I started really delving into photography about two years ago, and until recently I focused entirely on the open source Darktable project for all of my editing. It’s free, extremely powerful, and I can use it on my Linux laptop. Recently however I made a big change and bought an M1 iPad Pro, specifically for Lightroom, and wanted to share some thoughts on why, and how it’s working out.

Up front I think Darktable is an incredible piece of software. It’s clearly immensely powerful and maintained by folks who are very talented and clearly know their stuff. It is however, quite had to use. If you’re willing to invest the time, I strongly suspect you can get better results than you can out of Lightroom as you’re much more in control of the entire image processing pipeline. This however requires many hours of learning and studying to be able to use effectively. At least for my FujiFilm raw files, on opening I’m met with something miles away from the JPEG I shot, and if you wanted to replicate those JPEGs and work from there but with RAW file data, you are about out of luck, there simply isn’t any way to do that. There are styles floating around that claim to simulate Fuji color simulations, but try applying them and the results are utterly unusable. At times I had images I simply couldn’t get to look sane in Darktable at all, and had to go with the JPEGs.

I have been able to edit some images I like in Darktable, but it’s typically a struggle to get to something passable, let alone what I really want.

Unfortunately for me, I don’t even like editing photos that much. I’d far rather be spending my time hiking and taking them than sitting on a computer editing them. As a result I often left photos sitting on the camera for weeks before I found time to plug in my personal laptop and actually upload and edit.

It occurred to me recently that perhaps an M1 iPad Pro could be the answer. Lightroom is very capable on the iPad, the M1’s are cheaper now given the newer M2 models, but reportedly still more than powerful enough. Most importantly, I could edit from the couch or while traveling, without having to sit at a desk.

Lightroom’s monthly subscription is very expensive, but I’m feeling ok with the price for what it offers. I can now open my Fuji RAW files and in a couple taps have colors applied that match Fuji’s film simulations almost dead on, and choose which I’d like to use even after the image has been taken. The M1 laughs at editing tasks, pretty much instant for any change I make. I can get better results extremely quickly, and most important of all, now I can do it from the couch. It’s dramatically simpler (though still can require a lot of study to master) and I appreciate the cloud aspect and being able to access from my phone or even browser.

It pains me to move away from the very capable open source options that are out there, but in this case I needed something that fit my life a little better to stay productive in my hobby.

If anyone is here wondering if an iPad Pro is a good option for photographers, I would highly recommend it. Very powerful, portable, fast, and easy to use. (provided you’re ok with the monthly cost)