I am an amateur photographer, and I recently bought an iPad that I want to use for photo editing. Many times, a big barrier to get to organize and edit my photos is my clunky workflow. I'd like to implement something like this:
- Photos are taken from the iPhone or the Camera.
- At the end of a shooting day, these photos are transferred to my main external drive, where my catalogue lives (currently Lightroom Classic, used to be Aperture Y_Y).
- At this stage, I want to use the software on my laptop to cull and organize photos. In particular, I want a software that has at minimum these two features: stacking photos (similar photos taken within a short time interval are stacked and one can choose the best pick), and rating.
- I rate my photos: 1–2★, stay on my external drive. I don't do anything with them, I keep them in my archive (I've got a Time Machine backup of this drive). 3+★ are worth editing.
- I transfer them to my iPad and edit them.
- I transfer them back to my external drive (I don't want any RAW files living in my iPad, and I want the external drive to be the only source of truth).
- After editing, 4+★ images get transferred to my iCloud storage in JPG form for further backup but also for accessing through all my devices. Those are the pictures I truly care about to look at and share.
So, my requirements are the following:
- The app I use to edit on the iPad should have an equivalent or compatible Mac version, because when I import back my edited files to my external hard drive, I want to do so non-destructively (I should be able to go back and adjust the edits).
- I strongly prefer applications with one-time payments, rather than subscriptions.
- It would be cool if for steps 3–5, I could use iPad or Mac interchangebly (so to be able to cull and rate on iPad, or editing on Mac).
- Ideally there would be a way to automate the cloud operations too: to only sync with the cloud 4–5★ pictures (perhaps through the use of smart collections, or something similar).
Any pointers on how could I achieve this? I'm not locked/married to any specific software, I don't have a budget limit (though, as mentioned, strongly prefer non-subscriptions), and am open to any sort of automation or more complex setup if it ends up achieving my goals.