Saturday, November 26, 2011

Lightroom for iPad

Using an iPad as a replacement for Lightroom/RAW file manipulation is currently infeasible, for several reasons:
  • the iPad hardware is limited and costly: at this processor speed, you could consider retouching one image, not hundreds; the top-level iPad has only 64GB of space, not expandable, shared between apps, data, music... you can buy 4 high-speed 16GB memory cards for a fraction of the cost.
  • the iPad screen is nice and has brilliant colors, but it's not really the same as a good monitor; if you retouch on the iPad, the results are non-portable.
  • RAW manipulation software for iPad is seriously overpriced (which is also the main motivation for this mini review); a typical app costs 0.99$, a RAW photo manipulation app costs 9.99$, and you may want to read carefully the description before you buy, because any feature which is not advertised is probably just not there.
What you really can do on the iPad is...