Workflow for downloading and culling pictures on an iPad while traveling

[Kemble Widmer]

Some of the discussion in the “Africa: what’s in my bag thread“ got me thinking. I don’t like traveling with my laptop, and only take my iPad when traveling to Africa. Normally I wait months until I’m home to fully process images in Lightroom, which works fine for me.

BUT, it sure would be nice to cull pictures on the road with my iPad. Anyone have a good workflow for that?

Currently I cull completely “blown” shots on the camera, but if there were a way to cull “blown” and “subpar” shots on the iPad while traveling, and therefore come home with 2,000 pics instead of 20,000 pics before downloading to my laptop, for example, that would be fantastic.

 

[Patrick M]

On trips I use a usb-c cable to copy from my z8 to my iPad. I use the native photos app and create a new folder on the import screen. Once done, I copy the images from that folder, using the Files app, to my external SSD.
once that’s done, I can purge the unwanted images from the new folder. I don’t purge in the main library …just in case !!
z8 -> ipad -> SSD

at home I use Accinity Photo. I have it on my iPad too. Hardly ever use it, but I feel it’s useful, if ever I do edit….such as yiu mentioned.

 

[Ralph]

I think Patrick meant Affinity Photo. I pretty much do the same thing Patrick does. How much storage does your iPad have? Is it a usb c connection or lightning? What processor?

 

[TurtleCat]

I have had trouble at times getting my iPad to recognize the Z8 raw files. It will copy them but not display anything. That (unexpected obstacles) and storage constraints are things to keep in mind going down that path.

 

[Kemble Widmer]

I have a 2022 Ipad Pro with the M1, with 128 GB, usb-c. I shoot hi efficiency raw (HE*), so that may need to change unless the iPad supports it. Was hoping I could plug in a card reader, use an app to cull right off the card, but perhaps that's wishful thinking.
Patrick, Ralph I believe your workflow works well with JPEG, but I only shoot RAW (full or high efficiency) so that probably won't work for me (?)

 

[arbitrage]

For me I'd much rather pack a 13" MacBook Air with full capabilities and not try to use a half-baked iPad workflow. But there are ways to do it so start experimenting with a workflow since you own the iPad already. Why are you "wishful thinking" when you have the equipment in hand to just test if it works??

 

[Ralph]

I have a 2022 Ipad Pro with the M1, with 128 GB, usb-c. I shoot hi efficiency raw (HE*), so that may need to change unless the iPad supports it. Was hoping I could plug in a card reader, use an app to cull right off the card, but perhaps that's wishful thinking.
Patrick, Ralph I believe your workflow works well with JPEG, but I only shoot RAW (full or high efficiency) so that probably won't work for me (?)

I use RAW With my D500 and a MI IPad with 256 gig. 128 gig capacity may limit your workflow. Also, I don’t think Apples photo app supports HE* but it does support RAW. Up till a few months ago the Photo app did not support the Z8 but now it does. So make sure everything is up to date. You can cull right off the card if you wish using the photo app.

 

[Abinoone]

Some of the discussion in the “Africa: what’s in my bag thread“ got me thinking. I don’t like traveling with my laptop, and only take my iPad when traveling to Africa. Normally I wait months until I’m home to fully process images in Lightroom, which works fine for me.

BUT, it sure would be nice to cull pictures on the road with my iPad. Anyone have a good workflow for that?

Currently I cull completely “blown” shots on the camera, but if there were a way to cull “blown” and “subpar” shots on the iPad while traveling, and therefore come home with 2,000 pics instead of 20,000 pics before downloading to my laptop, for example, that would be fantastic.

If you do a search on this forum, you'll find several other discussions on this very topic. I use my iPad to quickly review images while in the field, delete the obvious losers, then store to backup SSDs. To accomplish this, I have a USB hub with the SSDs and card reader attached, so that I'm easily able to look at images before downloading them to backup. It looks like this:

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

 

[PhotoLover]

I can't resist saying this, and I apologize, but ... it simply pops out.

I have an iPad. I love it; use it all the time at home. I also have a 13" laptop. A person could buy a refurbished small laptop -- which is NOT much more trouble to travel with than an iPad, I know because I travel with both -- and use that inexpensive laptop only for photo trips. My LR subscription lets me install on the laptop and the main computer at home. I import the photos from the cards onto the laptop, and now I have a copy, and potentially can tweak the photos while traveling. That seems much less painful than the solutions in this thread. And given the cost of good camera gear, trips to Africa(!) the expense of a small laptop, even one dedicated to photos while traveling, seems trivial.

But I get it, if you really hate laptops ....

I will now go away and not bother anybody......

 

[Ralph]

I can't resist saying this, and I apologize, but ... it simply pops out.

I have an iPad. I love it; use it all the time at home. I also have a 13" laptop. A person could buy a refurbished small laptop -- which is NOT much more trouble to travel with than an iPad, I know because I travel with both -- and use that inexpensive laptop only for photo trips. My LR subscription lets me install on the laptop and the main computer at home. I import the photos from the cards onto the laptop, and now I have a copy, and potentially can tweak the photos while traveling. That seems much less painful than the solutions in this thread. And given the cost of good camera gear, trips to Africa(!) the expense of a small laptop, even one dedicated to photos while traveling, seems trivial.

But I get it, if you really hate laptops ....

I will now go away and not bother anybody......

I find the iPad a very simple solution without the need to buy a laptop. I prefer it to using my computer as well. I plug a simple card reader into the ipad, review the images and then import what I want into The Apple photo app. I do 95% of my editing within the Photo app. For basic editing it works great. I can edit just about any photo in 30 sec or less. For noise reduction or anything more elaborate like noise reduction or masking I will bring it into affinity photo. The Photo app is free. I actually think it does a better job than most of the other apps for adjusting highlights, shadow, contrast, brightness, exposure, vibrance , saturation or sharpness, etc. Not so great for noise reduction. Of course it depends on what your use to. Most LR people will probably disagree with me but I can edit most photos in a days shoot very quickly and the results are as good as any other program out there for what it does. And whether you’re using a laptop or desktop, you still need to plud in an external drive to backup your photos. SSDs work exactly the same on the iPad.

 

[PhotoLover]

I find the iPad a very simple solution without the need to buy a laptop. I prefer it to using my computer as well. I plug a simple card reader into the ipad, review the images and then import what I want into The Apple photo app. I do 95% of my editing within the Photo app. For basic editing it works great. I can edit just about any photo in 30 sec or less. For noise reduction or anything more elaborate like noise reduction or masking I will bring it into affinity photo. The Photo app is free. I actually think it does a better job than most of the other apps for adjusting highlights, shadow, contrast, brightness, exposure, vibrance , saturation or sharpness, etc. Not so great for noise reduction. Of course it depends on what your use to. Most LR people will probably disagree with me but I can edit most photos in a days shoot very quickly and the results are as good as any other program out there for what it does. And whether you’re using a laptop or desktop, you still need to plud in an external drive to backup your photos. SSDs work exactly the same on the iPad.

Our workflow is different, as I use LR for everything, so with the laptop I get LR like I would at home. I might have 1,000 photos from a day of shooting, so I do have volume to deal with. And I frankly do believe LR is far superior to tools like the Photo app (that of course is a matter of opinion, but it affects workflow and thus the tools used). Another workflow difference is that I much prefer using the laptop to an iPad; but that's partly because I use LR classic on the desktop at home all the time.

I don't need an external drive to go with the laptop. I use the internal drive. That's one reason I don't like the iPad solution. I have to buy and carry around an external drive.

 

[Ralph]

Our workflow is different, as I use LR for everything, so with the laptop I get LR like I would at home. I might have 1,000 photos from a day of shooting, so I do have volume to deal with. And I frankly do believe LR is far superior to tools like the Photo app (that of course is a matter of opinion, but it affects workflow and thus the tools used). Another workflow difference is that I much prefer using the laptop to an iPad; but that's partly because I use LR classic on the desktop at home all the time.

I don't need an external drive to go with the laptop. I use the internal drive. That's one reason I don't like the iPad solution. I have to buy and carry around an external drive.

I agree it’s what your use to. But I only use a ssd for backup. I keep all my images on my iPad and only transfer my best to my computer. I tranfer all my images to desktop without the need for HD. I use airdrop. To each their own..

 

[PhotoLover]

I agree it’s what your use to. But I only use a ssd for backup. I keep all my images on my iPad and only transfer my best to my computer. I tranfer all my images to desktop without the need for HD. I use airdrop. To each their own..

Yeah, I have more volume than that solution could handle, and I require full LR support. Workflow and tools required definitely drive the choices.

 

[Kemble Widmer]

Thanks all, I searched the forum before posting but had not realized there is a post processing forum, hence no results when I searched (thanks for moving this thread admin). Have some ideas from the above helpful discussion and some older threads I found. I was mainly in search of whether there was an app folks like, but appears most workflows leverage Apple Photos, with Affinity Photo a possibility. I have enough now to do some testing.

I use my iPad for numerous other things, and am on the road for months, hence why I prefer to avoid lugging my heavy M2 16” MBP In addition to the iPad.

 

[Anjin San]

Some of the discussion in the “Africa: what’s in my bag thread“ got me thinking. I don’t like traveling with my laptop, and only take my iPad when traveling to Africa. Normally I wait months until I’m home to fully process images in Lightroom, which works fine for me.

BUT, it sure would be nice to cull pictures on the road with my iPad. Anyone have a good workflow for that?

Currently I cull completely “blown” shots on the camera, but if there were a way to cull “blown” and “subpar” shots on the iPad while traveling, and therefore come home with 2,000 pics instead of 20,000 pics before downloading to my laptop, for example, that would be fantastic.

In reality…last month in the Serengeti there was no time for me to cull…just copying the images from the cards to the backup SSDs took all the spare time I had. I’m going to refine my backup technique slightly for the trips to CR and Glacier NP in the summer…but still plan on little to no culling. Patrick deletes a lot of 8mages on the trip…when I cull back at home I only trash out of focus or clipped wings shots…I ended up with a lot of almost identical shots from last month’s trip…but it would take a lot of effort to cull say 100 of the same lion down to the 25 that I didn’t process immediately but were good shots than it is worth…and hard drive space is cheap. We were literally doing things from before 0500 to 2000 daily so culling was far from my priority list. My roomie Andy was importing everything into LR and was awake most nights long after I was snoozing…and while he was using USB drives and I was using Thunderbolt…that was only part of his more lengthy routine and he wasn’t culling, just importing.

Ive tried the copy card -> SSD and it works…but until we get the upcoming solution of CarbonCopyCloner on the iPad it’s a lot easier to use a laptop. Everything is automated there…using CCC I copy the card to a TB drive, then the card from the other camera to a different folder on the TB drive. Then plug in the dual USB C backups to the powered hub and trigger the CCC batch job to do the backups and I head off to bed not caring about time then although it’s actually pretty quick. Cards don’t get formatted on trips…that’s why I bought 1.3TB cards. Then back at home I used the main LRC catalog on the TB drive to import in place and then move them to their proper place within LR. Still haven’t formatted the cards from Africa…I just need to do a final check and then dthen I guess.

The iPad route works as I tried it…but it currently requires a lot more thinking about source and destination to get the requisite number of backups than a laptop does…so I will take the laptop unless weight is a real issue.

I agree that for me LrC is superior to both the web version of LR, Photos, and Affinity…but what works for others works for them so I’m not going to say they’re wrong…likewise I don’t throw away images unless they are rejects but others do and hey, whatever works. My theory is that each image from Africa cost me about 75 cents…and spending the hours to reduce the 32,000 to the 400 I process for the blog and the best 2000 of the remainder is far worse than just copying them to my 12TB RAID and not worrying about throwing some away. Amanda on our trip had somewhere around 80,000…but she was there an extra day shooting at Arusha NP before we arrived…I can’t imagine how long it will take her to finish processing.

 

[Kemble Widmer]

Thanks Anjin,
I also dislike like spending time culling (or backing up) while on safari (But get those that do).

Since I am normally sitting around for 8-10 weeks after safari (I have family in South Africa), my only desire is to have an easy means to cull pics on the iPad before I get back to the States, to speed up my Lightroom work back at my computer. A touch of OCD means I always try and get my trip photos down to a few hundred or less. I do study lion movements as a hobby, so will save dozens of a lion sighting to pick up and maintain whisker patterns, etc., but am pretty quick on the delete button otherwise. One of the many valuable lessons I picked up from Steve’s writings is the concept of flag the good ones, delete the rest, as opposed to delete every bad one individually. This took some time for me to change my behavior, but it’s been a game changer in saved time (perhaps you do same). Typically I’ll go through a pass flagging those I really like (ie take 30,000 down to 1,000), delete those that are unflagged, then sleep on it and do another pass, and voila, I‘m down to 300- 500 before spending Lightroom time in Post.

 

[Anjin San]

Thanks Anjin,
I also dislike like spending time culling (or backing up) while on safari (But get those that do).

Since I am normally sitting around for 8-10 weeks after safari (I have family in South Africa), my only desire is to have an easy means to cull pics on the iPad before I get back to the States, to speed up my Lightroom work back at my computer. A touch of OCD means I always try and get my trip photos down to a few hundred or less. I do study lion movements as a hobby, so will save dozens of a lion sighting to pick up and maintain whisker patterns, etc., but am pretty quick on the delete button otherwise. One of the many valuable lessons I picked up from Steve’s writings is the concept of flag the good ones, delete the rest, as opposed to delete every bad one individually. This took some time for me to change my behavior, but it’s been a game changer in saved time (perhaps you do same). Typically I’ll go through a pass flagging those I really like (ie take 30,000 down to 1,000), delete those that are unflagged, then sleep on it and do another pass, and voila, I‘m down to 300- 500 before spending Lightroom time in Post.

Culling post Safari works…my point was just that while on the Safari there’s no time. If you are using LR…then using the non classic version on the iPad with local storage out on the SSD (or iPad internal if you’re enough storage there). Delete the obvious rejects and flag or star the ones you want to process later…those ratings will remain with the files IIRC and on import into LrC will follow…but if it were me after marking them I would move into a sub folder, then later import either the folder or the sub folder depending on whether you wanted all or just the culls in LrC.

Personally…I wish I had time on the actual photo trip to cull daily…I just don’t. Admittedly on trips with my bride we spend less time daily in the field…but we still need to do the things she wants to do on the trip so really no time there either. Visiting family for awhile after the photo portion of the trip is a whole ’nother thing…and yeah, culling there is good. But since I only delete losers and keep every else (storage is cheap)…I just cull in LrC. For me…a single pass through with Auto Afvance turned on and hitting U, F, or X dropped the 6000 shots from the longest day to 200 or so flagged ones in an hour or so. A second pass the next day dropped that to 120 that I batched through DxO to a subfolder…then a pass to 1 star about half of the 120 for actual processing and output to the blog. The non selected 5800 less the couple hundred losers stay in LrC but mostly don’t get used again…but they cost me so many dollars and I’ve got the space, so why delete them. Steve picks the winners to process…but he’s said before that he keeps bad but not loser photos for use in training videos…and he’s got so much storage I’m not sure he actually deletes many that aren’t obvious losers. Maybe he will see this and let us know his max number of frames a day from the recent trip…how many got deleted, how many are in LR, and how many he will process…maybe I misunderstood what he said before.