iPad Pro – What a Difference Two Years Make ?

I recently read this article “The iPad Replaces my MacBook Pro. Finally!” thinking it was recently posted only to find out hat it was posted two years ago. This excerpt was interesting as it relates to photography:

I love photography and my primary device not being able to import and process RAW images was a deal breaker for me. Now iOS natively handles RAW images, Adobe Lightroom allows me to process these images on my iPad, and the processed images are available on my iMac at home via the Lightroom cloud. What I would like to see improved here is the speed at which RAW images are imported into the iPad from the memory card, and also the ability to directly import RAW images into Lightroom bypassing the Apple Photos app.

How is this different today, two years later ? Well, Lightroom certainly evolved. Adobe is investing a lot in it. I find myself processing photos more and more on the iPad. And I think the upcoming iPad Pro will make this even more joyful to do. But, still, the missing parts are related to iOS itselfs. I find it hard to understand why we cannot see quickly what photos are in RAW format in Apple’s Photos.app, we have to rely on third party extensions. Also, we still can’t import RAW images directly into Adobe Lightroom without going through Photos.app. Once the import is done in Lightroom, we have to delete RAW images from Photos.app. This should be a one step process. And if you ask yourself why the iPad Pro can’t always replace a traditional computer, there you have an explanation. Blame Apple’s iOS.

The new iPad Pro doesn’t change that, maybe iOS 13 will. Meanwhile, we will wait and enjoy this powerful, beautiful slab of glass. Can’t wait for the future.