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Input please:

As a photographer I’ve been using Lightroom on my (now outdated) iPad for years, and used my wife’s Macbook Pro when I needed features, not available on my iPad (photoshop).

I don’t really like Lightroom, I’m intrigued by Affinity Photo, and I need new hardware - so here’s my dilemma:

Is there any difference in performance/possibilities/features/flexibility using Affinity Photo on an iPad Pro, or an iMac?

Because that might decide my hardware choice (I really like my iPad cuz I travel a LOT, but the output and flexibility is far more important). 

I hope this makes sense!

Thanks in advance for any help!

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The features sets are very similar but the iPad does not yet have 100% of all desktop features. Affinity did a Live broadcast showing there latest versions and Publisher. They demonstrated the same  file on both iPad and a top line Mac with no noticeable difference in speed.

check it out here, well worth a look as Publisher is coming to iPad and includes Live studio. This allows opening a file in one app and having all the tools of the other apps (if installed) available at the touch of a button, all within the one app.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/live/

Works done on Mac and iPad is totally interchangeable. Simple answer is to buy both! :)

M1 IPad Air 10.9/256GB   lpadOS 17.1.1 Apple Pencil (2nd gen).
Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Affinity Design 1.10.5 
Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2, Affinity Photo 2 and betas.

Official Online iPad Help documents (multi-lingual) here: https://affinity.https://affinity.help/ 

 

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The trouble is that despite much publicity, and long consultations with Apple (the specialist on Apple Creative staff had not heard of Affinity), it seems impossible to download raw files to the iPad. This seems a serious limitation, though it is still, of course possible to use Affinity including its Develop persona, but obviously not to its full potential. 

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1 hour ago, Tracer said:

The trouble is that despite much publicity, and long consultations with Apple (the specialist on Apple Creative staff had not heard of Affinity), it seems impossible to download raw files to the iPad. This seems a serious limitation, though it is still, of course possible to use Affinity including its Develop persona, but obviously not to its full potential. 

I don't know what you mean about not being able to load RAW files on the iPad, but I assure you, this is not the case. You only go into Develop persona if you've loaded a RAW and there are numerous ways to do this on iPad. Maybe I'm not understanding exactly what you mean.

iPad Pro 12.9 M1/Mac Mini M1, in that order

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8 hours ago, Tracer said:

The trouble is that despite much publicity, and long consultations with Apple (the specialist on Apple Creative staff had not heard of Affinity), it seems impossible to download raw files to the iPad. This seems a serious limitation, though it is still, of course possible to use Affinity including its Develop persona, but obviously not to its full potential. 

I load my RAWs into the iPad using the Apple card reader (or wirelessly from my Fujifilm XT-2). I can then upload directly to iCloud, or directly into Lightroom, if I need to.

You can easily download photos or whatever into your iPad from any cloud, be it iCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox. 

I assume you can open RAW in Affinity Photo, from any cloud.

 

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15 hours ago, cvrp said:

I load my RAWs into the iPad using the Apple card reader (or wirelessly from my Fujifilm XT-2). I can then upload directly to iCloud, or directly into Lightroom, if I need to.

You can easily download photos or whatever into your iPad from any cloud, be it iCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox. 

I assume you can open RAW in Affinity Photo, from any cloud.

 

yes you can. Affinity Photo uses the Apple Raw Engine so when your Camera is supported by Apple, it should work fine with Affinity Photo. I was just thinking what feature you dont have on the iPad and after they added finally hex Color support in 1.7.1 I am kinda lost of what to wish for next. :DI think you cant record macros if I remember right, just import them from the Desktop Version. With iPad OS the restrictions are gone anyway so if you are used to iPad I would go for it. (Just maybe buy the 2017 Pro Model if you travel a lot, I wouldn't trust that weak construction of the 2018er pros at least without AppleCare ;))

| https://www.instagram.com/lutz.heidbrink https://500px.com/lutzheidbrink | https://www.eyeem.com/u/pixelcoder | https://society6.com/pixelcoder 
iPad Pro 10.5 - iOS 11.4.1 - Affinity Photo 1.6.7 - Affinity Designer 1.6.0.35 :11_blush:

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Thank you so much! Exactly what I was looking for. I really appreciate it. :)

Yup, if I choose the iPad I’ll buy the 2020 version (should be released here within the next 90 days).

One of the idiotic problems is, that when printing from my iPad to my Epson P-800 I can’t manually put in dimensions for the print, cus it’s not available as an option for the Epson print app. That’s got nothing to do with Affinity of course, but that might be a defining issue for me, when choosing hardware.

Thanks again!

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On 6/26/2019 at 12:31 AM, cvrp said:

can’t manually put in dimensions for the print, cus it’s not available as an option for the Epson print app.

You can set DPI in app and dimensions Export options. Your printer should honour those settings.

M1 IPad Air 10.9/256GB   lpadOS 17.1.1 Apple Pencil (2nd gen).
Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Affinity Design 1.10.5 
Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2, Affinity Photo 2 and betas.

Official Online iPad Help documents (multi-lingual) here: https://affinity.https://affinity.help/ 

 

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On 6/24/2019 at 9:36 AM, Tracer said:

it seems impossible to download raw files to the iPad. This seems a serious limitation, though it is still, of course possible to use Affinitincluding its Develop persona

Others have already addressed this, but I’d like to point out something else important: While it might sound like a good idea to bring your raw files directly into your iPad, this may not be the best approach for workflow. IMHO it would be more flexible and more organized to keep these files on some sort of external or even cloud drive. One can easily open them into the Affinity apps and work on them.

Storing them on your iPad first would then double the lost space — once for local storage, and a second time while the working image is held in Affinity's memory space (at least I’m pretty sure this is how it works. Someone please correct me if this is inaccurate). 

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37 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

Others have already addressed this, but I’d like to point out something else important: While it might sound like a good idea to bring your raw files directly into your iPad, this may not be the best approach for workflow. IMHO it would be more flexible and more organized to keep these files on some sort of external or even cloud drive. One can easily open them into the Affinity apps and work on them.

Storing them on your iPad first would then double the lost space — once for local storage, and a second time while the working image is held in Affinity's memory space (at least I’m pretty sure this is how it works. Someone please correct me if this is inaccurate). 

RAW files on an iPad are typically not stored locally. The file you see in the Photo app is a copy of the original RAW file located in iCloud. You can find the original RAW files in the “Files” app on your iPad and extract them from there, to manipulate in any compatible app - like Affinity Photo, Lightroom etc. Just like if you had your RAW files stored on OneDrive, Google Drive, and external drive, etc.

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9 minutes ago, cvrp said:RAW files on an iPad are typically not stored locally. The file you see in the Photo app is a copy of the original RAW file located in iCloud. You can find the original RAW files in the “Files” app on your iPad and extract them from there, to manipulate in any compatible app - like Affinity Photo, Lightroom etc. Just like if you had your RAW files stored on OneDrive, Google Drive, and external drive, etc.

Correct, and just as I replied earlier. I don’t store them locally.  But it seems that's what one of the earlier posters was looking for.

One of the most underestimated features within the Affinity products is their ability to Open and edit images in place (including raw files), as well as to import a working copy into the app. It's a minor thing, but actually genius in its flexibility. His may take on greater significance if Serif opts to give us the ability to save raw settings to a sidecar File or catalog.

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20 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

One of the most underestimated features within the Affinity products is their ability to Open and edit images in place (including raw files), as well as to import a working copy into the app.

True, but it gets confusing if renaming Files. I've had an open from file updating the source file while presenting a different named file icon on the Home screen and updating that too. Affinity won’t let you rename a named file (by design) but at the same time it allows the renaming of the version of that file in its sandbox! One file, two names.  iOS can be a bit confusing at times. Hopefully ipadOS will improve this..

M1 IPad Air 10.9/256GB   lpadOS 17.1.1 Apple Pencil (2nd gen).
Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Affinity Design 1.10.5 
Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2, Affinity Photo 2 and betas.

Official Online iPad Help documents (multi-lingual) here: https://affinity.https://affinity.help/ 

 

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I recall when Apple first began advertising the iPad as a "computer" a few short years ago. At the time a lot of us snickered about the iPad being a content creation tool for any complex projects or editing because of all the restrictions in iOS and with the (then) modest power of the iPad itself.

But when tools like the Affinity products and LumaFusion came out, along with more powerful iPad hardware, it was easier to see the light at the end of that tunnel. 

The Mac desktop will always be my preferred means of getting through my workflow, and I doubt the iPad will ever become my primary means of processing or content creation. But I'm very happy with where things are headed, and I really enjoy the cross-platform compatibility between desktop and mobile.  :) 

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@cvrp  I think a lot depends on the kind of photography you do.

I’ve used Photoshop in various flavors since about 2007, and Photoshop CC these days, always on a MacBook Pro.  Many of my photographic images are stitched with a dedicated app (definitely not Photoshop), and they’re large.  I almost always have to use Photoshop to edit stitched images after they’re stitched because they include elements in motion like water (rivers, sea).  Lightroom can’t handle these images, and is of very limited use to me for other reasons; PhotoMerge is a flop.

I now have Affinity Designer on both Mac and iPad Pro (with Pencil).

I haven’t traveled since getting the iPad, so not quite sure if I would take just iPad or iPad and MacBook.  I definitely prefer to keep Photoshop CC on the MacBook, and it’s extremely unlikely I’ll ever put any part of it on my iPad.

If my photography was all single-shot images (i.e., no stitching) I would probably rely on the iPad provided the compromise in functionality was tolerable.

  • IPTC Image metadata is very important to me; I have no idea what Affinity Photo offers, so you’ll have to evaluate that for yourself (I rely on Bridge).
  • If you’re not using iCloud you’ll have to figure out how you’re going to manage storage, especially if you’re a prolific shooter.  When iPadOS gets here you might be able to use external storage directly from you iPad.  I know there are several people on this forum who use third-party apps for this, but I have no experience with them.

I know a number of accomplished photographers who have dumped Photoshop and their DSLR’s in favour of the iPad camera and Affinity Photo, so you won’t be the only photographer in that game.  I’m not getting rid of my DSLR any time soon, but I have found some situations in which the iPad camera will get the shot that’s a challenge with a DSLR.

Hope this helps, DM me if you want to know more.

Regards

 

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11 minutes ago, LionelD said:

IPTC Image metadata is very important to me; I have no idea what Affinity Photo offers, so you’ll have to evaluate that for yourself (I rely on Bridge).

This is not a strong point for Affinity Photo at this point in time. It’s an image processor with very limited metadata manipulation capability. Bridge (FREE) can take care of those needs.

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@LionelD Thanks Lionel! 

My favorite shooter is Fujifilm XT-2 and I ain’t going nowhere without it.:)

It seems when I read all these cool replies that there’s really not much of a difference in the workflow using iPad or Mac (I store  everything in iCloud anyways). 

The BIG question for me is really the printing process. On my current, older iPad I import from iCloud, open the file in my Epson printer app, and print. Here’s the problem: the Epson app does not allow me to manually configure sizes - it’s all presets!

So....will I be able to print directly from the Affinity app, with the possibility to manually set my print sizes - or do I still have to go via the Epson app?

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@cvrp  As an example here is the Export screen showing all various formats. DPI (PPI) is adjustable in editing and format options give different adjustments for printing. Size (in pixels in this example) is common to many formats.

8E4980D0-DB34-40ED-AC10-15876FBD0D7F.jpeg

M1 IPad Air 10.9/256GB   lpadOS 17.1.1 Apple Pencil (2nd gen).
Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Affinity Design 1.10.5 
Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2, Affinity Photo 2 and betas.

Official Online iPad Help documents (multi-lingual) here: https://affinity.https://affinity.help/ 

 

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