Tag Archive for: Photoshop

Quite Frankly on plugins

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We all love photography right?
And one part of photography is editing, and well… this can be fun but sometimes it’s also a matter of repeating the same thing over and over. This is where plug-ins come in very handy.

 

Now there is literally a jungle on plug-ins available, so how do you select the right ones?
It will always be very personal, what works for you might not work for me, so in the end you have to make sure you choose what you use/need and not what someone tells you rocks.That being said, I love the plug-ins from MacPhun. I met them a few years ago during Photoshopworld and their intensify plugin/app blew me away, I’ve been using it ever since and found myself more and more switching to all their apps/plug-ins.

 

The plug-in we are gonna look at today is Intensify, and I believe it’s in 95% of my shots, sometimes very subtle, sometimes a bit more over the top. In my opinion by the way, mixing the effect is a vital importance, you don’t want your images to look like HDR (Highly Destructive Retouching).

 

In this episode of Quite Frankly (wow 57 already) I talk about plug-ins and demonstrate the Intensify plug-in by MacPhun.
We also made a special deal with them for you guys, surf to www.frankdoorhof.com/macphun for a great discount on their creative suite.

Digital classroom Small flash

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Digital classroom is a live broadcast from our studio which we do every month for free.
I started digital classroom to introduce people a bit to what we do with our instructional videos and workshops, of course these go more in depth and are a bit more technical but for a free broadcast I strongly believe it’s a great educational tool.

 

Digital classroom is not possible to create without the help from some sponsors of course, so we are very grateful for our friends at BenQ and Rogue/Expo imaging to help us out with this.

 

This time the theme of the Digital classroom is “using small flash”.
It’s a 2 hour instructional video so take your time, sit back, grab your notepad and enjoy.

iPad pro vs Surface pro …. oh no

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Let me start of by saying that I always believe that everyone is right…
Now what do I mean with this?
Everyone has a different workflow, everyone has different skills, everyone has different needs and that’s ok, so whatever I will say in this blogpost is actually aimed at me, and maybe at you…. But one thing…. please read the WHOLE blogpost before you start a discussion because I think it will make a lot of stuff clearer 😀

 

Why this blogpost?
I recently got an iPad pro and Apple Pencil and have been over the moon with the possibilities (see my reviews online and on this blog), in fact the Apple Pencil awakened a long sleeping desire to draw in me, and I’ve been doing since the day I got the Pencil, it just feels very very natural. So I’ve been posting very positive about it. Also because I never intended to buy the iPad pro for the simple reason it didn’t run full MacOsX, but….. and this where it happens.

 

Full OS vs iOS
So why did I bought that expensive iPad pro and didn’t I buy a MacBookPro or 12″.
Well the 12″ doesn’t make sense for me, I need processing power, we edit 4K videos on the road, I retouch 42/60MP files etc. and although the 12″ is great for business men, for me it would be a paperweight (a very light one) and I would still prefer my MacBookPro 15″ retina.

 

But… I can’t draw on my MBP.
And this is the MAIN reason I bought the iPad pro, the incorporation of the stylus, excuse me Pencil. Of course it also helps that it’s smaller than a laptop (easier when traveling) and it’s bigger than an iPad so I can work on it better, and even with the attached Logitec Create keyboard it will still fit on my lap in an Airplane (barely). But most of all because all the apps are 100% touch based….

 

Surface pro and likes and iOS iPad Pro
So whatever you post about the iPad pro there will be a group of people claiming the iPad pro is just catching up because the Surface Pro has been doing it for YEARS…..and indeed they Surface pro (and others) have been in that form for years, indeed, so that’s true. If you look at it like this…. you have a pen and a tablet.
BUT…..
There is much much more, let’s look at some differences.

 

The first thing you have to realize that there is a huge difference between a tablet and a PC.
A tablet is/should be 100% touch, meaning bigger menus for your fingers (slightly smaller for a stylus), there should be more than enough apps to do whatever you want to do and…. most importantly the system should be very stable.
A desktop or laptop is a different beast.
You have a keyboard for typing and shortcuts, and you have a pointing device for example a mouse and/or trackpad. Most importantly this means you can have smaller menus, you can use keystrokes for quick and easy acces to much used commands and you can work in a efficient way.

 

Did you read that last one?
In a more efficient way, and that’s 100% true.
Let’s look at Photoshop for example.

 

Photoshop (real life) example
For Photoshop I use the following keyboard shortcuts a lot (read sometimes several times per second)
sampling, brush size up and down, Undo and redo, zoom in and out, drag, and switching color when working with masks and I know I only use a few compared to some others. But I would need 9 hardkeys or soft keys to do my work in the most simple way. On my Mac/PC or laptop no problem at all, the keyboard is always there.

 

Now I disconnect the keyboard like on the surface, I sit down on the coach and start to retouch…. after opening my image and looking at it the first problem occurs, I want to zoom in… well that’s possible via the Menu. But now I want to take away some blemishes…… uh…. well….. I can find my healing brush but….. how do I sample without a keyboard? ok let’s forget the sampling just run a filter because I’m running the full version, so that’s done, now I make a layer mask, hide all and I start to paint, every time however I need to switch colors I have to click on the colors, but that’s doable. However changing the brush size….. well that’s again very annoying because it has to be done in the menu. But we’re done with that… now let’s change something in the background with the clone tool…. oops that doesn’t work also because I have to sample something….. well let’s skip that too….

 

To be honest this doesn’t work for me.
If I need to skip things in my workflow I would rather not be able to retouch at all, it should be seamless. You could of course project the keys as a floating keyboard and use those with touch, but when I worked with the Surface I couldn’t find an app that made a few small buttons I could program as keystrokes.

 

Same goes with video editing, try to operate Adobe Premiere ONLY with a stylus… you can better wait till you’re home and do it at home.

 

So I’m running a full OS, I can work in Photoshop and Lightroom but… I can’t do the things I normally do unless I switch constantly between menus and taking for granted that some things never will work. One could argue that you can program the keys on the stylus for this but this is not something that worked very well for me, I lost a lot of control when I did this and found myself frustrated a lot, but maybe if I would have stuck with it for a few days longer I would be able to learn it, but even then I would have only had 2 extra keys.

 

Now let’s look at a 100% touch interface
A tablet runs with apps.
Now apps in the past were terrible, it was a game, an option to put two fingers on the screen and draw, play piano etc. and of course an app was never take seriously… but hey it’s 2015 and apps have grown, in fact you could say that when you look at the apps today some apps are even better than the full blown versions on the “real” OS. But the system will live or die by the amount of apps, and this is (in my opinion) where the Apple system blossoms, there are apps for everything and the apps are very very good overal.


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For example take a look at iMovie
When ever I tell people I use iMovie they look at me with a big question mark like I’m editing on a typewriter.
But let’s face it, iMovie on the iPad/iPhone has matured and delivers 99% of what most people need. You can edit 4K streams, use PIP, use titles, add music, manipulate music, change the look of clips, change fades etc. plus it reads a lot of video formats now a days. What do you need is the big question, if you need to edit Multicam you are right, iMovie is not the place, but if we are filming a BTS video we often use one camera and that we can edit for almost 100% in iMovie, the only reason I say almost is because sometimes we want a different kind of title, a different look etc. but that’s personal, if it would be just the video we could do it 100% in iMovie.

 

Now throw in Adobe Clip in the mix and you have different options including a cool one where you select the music, throw in the clips, sit back and it creates something cool all automatically on the music which of course you can later fine tune. I know of people that actually use this every time for BTS videos even when at home, they throw the clips in, let it do it’s magic and fine tune it in Premiere pro on their macs. It’s actually also something we are looking into, but Annewiek (and me) actually like a bit more control so we always edit manually. But hey it’s pretty cool.

 

Interaction and connectivity
In the past the iPad was the iPad, you needed iTunes to connect and what came out of the iPad was a finished product. But also that has changed A LOT.

 

First of all using iTunes is also something I don’t like that much, but I hardly use iTunes anymore, only for my music and backups to be honest. The rest is all transferred via a USB3/Lighting stick which is available up to 128/256GB so that should keep you going. Work I create in Procreate is synced via my dropbox, videos and photos we use airdrop and movies I just copy to VLC player via the stick or via iTunes drop, so this is really something from the past… but there is more.

 

You can easily start a project in Adobe Clip or iMovie and continue that project in Premiere or iMovie/Final Cut ProX on the desktop, no problem at all. I can create a drawing in ProCreate and drop this as PSD to Photoshop to finish it off.

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Limitations
Because the interface is 100% touch and Apple doesn’t want to take any sacrifices they will not merge MacOSx and iOs together at the moment so somethings you can’t do. For the moment for example there is no full Photoshop touch that works with plugins the way you are used to on the desktop, but I think there will be solutions pretty soon. If you for example look at the interface of the FREE MediBang Paint you can see that it’s very well possible to create a very sophisticated program on iOS. I have to be honest that it’s a program I just installed 2 days ago (never heard of it before) and I’m now switching between MediBang and Procreate to see which one I like the most, but MediBang is pretty impressive and I can see something like this EASILY used for photo editing if they changed a few things around and add a few features. (by the way the interface is 100% english in my version)

about-mpiPad

 

A look into the future, that I THINK will be reality
Let me start of by saying that this is just my COMMON sense speaking, what I tell you now is not something that I know is coming, but it’s something that if it would NOT be coming it would REALLY surprise me.
Let me start by saying the following (and this might shock people), Photoshop doesn’t read RAW files.
No really it’s true. Photoshop works with a “finished” product, ACR (Adobe Camera RAW) converts your RAW files into for example TIFF 16 bits ProPhotoRGB files and this is what Photoshop uses. After this all the plugins are used, you can retouch etc. but in essence you are working on TIFFs/PSD etc.
So let’s see what the future COULD bring
I process all my files in Lightroom, Capture One or DxO on my desktop (in the hotel or wherever) into TIFF/PSD 16 bits files. Now I put them on my USB stick and we travel. During travel I now open first my TIFFs/PSDs into Photoshop fix (which can handle pretty big files) and I retouch my skin, other small things etc. Now I open up my other skin plugin (if needed) and I make the skin nice of course I use the delivered adjustment brush to paint the effect in where I want it. After this I run my mobile app for the special sharpening (on my dekstop this is Intensify pro from MacPhun) and I’m done with that (also with the adjustment brush ofcourse), now I open up the final software and I tint my image….. And…… well I’ve done the EXACT same workflow as I did on my desktop and I have the EXACT same file as I did on my desktop, but there is one huge difference…. ALL the apps I used are designed for touch, meaning they use easy to use interfaces, they support the Apple Pencil and they run VERY fast because everything is optimized for my tablet. Everything is now stored on my stick which I take out and plug into my desktop and copy everything on my harddrives and sync it within Lightroom and… well I’m done.

 

The whole discusion of “the iPad can’t read RAW” is pretty “lame” RAW files only need to read once and this is where you adjust what you need and you store it as TIFFs/PSDs after that you can edit in whatever you want. So also on the road.

 

Discuss because of….
I’m afraid a lot of the discussions about surface pro vs iPad is more a matter of “my brand is better than yours” than people that really think about the workflow differences and the options you get. Or they simply don’t want to be open for what’s really going on, and of course you could say I’m the same 😀

 

Is the iPad pro a game changer… well I think it is but not if you just look at it as a tablet with a stylus, that indeed has been on the market for years. It has just been released and you already see artist and real creatives (I consider my drawing skills to be absolute starter) taking the Pencil in their hands and being blown away and switching to the iPad pro because it gives them more control, although already they created art I can only dream off on iPhones with their fingers. The Apple pencil is I think the real game changer, and as you know the iPad pro was designed for that Pencil (the technique is not 100% in the pencil but also in the iPad).

apple6_600x400

 

You see apps like Astropad who not a lot of people heard of explode online now it really comes to life with the bigger screen and Apple Pencil on the iPad pro. You do have to realize however that Astropad is not a substitute of running Photoshop on an iPad pro… it’s in fact a 19.99 Cintiq alternative, for me for example the Cintiq was never a question, I would LOVE the companion but it was too expensive and the use I would get out of it was too little to justify the costs, and carrying another device on the plane or during travels.

 

In the coming months you will hopefully see more and more plug-in creators change their plug-ins for Mac/Pc into apps on the iPad and if someone is smart enough to create a “macro” app which will let you open a TIFF and run it in series through the Apps you need this would be a golden combination. So open in fix, save, open in skin, save, open in intensify, save, open in tint, save and now finally….. choose.

 

Most professionals have a really streamlined workflow, my Photoshop workflow for example is almost always the same, so for me it doesn’t make sense to go back to step 1, my retouches take on average 5-10 minutes total and are always in the same order, heck I even flatten my layers when I’m done. So being “stuck” with apps would actually be no problem at all for me.

 

Most of all however the game change element is in the fact that for the first time you have a REAL tablet (so one that is based on 100% touch) with a HUGE library of apps that now also supports a creative device (the Pencil) that can be qualified as top of the line, that combines this all together and opens totally new workflow options. The iPad never really FILLED the gap between being at home and traveling, it was always more “playing around with your files and great for iPhone shots”, now it really fills that gap WITHOUT claiming other wise, I never heard Adobe say you would never use your Photoshop anymore, they always talk about connecting everything together, working on one device and continuing on another. This is also what I didn’t like about Cooks announcement that it would replace the laptop, for business men I think it could, for creatives… well never.
When Microsoft lend me the Surface Pro I was amazed by the device, when they recently released the Surface book I was blown away, it looks drop dead amazing for what it’s on paper, but I also know that as soon as I disconnect it from the keyboard I’m stuck with a crippled Photoshop and the apps for Windows that are 100% touch don’t come close to the offers on the iOS system, and that’s understandable of course, it’s mainly windows with added touch so that’s not an attack, but why would you write an app if you have the full blown OS available.

 

I always claimed that if there was something better than what I’m using now I’m switching, this is also why the Surface pro replaced my MacBook for about 6 months (I actually sold my MPB) but in the end it just didn’t work out, I found myself using it more for watching movies and some photo selecting in Lightroom than running Photoshop, when I ran Photoshop I had a keyboard connected and then loved it, but as soon as they keyboard was gone… well I couldn’t work with it at the speed I wanted so I never used it. For photoselecting I can use Lr Mobile which works faster with touch than the full version to be honest on my Surface.

 

You always have to realize that there are many different markets.
For business men I think the SurfaceBook is the choice at the moment, it will beat the iPad pro senseless for the simple reason that it’s very well thought out, office runs on it and when you disconnect it you can draw a bit and watch movies (although battery time is limited) but without a keyboard Windows will stay crippled. For creative people, photographers, video editors, drawers, painters etc. I strongly believe the iPad pro is the first generation of a device that WILL change the way we work.

 

Are we there yet?
Well yes and no.
With Adobe Photoshop fix you have a great program for fixing things (hence the name)
With Snapseed I could do the sharpening I love and even the tinting (actually snapseed does A LOT) but they need to up the resolution to 50MP on the iPad pro which is the only limitation it has now in the workflow (and of course be able to open TIFFs), but I think that’s something that could be easily adjusted.
For me as a professional I still prefer my MacPro and my Magic touchpad, Wacom/Astropad (still testing which one will stay but I’m leaning to Astropad) and my 27″ dual monitor setup with aRGB color capabilities, but when traveling this doesn’t fit in my bag, so I have no problem at all by selecting my images in the hotel, converting them to TIFFs and putting them on a stick and retouching them all on the plane with the iPad pro without the need for keyboards, because the whole interface is touch based.

 

Conclusion
Sorry for the long rant but I wanted to write this blog post because it seem the last week I’ve been posting the same answers over and over and I’m limited to what time I have online so I thought let’s bundle all these answers into one blog post I can reference to.

 

Let me end by stating (again) that I love Microsoft, they are making great products and the people I worked with were absolutely awesome, I really really like their SurfaceBook. But for what I PERSONALLY do the iPad pro at the moment is filling my needs, but it’s far from perfect, it’s really a very good in between device for photographers and video editors meaning it cuts down a lot of edit time when you arrive back home.

 

Where is shines is drawing and painting and I absolutely love it, and as a traveling companion I couldn’t wish for a better device, the games are cool and gorgeous on the big screen, the movies playback amazing and it even plays 4K if needed.

 

Let’s dream a bit
Howe about if Apple would release a keyboard with build in harddrive, fast video etc. or in other words a MBP without display…. the only thing they would have on top of the keyboard would be the new connector…… and what if…… you would just click that iPad pro onto that connector and the iPad pro switches from being an iPad to just being a display……. I would be willing to pay the price of a MBP 15″ for that keyboard 😀

The iPad Pro

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If you don’t know by now you must be living under a rock I guess, but Apple announced their iPad Pro a while ago, and online you have read a lot of opinions, hands-on etc. some even the minute it was released, so why am I so late in the game and why do I even post this…..

 

I love gadgets, don’t get me wrong, I’m just like all of you (well ok most) when something new is released my first instinct is “WOW have to see that”, but I’m also very realistic, meaning I hardly buy something I don’t use or need. Take for example the Apple watch, when it was “leaked” I had to have it, I love sports and I love gadgets and what the Apple watch promised was amazing (did you count the amount of amazing during the keynote?) however when it was released for me personally it was a huge disappointment, of course it’s a cool watch and I love to be able to see stuff on my watch, and yeah I think it’s the future but they took out all the cool stuff for health, so I skipped the watched and got a Fitbit Surge which I love by the way. Will there be an Apple watch in my future… without a doubt but not yet, they have to add stuff I can’t do with my surge that will benefit my fitness/health/sport etc. and the Surge is pretty complete. But hey this is about the Apple iPad pro.

 

A photographers view
I love photography, you could say I’m always doing something with photography, but I also would love to be able to draw, in fact when I was younger I used to draw a lot but somehow it faded away to the background and I never also found a way to draw digitally that I liked or that triggered me to start doing it again.

 

My first opinion when the iPad pro was launched was…. “OH NO… NO MACOSX… I’m not interested”
And I think many of you thought the same thing, and the pricing…. pffffff I’m better off with my MPB or a MBP air or whatever MacBook. And so it faded away and I never thought of the iPad pro again. Till recently.

 

I do a lot of workshops on location and to be honest dragging a laptop with me, USB cables and setting everything up is pretty annoying at times, especially when you move around on a location a lot, so I was looking into ways to tether wirelessly with my Sony, the Sony remote software works flawless although there is a small bug in which the EVF stays black, but I hope they solve this soon. The other option is an Eye-Fi card which SHOULD work flawless but I can’t seem to get it to work consistently (Eye-Fi is working on my problem and sending me a new one), then we have CamRanger, works flawlessly but not for Sony (COME ON CAMRANGER), but I’m also working on a solution here with a TP-Link router (will know next week if that works), in other words shooting wirelessly will happen. And on the iPad/iPhone this is a really handy tool which works like a charm, but in the meantime we also have this working on my MBP so let’s put it this way, we probably are able to cut the cables very soon.

 

So where does the iPad pro come in.
Carrying an iPad with us is like a dream come true during workshops, but…the screen is a bit small, so the iPad pro would rock there, so that’s one point for the iPad Pro.

 

Lightroom Mobile
When Lightroom Mobile was released I was over the moon, WOW amazing (oops) awesome, the idea of working on all devices connected is a dream come true. But at first I just used it for my portfolio so slowly LrM was forgotten, until I started looking into the iPad pro, I changed my portfolio from LrM to the SmugMug app (which also supports local copies) and I started playing with LrM, totally love it, but….. uploading files can be LOOOOOONG and especially on trips I’m afraid this will be a problem, but there is always a starbucks close by or another wifi network and I think if you just by routine let the laptop upload every night it will be ok to have everything on your iPad when you travel. Because that’s the idea, but ideal it’s not (yet)

 

Now I spend sometimes hours behind a crappy desk in a hotel doing edits and selects in Lr from my street and travel photography, I don’t need anything more than Lightroom for 90% of those shots, and even worse… when there is no good desk I do it on the bed and end up with back-pains from sitting in a weird position for 1-2 hours. Imagine….. doing this on the iPad (pro) and indeed after some testing I did in the last few weeks this indeed works like a charm, I’m a bit faster on Lr on my MBP/Mac but… the speed in which you can actually edit and select is pretty cool it really works. Because you can tell LrM to edit OFFLINE you can download the whole catalogue on your device and work on it on the plane, in the bus or whatever. Having the real estate of the iPad Pro…. well point 2 for the iPad Pro.

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Video editing
We love video, and you guys love video.
And we do film a lot of stuff, but most never sees the light of day because we have more important projects and most edits could be done pretty fast, we experimented a while on the iPhone during travels and the iPad air and it worked… but to be honest on the iPad it was ok but on the iPhone it was a less than happy experience to say the least, it’s ok for small videos but a larger project no way. When I saw a small demo of what iMovie was capable off on the iPad pro I was like….. interesting and this actually triggered my interest from the iPad pro from “I’m gonna skip it” to “I’m looking into it”

 

Now I hear you ask, how do you get the videos from the iPhone or cameras into the iPad?
Well there are plenty of solutions out there that support a memory stick with both Lighting and USB so that would not be a problem, just download the material from the iPhone and upload it into the iPad (pro).

 

But iMovie? Seriously?
Well yeah, why not, and when we are done with the edits, copy the project to FinalCutProX and complete it, as long as the “flow” is there, and let’s be honest that takes the most time. But even then, for most videos like BTS etc. you could do more than enough with iMovie.

 

Entertainment
Not so much for that, of course playing angry birds or candy crush on a big screen is cool, but not worth the 1000+ you have to pay for the iPad pro, I love my iPad air way too much for that, that being said…. movies… well ok that would be nicer. Half a point of the iPad Pro.

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Drawing
This is where I was most impressed about on the iPad pro, and seriously…… Wacom watch out.
At the moment the best experience I ever had on tablets were on Wacom tablets, and trust me I tried a few and they all failed miserably, but the first Wacom I got… well I never looked back and now even travel with one. But for my retouching I don’t really need the drawing power of sensitive, angles etc. but remember I told you that I loved to draw when I was younger…. well this still is inside me, thinking about the options to draw on a tablet like the iPad pro when flying or traveling or when you have a few moments off…. for real artists probably 10 whole points for the iPad pro for me just add another half point.

 

Retouching
Now it gets more interesting for us photographers.
Ever lusted for the cintic?
Ever drooled over the companion?
Be honest…..
Be honest….
Yeah me too, but I just can’t justify the costs, but it would be incredibly handy for those composites you do and the drawing of masks etc. well enter an app called ASTROPAD which I recently found out, it promises (and as I can see delivers) the cintic killer, zoom in on you work with the gestures and edit without lag (if you use a cable) on your photoshop work. For under 50.00 (the price seems to change constantly) you’re up and running and with the normal styluses the people are already raving about it… imaging the iPad Pro pencil which works on a pixel level instead of the rude way the iPad styluses work, that would be…. well ok I say it once… amazing.

 

Let’s say 1 point again for the iPad pro (because I can also work with a Wacom for what I do, but for some people this will be another HUGE amount of points)

 

The future
Ok the iPad pro works with apps.
But is this really a bad thing……
Yeah if you want to retouch models on it.
Photoshop fix is awesome, but don’t even thing about running it from LrM because you will be working on a smart preview, in other words a smaller resolution, yeah it saves a great PSD you can fine tune in Photoshop later on (this works pretty well by the way and really wowed me) but if you want to do this you have to import TIFFs on the iPad (pro) and edit from there and then upload them to the cloud and later back on your mac.. and to be honest that won’t work for me. So retouching skin or taking stuff out of a shot not for me, I don’t believe in that until there is a full blown Ps running with plugins and that will take some time.

 

Having said that…
We all know what happens when Apple releases something, first people deny it will ever work or be a succes and slowly (sometimes very fast) people start seeing the benefits and app makers jump to the opportunity to create something cool and use the device to the max, I expect Adobe to not jump on the iPad pro but I think they will RUN to the iPad pro and I mean RUN!!! this device is so powerful and has such a great opportunity with the Pencil that Adobe would be crazy to not take full advantage of it. I think the mobile apps we see now are just the beginning of something that will maybe be a full companion to our desktop programs and interact even more with on the road and off the road.

 

Think about this.
In the studio connect the iPad pro and edit on the iPad Pro with your Pencil in Photoshop, Lightroom, Paint or whatever you use, when you disconnect all you work is synced to your iPad pro and you can work on the road, as soon as you’re back home and connect the iPad Pro again it’s synced and you can continue. The processing power is there, the accuracy of the pencil is there, Adobe has already a great suite of mobile apps…. the next step will be made, or in other words it would surprise me if they didn’t. They just have to skip the cloud action and the options are endless (well as long as you have enough storage that is)

 

This is of course as we call it “Coffee thick watching” but I think within 6 months we will see things happening on the iPad pro that will blow your mind, or at least help your creativity.

 

The competition
I hear you say “Frank nice and Apple fanboyish, but what about the Microsoft Surface pro?”
Well I will tell you even better, did you see their new Surface book… talk about a machine WOW, can’t wait to get my hands on one of those to be honest, that looks like the perfect machine for any photographer/retoucher out there, a super powerful machine with full versions of Capture One, Photoshop, Premiere etc. USB ports for tethering, wifi etc. And when you want to use it as a tablet you just take it off and you work with it, and it also supports a pen. to be honest I was thinking about getting one and leaving my MacBook and iPad pro when traveling… but I also read some reviews, the trackpad is not as good as the MBP and be honest you work with the trackpad a lot, the pen is not as good as the iPad pro, and that’s where a lot of creative people will probably leave, if you see their keynote they do indeed focus A LOT on office and not on drawing or painting.

 

That being said, for ME personally the Surfacebook would be more than I need for my workflow, and 3100.00 well ok it’s a LOT of money but it could replace my MacBookPro and the iPad pro so in the end it’s cheaper, so why not buy that one?

 

Well I’m “afraid” that within a few months when the iPad pro is out I will regret it, but I will try to get my hands on a Surfacebook and test it (let’s hope Microsoft is willing to lend me one), I did LOVE their surface pro tablets and even used one for a while but I switched back to the mac because of the interaction between my devices which was a bit more smooth when I used all mac devices but things have changed. So I’m open for that.

 

Final thoughts and notes
As you can see this is more a notepad to myself, which hopefully also helps some of you guys out there, to decide of the iPad pro is for you. For me at the moment there are a lot of plusses to the iPad pro, the size is very nice for the workshops on location (if we get Wifi tethering working it will be a sure buy) but could be a problem during travel in the airplane (will it fit in the little net in front of you), entertainment on the road is cool but not necessary this big, but having the option to do quick video editing in downtime, don’t have to sit on the bed or behind a crappy desk in a hotel but just work with touch while being comfortably on the bed or seat also adds A LOT. Also the prospect of what could be possible is very intriguing and because it’s an Apple product I’m willing to risk it.
Adding everything together I’m still on the point of Yes/No, although the Yes will probably win, but I’m also looking at the Microsoft Surfacebook although the idea of using one machine with Windows and everything else with MacOs also scares me seeing the experiences in the past. And because I also want to be able to draw a bit more I don’t know if that would be the best choice.

 

The final thing that I have to add is the addition of the Apple Sim.
We travel around a “bit” and we now have 2 mifi devices, one for europe and one for the USA.
In Europe we hardly have any problems, go to the first local shop and get a simcard plug it in and voila internet, and pretty cheap too. In the USA it’s a huge problem, we have a Verizon Mifi and to our “horror” nobody could help us to get it working again, we had to go to a Verizon head office store, and the closest was 10 miles and it was closed that day, so we ended up forgetting about it and just hopped acces points that week. With the Apple sim the moment you land you can buy an Internet package, pricing is ok but a bit steep, on the other hand if we calculate the loss of half a day to get a mifi working in the states well… it could pay back itself. However in Europe everything is about to change, in about 1-2 years there are no more roaming costs, meaning we can use our own bundle also in other countries, meaning the Apple sim would be useless.

 

The iPad pro promised a lot, it’s bound by apps.
At the moment the main things I want to do I can do much easier on the iPad pro than on the iPad or MBP while traveling, and some new options have opened up which draws me more and more towards the iPad pro. Let’s see what happens and I wonder what your opinions are?
Feel free to post them below.