Update: iPhoto was in fact announced. Further thoughts at the bottom of this original article.
Some well-reasoned pundit speculation about the hours-away iPad 3 announcement indicates we may see iPhoto announced for the iPad. You’d think I’d be all excited about that as a photographer, right?
I’m an Adobe Lightroom user who’s found the experience of editing photos on the iPad to be clunky, awkward, and slow. These problems weren’t because of software, but because a finger-touch system is a crappy way to make precise photo edits. iPhoto won’t fix that.
Why should I care about a system that will involve importing photos from some external camera device, editing them in a clunky interface, and managing them in a system which isn’t compatible with Lightroom?
What am I missing?
Update after the announcement: Apple did announce iPhoto for iOS (both iPad and iPhone). I might load it on my iPhone, but I’m pretty sure I’ll never really use it on the iPad. As I mentioned when I wrote this piece last night, the issue isn’t software – it’s hardware and workflow. I don’t capture images on my iPad… so if I’m going to spend the time to import images onto another device for editing, why would I import to the iPad (with a limited set of photo editing tools) instead of my MacBook Air (with Lightroom)? And when I’m done editing and want to share the photos online, would I rather do that from the iPad one-app-at-a-time interface where sharing/uploads are often clunky, or would I rather do that as a Lightroom export including the various publish services?
Here is my take as an amatuer photographer. I bought my first “real” camera (Panasonic LX-3) in Spring of 2009, along with Aperture and subsequently, Lightroom. I recieved a first gen iPad and camera connection kit December 2010. In the first 18-20 months of having a camera, before getting an iPad, I took about 500 photos. Between January 2011 and and November 2011 (when I could finally get an iPhone on Sprint) I took over 10,000 photos. Basically, the iPad made the process immediate and Instagram, Camera+, and TiltShiftGen made it fun. I like being able to get a shot and play with it immediately. Loading a bunch of photos into Lightroom when I get home, while powerful, is not fun. It just feels like work. Through all of that, the biggest limitation, and source of frustration, was the cluxy iOS Photos app, which chokes if you have very many photos. So I’m pretty excited at the prospect of a better option on the iPad.
So… your process was that you were loading photos from your LX-3 onto your iPad and then editing them in the iOS apps?
How has that changed since getting an iPhone? Do you still edit on the iPad?
Sometimes, but less so. The iPhone camera is good enough that I no longer carry the LX3 and iPad everywhere I go. But if I know I’m going to be somewhere that I want to take a lot of photos and post them, I’ll take the camera and the iPad.
> But if I know I’m going to be somewhere that I want to take a lot of photos and post them, I’ll take the camera and the iPad.
And I’ll take my MacBook Air with Lightroom.
But, will the new ipad have 2 ports so you can attached a card reader and an external hard drive to at least be able to transfer photos with the ipad as a conduit? I don’t care about being able to edit on it – just transfer as I am going on a trip where I need a solution to clear off memory cards as I go.
No, the new iPad still retains the single dock connector, which can be used to import photos via a card reader.
Thanks Aaron. Do you know if there are any solutions to this for photographers? Like an adapter to connect 2 devices? I was hoping not to have to buy a macbook air!
Thanks
I’m not aware of a way to export from the iPad to a hard drive.
I haven’t tried much editing on a iPad yet. But something you mentioned about the klunkiness of it made me think. I have a stylus that I used for handwriting notes into Noteshelf. It’s much more precise than trying to write with your finger!
I also have a Wacom tablet that I use to edit photos with in Aperture. It’s more precise than an iPad stylus, but I’m curious now about using my iPad stylus in an iPad photo editor like I do with the Wacom tablet on my iMac. If they do announce iPhoto for the iPad, I’ll have to give it a try to see if it’s an usable option.
I don’t know if they’re thinking iCloud will help address the photo import/export scenario, but the iPad historically hasn’t been real great about getting files in and out of it. Definitely have a point there.
As far as the finger editing goes though, to me that kind of sounds like DOS users back in the day who’d point and laugh at those silly Mac users with their new-fangled mice. Think of playing the guitar, piano, typing, etc… fingers beat the pants off of using your hand like a brick. Some people like to use the stylus because they’re used to that form factor from writing; others like to use a mouse because they’re used to that form factor from computer usage. But don’t mistake untrained for incapable. You may find once you adapt to multi-touch editing that you are much more productive than you were with a mouse. (Imagine being able to define a circular edit region with the thumb and forefinger of one hand, and controlling the amount of editing with the other hand… stuff like that.) There are many creative endeavors I can’t imagine us humans being able to perform as well without our digits.
As a sidenote to that, I am glad to see some more apps like iPhoto showing up in the content creation/editing arena. For me that has been one of the only disappointments of the iPad and the follow-ons — everything has been so focused on content consumption, not creation.