The Sweet Setup just updated their comprehensive iPad photography workflow guide, and it’s probably the best thing I’ve read about using an iPad for importing/managing/editing your photos, especially if you shoot a dedicated camera. Marius Masalar has done a lot of work to talk about the different hardware and software involved, but also provides helpful reasons to choose certain tools/processes over others (for ex: a filter-based approach to editing, vs hands-on adjustments to exposure/color).

My photography workflow is very basic these days compared to when I last wrote about it, mostly because I replaced the Fujifilm X100S with an X-T30. Unfortunately, the X-T30 RAW files requires the latest version of Lightroom, which requires at least macOS 10.13 — but my home laptop is so old it tops out at El Capitan (10.11). (Let that be a lesson that upgrading one part of your toolchain can have a cascading effect on other parts). So my primary workflow these days looks like this:

• Use the in-camera RAW processor to generate JPGs (which are usually great to begin with, since Fuji has plenty of film simulations)
• Import those into my iPad’s camera library
• Use Darkroom for adjustments (usually a little tweak to the curves for more contrast, and tweaking white balance). I used to use VSCO for filters but haven’t touched the app in over a year.
• Back up RAW files to an external drive, which is cloned locally (using SuperDuper!, and to the cloud via Backblaze.

On the rare occasion that I want to edit some RAW files I import them straight to Lightroom on iOS using that program’s new external device support, make my edits, and save JPGs into the camera library. I don’t do this as much because I have an older iPad Pro 9.7-inch model, which still uses a Lightning port, which means that importing RAW files is slow. You can start to see how aging hardware is a recurring theme in my life.