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the_ether

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My initial (poor) experience with IPad Pro 9.7"
« on: April 29, 2016, 11:04:02 am »

I just bought the latest Ipad Pro - the 9.7" version that has the super screen and 'True Tone' capability.

After my initial playing around with it I'm rather disappointed given all the hype that Apple made about it being a laptop replacement. I could well be missing something but here's my initial observations:

1- the standard way of getting photos on to the device is by syncing via iTunes. However:

a) you need the latest version of iTunes to sync with the iPad Pro and it turns out this version of Itunes has a bug whereby it doesn't like some photos for some reason (some new Apple curatorial AI?) and then decides to not sync any other photos it comes across thereafter - silently, without any error message. Deleting the offending images is the only way to get the remaining images onto the iPad. Apple appear to know about the bug and so hopefully in the near future this will be fixed;

b) iTunes re-sizes the images. For example, I have an image that is 5644 x 6679 on my Macbook. But when synced to my iPad, it becomes 3,460 x 4096. Presumably quality is also degraded as the image would have to be uncompressed and then recompressed.

2- I found one app., PhotoMgrPro that can import photos itself from iTunes. It pulls from iTunes rather than the standard iTunes push and so I can import images in their original size. Hurray! However... the standard maximum zooming in iOS seems to be fixed. The result is that in the standard iOS Photo app and also PhotoMgrPro, I can't zoom in enough... Effectively back to where I started.

Importing and zooming issues are the same for Snapseed.

So basically, I can't get a 100% enlargement of my photos.

3- I tried Lightroom Mobile. (Note that there are two version of this app.: one for a phone and one for an iPad; the latter is the only one that can make use of the large iPad screen though the former still works.

Lightroom doesn't cap the zoom amount. Great! However... to import the images you must import them from the Photo app which itself gets them from an iTunes sync. So great that you can zoom in, not so great that you can only zoom into a lower res image.

It appears though that if you subscribe to Lightroom CC - and it seems that the standalone won't do - then you can import images from your main computer - presumably at their original resolutions.

I don't know if LR Mobile will allow me to import from a memory stick and even if it did, I would then have to pay for a fancy new cable / stick for that.

I don't want to pay for a Adobe CC subscription just to be able to view my photos at 100% crop on my iPad.

I've seen someone on this forum praise the Filterstorm app. but from their website it looks like you can only import images from the iOS Photo app. Also, I can't see whether zooming is capped or not.

4- The Ipad has a 'True Tone' capability which adjusts the screen's white balance according to ambient light conditions. Personally, I've found that this has a negative impact. Perhaps it's because I bought the iPad with a black bezel. I assume that a True Tone would be needed if one had a white bezel so that the screen matched the changing whiteness of the bezel.

5- The screen has a best of class, low level of reflectivity, which is great, but it also means that it is the worst for picking up - and keeping - greasy finger marks. My iPhone 6 wipes clean more easily.

So, so far at least, I find the iPad a bit of a toy but I still hope to find a reasonably priced app. that at least allows me to see my photos at 100% crop at their original resolution.
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Alan Smallbone

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Re: My initial (poor) experience with IPad Pro 9.7"
« Reply #1 on: April 29, 2016, 12:59:01 pm »

I don't have the iPad Pro, I just have a regular ipad, normally I do not use Apple products, I have it mostly for my drone. However I am playing with some of the photo apps. I did find a way to transfer pictures from anything to anything without having to use itunes, which I dislike. It is called phototransfer app.
http://www.phototransferapp.com/

It is free for windows, the apps for android and apple cost a few bucks. I can move photos from my new Android Galaxy S7 to my PC or my iPad directly using wifi, no the fastest method but it works. You can try the apps before buying them. The only problem I have found is that it will not transfer the DNG files from phone to the PC but the developer has been contacted about it and was not aware of the raw formats now, so I think he is working on a fix for it.

Alan
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Alan Smallbone
Orange County, CA

the_ether

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Re: My initial (poor) experience with IPad Pro 9.7"
« Reply #2 on: April 29, 2016, 04:24:15 pm »

Thanks Alan.

I had a look at the app. You have to buy it to use it on an iDevice and I couldn't find enough details on their help page to answer the following question. Could you tell me, when you transfer photos onto your iPad, are they stored in the iOS Photo app. so that they can then be loaded by other apps. such as LR Mobile, or are they stored within the Photo Transfer App?

Second question please. I have my photos arranged in folders on my Mac. When I sync with iTunes, the folder structure is maintained - which is what I want. Does your app. do that or do you end up with one folder with all the photos inside?
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the_ether

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Re: My initial (poor) experience with IPad Pro 9.7"
« Reply #3 on: April 30, 2016, 08:32:57 pm »

I managed to find a Lite version of Photo Transfer App and gave it a go. I then decided to buy a different app. called PhotoSync. I prefer the latter because you can specify (and create if needs be) an album on the iOS device to transfer the images to. It can also handle RAW files.

https://www.photosync-app.com/photosync/en/features.html

I could then import the images into Lightroom Mobile.

Note that with the latest version of iOS you can split the screen and run two applications side by side (only on an iPad). So I ran Lightroom against the standard iOS Photo app, Snapseed and Filterstorm Neue to view the same photo. There was a noticeable difference between LR and the other three. The images I tested were in Adobe RGB. (Note that the 9.7" iPad Pro has a wider colour gamut than other iPads.) I retested with an sRGB version of a photo and sure enough, it's a colour profile issue.
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Alan Smallbone

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Re: My initial (poor) experience with IPad Pro 9.7"
« Reply #4 on: May 03, 2016, 11:30:58 am »

Sorry to not reply earlier. Thanks for the link to PhotoSync. I will look at that. In the last day or so I decided to revamp my workflow and now it is better managed at least for what I am doing. I am taking a class in mobile photo art, something completely different to what I normally would do.... So I was taking pics with my Android phone (S7) and also taking pics with an iPod which has the same camera as the basic iPhone 6. Then using those images for doing on art on the ipad. Originally I was using the Photo Transfer app but has the limitation about the raw files, it can create albums on the ipad, just have to create them first. I was losing control of the assest pretty quickly and so ended up revamping the whole workflow.

I now download everything to my laptop or desktop. Copy the images to a folder on my OneDrive (Microsoft) directory. This then links the laptop, desktop and all the mobile devices. I then catalog my images there with Lightroom and I can process them in Capture One or Lightroom or Photoshop, then output to a specific directory on the OneDrive. These then appear as thumbnails in the OneDrive app on the ipad. I can then "share" the images I want to work on to the ipad. Work on them and then take the finals and place them in a finals folder on OneDrive, I can think sync the catalogs on the desktop and laptop and everyone can see all the images and they are all managed quite easily.

So don't know if that is helpful to anyone but it works well for me. And stops multiple copies on multiple devices. I can also look at the finals on any mobile device without having to download to that device. Which is nice as well.

Alan
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Alan Smallbone
Orange County, CA
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