ashriverguy Loc: Rural Minnesota

I’m an amateur photographer and I have an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil that I love to work on. I have had good luck using mobile apps, like Snapseed etc but have just bought the mobile app, Affinity for only $20.
My question is, should I buy a Mac Book and Lightroom or will I be happy with Affinity on an iPad Pro? I hate to go through all the trouble of learning Affinity and not being happy with it and THEN have to learn Lightroom. The mobile apps have improved A LOT and some say it’s the wave of the future in PP.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Funny how serious photographers usually have 32" monitors. Think about it. While traveling or just for getting images off your Camera or Cards pads and phones might serves a purpose with a real camera. But PP and editing, it is rough enough with a real computer for most people. Even laptops are a bit of a stretch.

rjaywallace Loc: Wisconsin

Linary Loc: UK

If you have now purchased the Affinity Mobile App, why not use it for a while and see if it addresses your needs before splurging out loads more money. Lightroom will still be there when you have decided.

I use Affinity Photo (Desktop) as well as Lightroom and Photoshop, and have found there are things that Affinity cannot do whilst the Adobe products can. There are also some things that Affinity can do (or do easier) whilst the other two products can't do them as well.

Affinity is constantly being updated, not with new features but to bring the efficiency of existing tools up; this is to be expected as Affinity is a relatively new product, but the one really important thing I find lacking is the ability to complete very accurate selections. In this respect Adobe is streets ahead of the game.

Vlemasters

I love my Affinity on my iPads pro. It’s all I use, but I am a amateur. Can’t see ever needing something that I can’t do with Affinity.

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

Desk top Affinity is upgraded for free and the starting price is right, $50. I would assume that all Affinity is basically the same, learn one ya learnm' all.
Adobe products are being abandoned by it complication of learning and by the perpetual billing. Remember when Cable TV was king... now begging to go steaming after being eaten by devices like ROKU; Adobe desperate for money went from too expensive and charging for updates to monthly fee; they will go the way of cable ! Remember when Nortons was THE antivirus of choice? Gone from leadership. Summary Affinity will be there for years because it is good and affordable.

NelsonARowe Loc: North Georgia USA

I have gone the route of using my MacBook Pro for now but only because I already owned it and was thinking about buying the iPad Pro 12 for doing PP on the road. What I would like to add to the discussion is people who haven’t used an iPad don’t realize just how easy it is to zoom into a specific area to work on something like removing a telephone wire etc. With the pencil and the precise points it has you can do a lot of things that are much more difficult than with a mouse on a desktop or laptop. If you already own the iPad which it sounds like you do stick with it. You are also correct about the apps getting better and better for much less money too. I’m waiting for next Christmas to get the iPad but that’s the way I’m moving. Good luck.

ashriverguy Loc: Rural Minnesota

The Apple Pencil is "pressure sensitive" and only works on the iPad Pro, not my iPhone 7. You are right that you can zoom in and do really detailed work.

NelsonARowe Loc: North Georgia USA

You said in original post you had an iPad Pro ? Did I read that wrong? Yeah I have the iPhone 7 Plus and I wish I could use the pencil but even then I think the screen is too small. I have a Sony a6000 and took pictures yesterday of the kids when we went to the world of coke in Atlanta. I have the program to transfer wireless to my phone but you still can’t see just how good the photos are until you load them on the laptop. I think my MacBook Pro has approximately the same screen as the iPad Pro except it’s a few inches bigger. Still my point was really meant for the “windows “ guys out there who popo anything Apple. They have never tried an iPad and seen how simple it is to use. My mother in law kept messing up her laptop and I would have to fix it for her. We finally got her an iPad and once we got her to stay out of settings she hasn’t had a problem. I work on the road all week and carry my camera and laptop around, you never know when you’ll see something cool to shoot and I even asked the UHH group the question of should I get the iPad Pro and use it for pp. A few people use it and every one of them said it was great and lighter and easier than the MacBook but the only two drawbacks mentioned that seemed to make sense were you needed the Apple card reader to transfer the files to the iPad ( I thought I could do it wirelessly just like my phone which I could, just don’t know if I would lose any pixel info in the process). Also they mentioned the storage issue which when transferring raw files can be big and the iPad doesn’t have the same storage capacity as a laptop. I thought I would also be able to overcome this issue by moving one file at a time and then moving to external hard drive which you can also do wireless with certain drives. There again the issue of losing information via wireless transfer comes into play. I guess you could ask Apple tech support (who are great) or just experiment on your own by making a few transfers and seeing if there is any change in file size. Anyway I’m going to get the iPad as I mentioned for Christmas so if you end up going that route please let me know how it works and what if any problems you encounter. Good luck to you.

blackest Loc: Ireland

I posted earlier about using duet display this has the iPad act as a second display for a mac or pc but its also an input device so with display mirroring turned on even with a basic rubber stylus you can very easily remove unwanted things like telephone wires. Something that i would wobble all over with using a mouse or track pad. Obviously you can zoom as needed.

NelsonARowe Loc: North Georgia USA

Thanks for the info. I will give that a try. Does it matter which program you’re in or works for everything ?

blackest Loc: Ireland

works for everything it is essentially an add on touch screen.