[alamo5000]

The other day I was wandering around (it's rained almost every day here) but I got to looking and talking to one of the sales guys. I currently, nor have I ever owned a tablet of any type. I also will not buy iAnything. No Apple products...

But what I did see was a Samsung Tablet (I guess that's what you call it) and the guy got to demonstrating a particular setup...that is using the optional keyboard and a bluetooth mouse...then he plugged in a small female USB adapter where I could take my SD cards and read them straight to the device.

I got to thinking about it and for travel it looks like it would be a possible good solution merely because of the size etc. Right now I am just using a laptop. However as soon as I get back to the US (or maybe sooner) this thing will get replaced.

Before I haul off and spend $600ish bucks I figured I should ask for other opinions. I pretty much don't want to be the guinea pig here.

In my opinion the downsides for post processing work would be that 1. The display is kind of small... it might make things hard to run lightroom. 2. I don't know if that display has enough resolution to keep up with a K3 and eventually a K1. 3. A possibility that the colors might be way off.

Question is though, has anyone tried it? Has anyone attempted to post process with a tablet type device and if so what were the results and/or downsides?

Basically I would like to know more information before I invest in any kind of new gear.

Of course the space on the thing is limited (32GB) but I always carry around spare external hard drive(s)...

Thoughts anyone?

[victormeldrew]

It depends what you mean by post processing...and whether it is a tablet or a PC. If it runs android, you will be limited as to your choices of software available.
Also, depending on the exact model, the processing power will be limited and the display fairly poor.
The newer Surface Pros are an exception...they are basically mini PCs with high quality displays and good processors (and roomy hard drives)
But I personally just take an ultrabook laptop - nearly as small but reasonably priced and very powerful.

[calsan]

Spend some of the money on a 1Tb SSD for your current laptop, put the rest towards something else, like towards your next lens. That's my $0.05!

[pathdoc]

I have tried it with Snapseed for jpgs on an 8 inch Galaxy Tab A, at a time when jpegs was all I was shooting. I don't like what I've heard about Lightroom for Android, I don't like open-ended pay-per-month, and Raw Therapee is currently not available on Android AFAIK. I would be happy with even a stripped-down version that could do basic cropping, colour balance, sharpening, exposure corrections, a bit of highlight and shadow work, and output a jpeg when fed a raw file.

The results aren't bad if what you're doing is tweaking and touching up holiday pics for social media on-the-fly (mostly cropping, correcting exposure, contrast and colour balance) and don't want to take a laptop with you. If you're serious about post-processing on a mobile platform or need professional-level results, you need the smallest notebook computer you can find with the most memory (RAM and HDD) and be prepared to pay mucho $$$ for it.

[gylfimag]

I have never tried a Samsung tablet, only a phone, but I would have thought one of the Surface tablets would be a more obvious choice for photo editing and management. They run Windows and thus Lightroom, Photoshop etc. You can also get them with a resonably large SSD drive and are expandable with an external drive or memory card. Basically they are small and thin laptops with detachable keyboards. I occasionally run Photoshop Elements on a Surface 3 and have had no problems. The external keyboard for Surface is not great but certainly easier to use than typing on glass. There are more powerful versions but they will cost you more than $600. That said I would much rather use a desktop computer for photo management and editing but on the road this will certainly work. The main advantage over an iPad is more storage space, expandability and USB ports but the interface is not nearly as smooth and the device is a bit bigger. An Android tablet would probably be closer to an iPad than a Windows tablet with the advantage of expandability (microSD slot) over the iPad.

[bassek]

I have an offbrand win10 tablet with attachable keyboard. It has a SD slot plus a microSD slot that I use as a "SSD drive" with big (16/32 GB) cards.
Works OK for small tweaks like cropping, white balance or light level corrections when you use a proper mouse.

Seb

[Na Horuk]

I think you would have to get a tablet with the mac iOS or Windows 10, just so you get access to all the PP software you need. There just isn't much pro photo development software on Android as far as I know (but there is plenty of other stuff; it has its pros and cons).
And tablets with iOS or Windows are basically just like any other computer. You need to look at their numbers, like CPU, memory..

Anyway, I was looking at this some time ago and it seems that tablets aren't really the best choice for this. Only time they are useful for photography is when you need to take photos, put them on a tablet, and send then to your client immediately. Other than that, tablets have quite a few limitations, and a good laptop (bigger than 15inch, hopefully) or desktop PC is just more powerful, at the same price point. But sure, it takes more space, and is less mobile. Its a thing of compromises.

[Jmhsnk]

spend $600ish bucks

Surfaces might be great all-in-ones, but they hardly fit this budget.

But I personally just take an ultrabook laptop - nearly as small but reasonably priced and very powerful.

This is your best bet, I think. Personally I find the smaller screens of tablets unfit for PP - I find it hard to edit even on my 13.3" laptop after working on an external monitor. Plus the smaller you get, the more compromise you have to make in computing power. I think ultrabooks are probably the best middle ground in your budget. I'm currently using an XPS 13 that is extra portable as it fits a 13" class screen on a 11" class body, and every now and then there are great sales in Dell Outlet to bring them to your budget level (I got mine for $680).

[johnmflores]

I've been using an iPad for mobile editing for years, first with Snapseed (now owned by Google and has somehow lost its mojo) and more recently with Lightroom (which has improved). I recently got a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge phone. The screen is beautiful (more than 500ppi) and with a MicroSD slot (which I filled with a 200GB HD). Paired with an OTG USB card reader I now have a nice small storage and editing solution. And Lightroom syncs with the cloud so my photos are backed up.

Mind you, most of the editing that I do on the road is for realtime sharing on social media, so I'm not as picky/precise as when I get home and edit for print.

For your budget I would look for a tablet/large phone that has a MicroSD slot to expand memory and has OTG support.

EDIT: Also keep in mind that tablets have much better screens than similarly-priced laptops in terms of resolution, color gamut, and viewability.

[dakight]

Here's another vote for a laptop. You'll just have more and better choices of software and when it comes to editing photos there is just no substitute for screen real estate. Samsung makes a tablet with a high resolution 10" screen, UHD I believe, but that doesn't solve your software problem. You'll just be happier with a laptop, even a small one.

[W.j.christy]

I recently started using my samsung note 10.1 2014 edition to do basic edits using the native photo software, and judging by the price point that you have mentioned that is what you are looking at getting or similar. The resolution on the the screen will work well, it will have as good or better resolution than the Ipad gen 3 and most likely the current note tabs will better resolution than the Ipad air gen 1.

The native photo editing software cannot handle Raw and is very basic (iso, color, crop and that is about it). However, there are several apps that can handle the raw files you just have to look and read the reviews. The nice thing with android is, if you don't like an app and uninstall it within 24 hours, most apps will give a refund of the purchase price.

For speed, as long as you don't bog the tablet down with alot of apps running, the newer higher end tablets (like the galaxy note 10.1) will do fine for photo editing.

I found that the touch screen on my tablet was responsive and accurate enough to do the basic edits, but I would find another method (mouse or what have you) to do anything more expansive.

[alamo5000]

Ok this pretty much answered my questions... thanks everyone for the input.

My laptop got dropped in the airport in Africa.... it still works but some of the plastic is busted. It is also several years old so it's almost due for a replacement.

I am doing a lot of travel lately (I hope to do it for longer but I have to see how the money lasts)...some of the places I want to go are kind of out of the way... (think one flight in per week and sometimes 2-3 legs to any major airport) but I don't want to be limited in what I am able to do. If I am processing, I want to do the whole 9 yards.

I guess I will just need to shop for an appropriate laptop and just live with lugging it around.

I can say for sure though that (for me) I am slowly honing my collection of stuff to haul around and that is not just camera gear.

[wissink]

Android gives you access to Lightroom mobile which requires you to subscribe to Adobe CC at $10ish a month. With your K3 photos you must first download the RAW files to your desktop or laptop (windows) PC and have them imported into lightroom. Then include the images into a collection that is marked as being available on mobile. Then you can do some basic editing of the jpeg previews from the tablet via the internet. I don't think it works without your tablet being connected.

I had a Google Nexus 7 2013, and tried lightroom mobile. It was okay. On a 7" screen I felt very claustrophobic though--almost clunky. It ran reasonably well (when connected to wifi) because its using jpeg previews not raws.

I also had a Surface Pro 3 i5. I had full desktop lightroom on there and attempted to cull and do basic edits of a wedding I shot. I gave up as everything took way too long. Perhaps a newer Surface Pro 3 i7 or Pro 4 i7 would manage better. I suppose I could have tried another software such as Fast Raw Viewer, Fast Picture Picture Viewer, or Photo Mechanic, for basic culling and rating. I don't own any fo them yet though.

If you don't have an android device and are curious about how Lightroom Mobile works, look up videos, or you can download a free android emulator on your PC and if you don't have Adobe CC, get a free trial of that.

[alamo5000]

Well that settles that. For one I am not subscribing to anything.

Secondly the whole idea is to be able to do everything, or almost everything, that I could do on a desktop.

I will not compromise on either point.

So it looks like a new laptop of some sort is in order when the time arrives...

[kp0c]

The other day I was wandering around (it's rained almost every day here) but I got to looking and talking to one of the sales guys. I currently, nor have I ever owned a tablet of any type. I also will not buy iAnything. No Apple products...

But what I did see was a Samsung Tablet (I guess that's what you call it) and the guy got to demonstrating a particular setup...that is using the optional keyboard and a bluetooth mouse...then he plugged in a small female USB adapter where I could take my SD cards and read them straight to the device.

I got to thinking about it and for travel it looks like it would be a possible good solution merely because of the size etc. Right now I am just using a laptop. However as soon as I get back to the US (or maybe sooner) this thing will get replaced.

Before I haul off and spend $600ish bucks I figured I should ask for other opinions. I pretty much don't want to be the guinea pig here.

In my opinion the downsides for post processing work would be that 1. The display is kind of small... it might make things hard to run lightroom. 2. I don't know if that display has enough resolution to keep up with a K3 and eventually a K1. 3. A possibility that the colors might be way off.

Question is though, has anyone tried it? Has anyone attempted to post process with a tablet type device and if so what were the results and/or downsides?

Basically I would like to know more information before I invest in any kind of new gear.

Of course the space on the thing is limited (32GB) but I always carry around spare external hard drive(s)...

Thoughts anyone?

Carrying a tablet, a bluetooth keyboard and mice as well as some dongle doesn't make much sense over an ultraportable like the Macbook Air* which have plenty of power for Lightroom while traveling imo, but to each is own. Don't forget the batteries for the mice and keyboard. You might as well look into the iPad pro** which seems strongly aimed at artist which the Apple Pen and all the applications available for retouching images. Oh, yeah, it's made by Apple though, so it just can't fit your need (just joking, just joking).

*I'm saying MacBook Air simply because I think they are the best overall ultraportable laptop and because I use one on a daily basis, but Samsung, Lenovo, Sony, etc. also make their version of such small computers.

** The iPad Pro + Apple Pen seemed like a somewhat valid alternative because you wouldn't need to carry a keyboard and mice, but maybe you would still need those peripherals for other applications.