iPad 128g for photo storage/lite editing

[sallysue66]

my laptop is on its last leg and i am considering the new 128G iPad to replace it. i've been an iphone user for several years and enjoy it's camera and the PS Express app. my "real" camera is an entry level DSLR, the Nikon D3000. i love to play with it and am just now starting to get comfortable with it after having it 2 years. but truth is i don't have the dedication to lug it around everyday or the brainpower to learn complicated editing software. my main objective is to quickly organize my pics into albums and would love to easily enhance them when needed. i would love a macbook, but $800 is about the top of my budget. do you think the ipad would serve the needs of a very casual shutterbug?
Thanks,
Lora

 

[photo_chick]

I wouldn't think it would work well for organization. It just doesn't have the room or the tools. As far as editing... it depends on what you were doing before. If you're an Instagram and go person then it would probably meet your needs.

 

[nvtsallo]

i have a ipad and macbook. I find the ipad serves for posting to social media but you will not be able to import raw files edit them and organize them. Also a tablet will make your job harder for overall organization. How are you going to back up all those photo's? I would invest either in a windows laptop or you might want to bring your budget up to $1k for a entry level macbook pro. also check your local best buy for open box deals. i know the 11" macbook air 64gb is around $900 if you want small. At least with that you could save to an external drive.

 

[mikegood2]

First of all WOW I didn't know they had a 128 GB iPad. Secondly, while iPads can work well as a secondary device for photography but I don't think they are ready to be primary photo editing device. Give it a few years and that could change.

I agree with nvtsallo that an 11" MacBook Air might be a great option. I know you said $800 is about as high as you can probably go, same amount as the 128 GB iPad, but for $850 you can get a current generation refurbished 11" air from apple. Also, if you can hold out a few weeks their is a good chance apple will update MacBook airs. When, and if that happens, than the previous generation (current gen. as of today) will likely get cheaper in the refurb shop!

 

[hakepb]

There seem to be several ipad apps that can edit RAW files.
Adobe is working on a cloud based iPad app that can edit RAW (I gues that will be $50/year)
http://mashable.com/2013/05/02/adobe-lightroom-ipad/

But 128GB doesn't hold a lifetime of modern photos, you would still need more storage and Apple doesn't make it easy to copy to an external hard drive. Right now, I think the iPad would mostly work as vacation storage and editing, but I'm not sure about everyday.

It will be interesting to see if the Lightroom service would work like that.

 

[sallysue66]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I'll look into the refurbs. I guess I could get another Windows laptop but the picture organization on the one I have is frustrating. Maybe the newer Windows is better now. The ability to save my pics on an external drive would be good. Right now I use Google Drive or Shutterfly as external storage. I don't shoot RAW, color me "I don't know what I'm doing" but when I did shoot both RAW/JPEG just to experiment my JPEG's looked much better. Maybe it's my old laptop or that I use Picasa for editing. Mainly I just crop, adjust brightness or bump up the saturation. I hope to get more serious with my camera one of these days but for now I'm taking pics of soccer games, dance recitals, vacations, etc and creating albums on Shutterfly to share on-line and printing photo books. Pics I really love get printed and framed.

 

[11290]

You could also look into getting an Android tablet that has additional storage via MicroSD cards. I use my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 on trips to backup each days pictures in folders by date. Have a USB adapter that can receive a camera card adapter. Have several MicroSD cards and usually copy the pics to one of them and then back them up on a thumb drive as the Tab 2 will not let you plug in an external HDD. Some tablets (I think ASUS) will work with ext. HDD's. Used to drag a laptop along on trips but the nice thing about tablets (besides the size and weight savings) is you don't have to remove them from your carryon when going through TSA screening as you have to do with a laptop. Android file structuring and photo organization is very similar to Windoze and various file managers / photo viewing apps make it pretty easy to do.

 

[havoc315]

My last Disney trip, I uploaded my pics to my ipad nightly. As long as shooting jpeg, there are some pretty good photo editing programs for ipad, particularly iPhoto and snapseed. But the ipad is not a good long term storage option due to the memory limits.