for tinting. For real photo-editing? Not really
  4. The others
    There are a LOT of editors on iOS and I don’t want to say they are not good enough to mention, but let’s be honest there are not a lot that have the features of Afinity and Photoshop so I left those out mostly because they have severe limitations in export, resolution etc.

If I look what I’ve done so far, I’m able to deliver the “same” looks and quality to my clients than I would do on my desktop, that being said….. it does take me at least twice as long per image. So I would say
CHECK 80%

Finally the file system
The promise, the thing, the magic of the iPad….

Well for me the disappointment of the iPad, well ok that’s a bit too harsh.
I’m very happy with it, you can now just connect an external SSD, card or whatever and you can easily copy stuff from and to your device, that part is awesome and well needed. So what don’t I like?

Well, it’s the way how.
For example the film roll is still fenced off like crazy, you can’t go to your photos via the filesystem, and if you want to copy for example images to photos you simply can’t….. unless you use the share option. When you are in photos you can share via filesystem so it’s all possible but it’s not like Apple (easy and one-click). I also feel the speed is limited (a lot) making copying huge amounts of data very time consuming, and finally you don’t really see what’s happening, I would love to see an indicator of percentage or time. For me the best way to work with the filesystem is just to have to windows next to each other and just drag and drop.

Another cool addition is the connection to network locations, but in our situation, we often lose the connection and it’s quite buggy when I want to copy files or delete files on my NAS (as in it just doesn’t work or is very slow).

I would say that for normal every day use it’s fine, but it needs a lot of work before you can even add the P from Pro.
Also we really need to see the option in the apps, meaning I can just use the file system in Lightroom CC, Lumafusion, Rush etc. At the moment Rush, for example, is not able to import anything from another location on my iPad than Photos.
Check 51% and 70% if apps start to support it.

Hardware
Finally let’s take a quick look at what I use as hardware
For the cover, I have one cheap cover that just protects the iPad when I don’t need a keyboard.
For the keyboard, I opted for the Logitech which I love, but it does make the iPad pro a bit heavy for reading in bed for example. I think if I would do it all over I would opt for the Apple version, the keyboard is a lot less but it does make the whole experience a lot easier to carry and you don’t have to switch cases.

Apple pencil without a doubt, don’t go for the competition, you will be using it a LOT

For connectivity, I’m using the Hyper solution. I really like this one and opted for Hyper for the simple reason that most of their products are well supported and good quality and seeing I’m using it like a pro device I don’t want any surprises. Do realize you have to disconnect it every time because it does drain the battery.

I’m also using a magic touchpad (I still had that one) for when I want to connect the iPad Pro to a monitor and use a separate keyboard and mouse like functions.

Conclusion
You might think I’m pretty harsh on the iPad pro.
And I might indeed, but let’s make one thing clear…. I strongly believe that in 2 years time we don’t travel with laptops anymore but with tablets like this. The reason is incredibly simple. You can do almost everything you can do on a laptop, in fact you can work faster and longer with creative software, the Apple pencil is just insane in how it works (and I love the new charging option).

The reason I’m harsh is more also towards Apple.
They charge you a premium price for all their products and throw around terms like magic, unbelievable etc. almost every minute in a keynote, this will, of course, strengthen the expectations someone has of a product. I already feel the iPad pro was wrongly launched, although people that draw will disagree and they are right, and after giving the iPad pro a second chance I can’t say I’m overall disappointing but it’s a far cry from what Apple makes you believe. The weird thing is…. it’s 98% there and that’s the most frustrating thing if a device doesn’t work at all you can just throw it out and don’t think about it.

The iPad Pro is a marvel.
I can edit 4K video smoothly on the timeline where my i9 needs proxy for h265 (insane), rendering a 10 minute video takes 8 minutes on my i9 en 10 minutes (real-time) on my iPad Pro (again insane), the screen is double as bright outside as my laptop which is a major deal when teaching workshops on location plus the battery just keeps going.

The apps are great.
Afinity photo is great for almost all photo-editing (but needs some serious bug fixes and performance boosts)
Photoshop I strongly believe in, but not at the moment… I know for sure that in a year we will have a different Photoshop on the iPad than the framework we see now, at the moment it’s a cool start but it doesn’t come close to the features in Afinity, but that being said, I think that in 2 years time Photoshop will be the ruler on the iPad Adobe just needs to start adding things and they already promised a very aggressive upgrade program so I’m full of confidence, and till that moment I can do everything with Afinity I need.

iOS itself is the thing that worries me the most.
Apple is always very “my way or the highway” and I just hope that by opening the USB-C port they don’t limit it for third parties to for example create tethering solutions or external connections.

At the moment I will continue using my iPad pro as a daily driver and my laptop is actually only used at the moment for our live streams and music recording (I like working with cakewalk on the desktop a bit more than the “limited” Garageband for full recordings especially with additions like EZkeys and EZdrummer etc). So overall I can say.

 

Yes, the iPad Pro can replace a laptop (finally) but if you are a demanding person (like me) there are some sacrifices you have to make. If they finally fix that batch renaming that would be a major improvement.

Sony A7rIV change this first and first impression

/in , , , /by

Images shot with my phone so don’t mind the quality please.

Since I’ve got the A7rIV people have been asking me why it doesn’t tether…. Of course it does but Sony changed the location for the settings a bit.

Make sure you always read the manual of course, bit for all you guys like me 😉

Go to

Now you can change a few settings that are important and pretty cool

First of course set it to PC remote and USB if you are using USB

One often heard complaint about for example capture one was that you can’t shoot to both the card and PC/Mac.

However a few firmwares ago Sony already added this option to for example the a7rIII. You can now set if you want to send images just to the receiver or also on the card.

But there is more

You can also opt for smaller files to be send to the receiver and the raws on the card. This is very handy with for example wireless transfers.

Now of course you also want to know how I like the camera ?

Well it’s very early to tell (I got my camera this weekend) but the files are very detailed and have a nice “roundness” megapixels is fun (I love a lot of mps) but not something that impresses me that much. I’m used to MF cameras and 60-100MP so that isn’t the thing that gets me.

That being said…. This camera is FAST and I really mean fast… I didn’t even load my fastest card and could shoot 60 RAW files before the buffer filled up on high+. That’s insane realizing you are shooting 60MP. Sony really did some magic here. The a7rIII was already fast but this is… Well insane is the only expression I can think off.

Also the evf is very nice and people that still claim evfs are not as good…… Try this one. I honestly would never ever wanted to go back to an ovf.

Also I love the fact that Sony gives you a lot of freedom with customization. You can program almost every button, create a favorite menu and even create your own version of the Fn menu (quick menu) for both video and photography (finally)

Does it beat MF?

NO and it will never ever, and any reviewer that tells you this doesn’t know his stuff.

MF is a different sensor size. Nothing more nothing less. However that being said, MF cameras have (thanks to that sensor size) a totally different look and feel to the images.

This camera is build for kick ass image quality with loads of detail, speed and portability and it beats MF in all those departments.

Let’s talk about lenses. Where MF is very dominant with prime lenses or 2-3x zoom lenses, the 35mm and crop series have a lot more options for zoom lenses and even a very nice 24-240 from sony (high on my wish list after testing one in SA and the USA)

So no the A7rIV is not beating MF on sensor size but it does make the reason to go for MF smaller and smaller. For a lot of work where in the past you needed MF now a 60MP Sony will do just fine. But if you’re a lover of that large medium format look and love the way the system feels MF still is a valid option.

But in all honesty…… Sony really does make it very very hard to warrant an investment of 10k+ in the step in crop MF world. Let alone full frame MF which will set you back a lot more.

The A7rIV is the kind of camera where other brands probably have nightmares off. And it is here. Where other brands only talk about whats to come. Sony just delivers.

Highly recommended

iPadOS my first impressions (mixed)

/in , , /by

As you probably know we are working on a fully laptop less workflow for photography and video based on the iPadPro.
In all honesty I was more than happy with my Huawei M5 tablet and didn’t feel any need to go back to Apple (I sold all my Apple gear a few years ago and are 100% satisfied with my P30Pro, Garmin VivoActive, ChromeCast and Windows Machines) but thanks to the iPad Pro, but mostly the apps, I decided to take the plunge and order an iPad Pro with Pencil 2. So far so good.

When the iPad pro 12.9 was released I was I think one of the first that hit refresh, refresh, refresh to order one, and a day later I could pick it up, the PRO ipad…. wow….. and what a disappointment. No apps that really used the iPad “pro”, it was literally just like the iPad just a blown up iPhone, nothing wrong with the iPad by the way I loved it, but it was a FAR cry from a pro device (what is it with that Pro title anyway, it seems soon I can Pro underwear and Pro socks or something).

So my first experience kind of sucked, Apple promised the heavens and it delivered a slight hell. A totally closed up system without any serious apps. But things have changed, not thanks to Apple (where is Final Cut Pro iPad for example) but thanks to companies like Lumatouch with Lumafusion (which is absolutely mind boggling), Adobe with Lightroom CC and soon Photoshop iPad and of course Affinity Photo. All great apps which are mainly focussed on iOs which I think is a bit of a shame because the Android tablets are very fast too, anyway long story short, when they announced iPadOS my interest was peaked, FINALLY an open file system.

Now why is that important
Try travelling with an iPad a few times and you know.
As long as you have blazingly fast internet… no problem but we recently visited Johannesburg and had to work with a stunning 2MB down and 0.09 up (yep I didn’t make a mistake really 0.09 up) meaning uploading my images to Lightroom CC was impossible, we started uploading 20 images at night and the next morning we hit 25%, Starbucks was my favorite place, but they only offered 5GB a month for free so uploading a vlog was impossible but for photos it was ok. But this shows the incredible limitation of iOS as it is. One could say… “use an external drive” well yeah… and no. You know copying with 100MB/s is ok but thanks to the limitations of the iPad pro I somehow never was able to break the 4MB/s to my harddrive (LaCie CoPilot) although uploading to the iPad worked ok with 20MB/s, connect it to my PC and it broke the 100MB/s with ease. So think about making a backup with 3MB/s of 25GB each day…. you get the idea I think. Add to this that you can’t let the iPad run all night with a harddrive connected because you can’t charge the bloody thing because it only has one port and with a dock the harddrive wasn’t recognized and you know why the iPad Pro with iOS is no pro device at all.

Which is a shame because as mentioned the apps are there. And in all honesty I can 90% of my work with those apps. So the idea of not bringing my laptop during travels is awesome (especially with the Apple pencil).

So what works?
Under iOS everything works, but getting stuff OFF the iPad Pro is a disaster, without fast internet, connect it to your PC for example and images can come off but videos are not seen (WHY) also it’s super frustrating to not be able to just use my downloaded music from talentsy/epidemic in Rush and Lumafusion without making two folders with the same content (come on). But it works if you stick to your workflow.

At one point even batch renaming was “semi” possible, still ridiculous no app or apple supports this and you have to use automator, but hey, it works (semi).

Powerpoint/keynotes work great, every projector and TV we used worked flawlessly, expect at my seminar at B&H we couldn’t get the ipad pro outputting a signal, but that was only once, luckily we had a backup and that one worked (phone and laptop). Shooting tethered wirelessly worked flawlessly with the Camfi (not stable/fast enough with the Sony app) and of course video editing and photo editing is no problem at all, if you can life with the photo apps from Apple (which is a disaster for a pro but ok).

iPadOs
So iPadOS
Ok I didn’t want to install it while travelling and when we arrived back I decided to wait for the final release, but seeing it’s only end of September and it’s now the 14th and I use the iPad pro almost every day I took the chance and installed iPadOS. And lets see at what I think and found out.

  1. External drives
    Yes it works, well semi.
    You have to format your drives in ExFAT, don’t try anything else it won’t work, don’t try to format on the iPad pro… because it doesn’t have an app for that, which I think is ridiculous seeing harddrives come mostly not in ExFat when you buy them, so you still need a computer to format them.
  2. External drive speed
    This is a HUGE disappointment for now, I hoped for a speedy way to copy my files or maybe even work straight from the hard drive, well forget about it. I did a quick calculation based on time and file size and I think the iPad pro tops out at max 25MB/s and this is with an SSD that tops out at 300MB/s on my desktop so it’s not the SSD.
  3. External tumbdrives
    Works although I only tested a few, speed was nothing more than usable
  4. Open file system
    NO WAY….
    This is not what I expected.
    Yes you can use external drives and files (the app to browse etc) but it’s still very iOS (like) for example there is still no way to batch rename files, the files app still doesn’t show you the film roll etc but I have some tips for that
  5. Look and feel
    Now for some people this is the biggest change but in all honesty I don’t really care for it, but I have to say, getting more apps on one page is awesome and well overdue, also the widgets on the home page is cool and of course Dark Mode and a full browing experience and semi multitasking is great, but that isn’t what I hoped for the most, but it’s cool don’t get me wrong.

Some tips for copying
For me the most important thing was getting files on and off and browsing via apps.
Well the most disappointing factor is that NONE of the apps so far use this option, Lumafusion still needs the import folder, Project Rush doesn’t even have the option for a folder or external drive (only cloud etc.) same with almost every other app I tried, BUT that being said this is still the beta so I guess the apps will be updated, if not…. I have to be honest I’ll go back to a laptop because this is just a very cumbersome way to work, that being said I’m almost sure they will update the apps so just wait for the final release and for now ignore that remark 😀

Ok so how do you go to and from the film roll.
Most apps use the film roll from apple for all the files, but how do you get files from the film roll to your harddrive and from your harddrive to the film roll when you don’t see the files/drives?

When you are in Apple’s film roll just select the files and select/copy. Now just leave the film roll and go to files and long press and use Paste. It took me a few minutes to figure this out because I expected actually to have it available a bit more obvious. Going from files to the film roll is a different story…. pffff.
Select the files and use SHARE, now under share use SAVE FILES and voila it saves it into the film roll. So it’s doable but it’s still very iOS like.

Conclusion
I still haven’t test a lot more like mouse support etc. because for me the most important thing is that file system.
So far so “good” I’m ok with how it works (when I figured it out) but I don’t feel like I’m working with an apple product and it hurts me to say this but I really feel Apple lost it’s way, and iPad OS so far shows this very clearly. For me Apple was always simple, easy to understand and very very clear how it works. At the moment (and it’s still in beta) we have a file system that works, but it’s not Apple worthy, it’s not impossible to use it (far from) but it’s more complicated that it needs to be, I only want to say… look at Android. For years I’ve been able to just connect it to my desktop and see all my files and copy back and forth without any limitations, also within Android most apps just let you select files from different locations. If you’re not careful it can become a mess but let’s be honest it’s the same on your desktop.

Apple has an amazing, magical (to speak in keynote words) device with the iPad pro, and I really mean this, it’s a kick ass device with incredible speed and battery life for what it does, yesterday I edited a complete vlog again and after editing, rendering and uploading with almost full brightness it only took a 18% battery hit, my laptop would be almost empty (remember these are 4K vlogs with edits in video and audio) and 10 Minutes vlog only takes 10 Minutes to render, my i9 on premiere pro does it in similar times so that’s just incredible.

What I miss is that Apple sauce. That very easy to understand interface, that interaction between the human and the machine (well you know what I mean), It seems like Apple is going backwards in a fast tempo for user interface but also going forwards in other departments like finally a full browsing experience (although on Chrome you can also ask for the full version of a website, but ok I’ll give them that).

What’s your opinion?
For me I just hope they make the copying to external devices much faster, 25MB/s in 2019 is really not from this time, we need at least 100MB/s and on USB-C that should be more than possible. Also I hope they open up the file system a bit more and make it integrate with the film roll like it should be. Or make the film roll an app like gallery and open up the folder film roll, now it’s really that it’s a fully closed app with all your photos which you can’t rename (still find that weird to the max) and can’t see on the iPad itself.

For now I think the iPad pro is an amazing device and a real game changer, the Apple Pencil 2 is just sick (in a very positive way) and the apps are more than adequate replacements/helpers for the desktop apps, it’s not that I really miss things, even skin retouching is easy with both Lightroom CC and Affinity (and soon Photoshop), but the file system REALLY needs some more work, but at least we now have something. It’s just a shame that a real Pro device is still a bit crippled by Apple that can’t seem to make up it’s mind if it’s fashion brand or a creatives dream company (which it once was).

Looking forward to your opinions.