Hey Everyone! I hope everyone had a great week! This week I want to talk about my ever evolving workflow. This year I have been traveling a lot (for me) and trying to incorporate an iPad instead of a laptop into my workflow. My old work flow was Backup SD cards to a mobile SSD Drive, edit some if I'm on the road on a laptop, and wait until I got home to import the majority of my photo's onto Lightroom Classic on my Mac at home then final edits and go to Photoshop if I need to. It has modified here and there but basically has stayed the same. This year I brought a iPad mini into the mix in place of the laptop and the Adobe Cloud.  Still the same workflow until this last trip to Boston where I used my iPad as the main editing tool. So basically here is the new flow. Backup SD cards to a Mobile SSD drive, import to iPad , the iPad syncs these photo's to a SSD drive on my Mac at home and into Lightroom Classic, when I get home turn on my computer the photo's sync from the Adobe cloud.  All the edits that I made from my iPad go to my main computer at home so I'm not wasting time re-doing edits from Lightroom to Lightroom Classic. This has been a game changer for me. I now have all of my photo's on my phone , iPad and Mac and even my Laptop that I really don't use that much anymore. I can edit anywhere with my iPad or even my phone if I wanted too. I don't.  Let me go into a little more detail.

SD card Backup. If i'm on the road backing up my SD card is the same process. I use the RavPower file hub and copy all the info off of the SD card to a mobile SSD external drive. With the speeds of the new iPads using the M1 or the M2 chip and the thunderbolt connection I could use a wired file hub and do the same thing using the files app on the iPad. So that's one copy SD card to the Mobile SSD. Then I will upload files from the SD card into Lightroom (mobile) with the iPad. I import these files into a Album. I use one for the year or create a special one if it's a special trip like Boston was. This will put the files into Adobe Cloud. When the files are in the Cloud I can access them with any of my mobile devices they are also Synced to Lightroom Classic on my Home Desktop Mac to an SSD drive I have connected to the computer. These files will have all of the edits that I make while on the iPad .  SD card to the Adobe Cloud. Two Copies. And last but not least the SD card itself is the Third Copy.  I'll put a new card in if I am traveling and save this one until I am home. If I am home I'll disregard the backing up of the SD card with the RavPower file hub and go strait to the iPad and Adobe Cloud.

After I have the files on the Adobe Cloud then its time for editing. Using Lightroom (mobile edition) I can go through and cull of of my photo's. I do this with placing 1 star on the photo's that I think I want to process. Then I start editing. Using the iPad and Lightroom (mobile) as my main editor I can edit anywhere without having to be chained to a desk. I can edit on the couch or in an airport.  I use the apple pencil to help with these edits and it works great. All of my edits are synced to the SSD drive on my home computer where if I need to take these photo's to Photoshop or say a plugin like NIK tools I can do so for heaver edits. I usually don't do heavy edits so this will only be a couple of photo's out of a shoot.  This was the process when I went to Boston a few weeks ago and it worked great. The majority of my edits were done by the time I got home. I didn't have to get home upload my photo's and start from scratch. After these photo's are done with I let them sit a month or so on my SSD drive that is connected to my computer then I transfer them to an Archive Hard drive I have hooked to my MAC desk top and they are automatically synced to a Back Blaze Cloud service I have. Thats about it. 

What do you need to do this workflow? Well you'll need an iPad with the Lightroom (mobile) app installed. If you are already a subscriber to the photographers special from Adobe (which you should be) you already have all you need. I think you get 20 gigabytes of storage in the Adobe Cloud with this package and the latest and greatest in Lightroom Classic, Lightroom (mobile) and Photoshop. You will just have to go through the setup process to get everything synced. I have all of my winner shots from all of my years of digital synced to the Cloud and onto my mobile devices from Lightroom Classic and now I am syncing all of my photo's I take now to the cloud. There will have to be some sort of cleanup process so I don't use up all of my cloud storage. I haven't quite figured out all of the details on that yet. I'll let you know when I do. It might be as simple as deleting them from the cloud and putting all of my winners back into the syncing collection that goes to the cloud. That way I'm only saving the winners on the cloud. I'll have to figure that out. Using the iPad and the pencil makes editing very easy and convenient. Now I have been using an iPad mini and not the newest version to do these edits and have not had a problem at all with speed or editing. I do plan to upgrade this year to an iPad pro which will have the new "M" chip in it which is suppose to be even faster than my Mac at home. The reason that I'm upgrading is really for the size. This iPad will replace my MacBook air that I have and I will no longer be using Laptops for anything and this MacBook will slowly fade into the sunset and my editing devices will be my iPad and my Mac Desktop at home.  I'm cutting out the laptops altogether in my workflow and everyday computing also. I don't have anything against Laptops especially if that's your main computer and you don't have a desktop version. For me using the iPad has become much more enjoyable.  I have tried this with the big Boston Experiment and the last couple of local shoots I've gone on and it has worked great!  Is this for everyone?  Maybe , Maybe not .  Thats for you to decide but for me having a small mobile device that I can do edits on and it sync to my home computer is a game changer. 

Until Next week keep exploring and trying new things and get outside and Shoot!  Just a update all of the references to the iPad mini I do with the iPad Pro with the M1 chip in it and its fantastic.  But the iPad mini still works and well. Happy Shooting! 

Here’s a little update . I have purchased an iPad Pro 11 inch and am using it I on our annual fall colors trip to the mountains and it is working great! And I have figured out the deal with the Adobe cloud.  You get 20 gig of storage with the Adobe subscription.  So after I get back home and all of my photos are on my main computer I then erase the photo’s off of the Adobe cloud.  Then I get my winners from Lightroom classic and add them to a collection that automatically syncs with Lightroom and doesn’t use hardly any storage and it goes to all of my devices and my Adobe storage shrinks after the erasing of photos ready for the next shoot. So until next week!