Mobile and cloud assisted photography processing appears to be where the industry is headed. Apple wants to link all of your photos to their cloud and Adobe’s changes to Lightroom will make a notebook computer unnecessary for some. Affinity Photo adds Photoshop-like functionality to the iPad. Luminar, On1 and Alien Skin all offer LR replacement functionality and cross platform support. Topaz Studio on a mobile device would be stunning.
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It will be interesting to see what answers you get to this question. I personally don’t use my phone or iPad to edit images, and I will not be using the new Lightroom CC (which is actually the mobile Lightroom). I will keep using Lightroom Classic.
Maybe it’s just my poor eyesight, but I prefer to edit images on a large screen and use the mouse or Wacom tablet for precision editing. I like to be able to zoom far in and still see a large part of my overall image.
I do recognize the trend to mobile editing, however, and the re-naming of Lightroom is a sign of the times.
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It’s not at the top of my shopping list but no doubt I’d play with it should it happen
For the foreseeable future, it wouldn’t even make it on my list. I don’t have any interest in making my photography cloud-based, in part or in full.
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No, unless it used cloud processing.
I am certain Adobe wants to control the imaging, one problem I don’t use Adobe nor does Adobe cut me any checks & if I am forced to assimilate I will find an alternative.
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I would like to see it ported to linux.
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The issue with phones and tablets is always the screen real estate and the issue with the cloud is that if you are using HQ type cameras with large RAW files is the sheer time it takes to upload/download images. Note also that upload/download is NOT affected by super fast internet unless the servers you are accessing have the bandwidth.
The question always will be out there but for people that primarily use phones for taking snapshots and uploading to social media as the quality is not necessary so I can see there will be a use but, even so, there is no attraction for me.
Lightroom CC is another marketing exercise, and very poor, by Adobe as the product is functionally poor and aimed at photographers with phones and not professional equipment. And be very wary as once you use 1TB of cloud storage the price increases. And a comparison of the functionality is in this link:
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I think about it off and on. Especially when I travel. But I can’t see doing serious work, btIm, heavy duty editing with large images and accurate color. Small edits in prep for home, yes. But not enough to damage said photos.
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Thanks for posting the comparison… a CC dealbreaker for me is that you can’t rename your image files… Hard to imagine a professional level program that does not permit fill renaming
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So… My opinion… Just for the record. 
Topaz Studio on an iPad or similar tablet might be a nice toy to have, but Topaz is not priced for the “take family photos with my phone” crowd.
As far as “the cloud is where the industry is going”? No. Not really. Not for anything serious.
The new Lightroom CC (which I will never use) is merely Adobe trying again to hone in on the phone crowd, trying to make a slightly upgraded (paid) photo editing for the crowd that might otherwise use Google and Picasa or similar. Adobe really, really wants their money, because that is where the bulk of the billions of simpler photos are being taken.
A customer base of merely “real photographers”, or “the millions of slightly serious people making snapshots”. Which one to make a business case on. (One problem with pure snapshot users is that they are used to “free”…
There is no money in “free”, unless it pushes a customer towards a high chance for an up-sell. )
Think Topaz Studio. (Free to download/use with the basic adjustments, but really just a marketing vehicle to sell the paid adjustments.) That is how it works these days.
The new simplistic Lightroom CC is merely Adobe’s desktop compliment to the already existing “Lightroom CC” for Android and iPad. They then unfortunately renamed the original Lightroom CC to “Classic”, which was a serious mistake and ticked off professionals. (“Classic” gives the impression of “no longer made/maintained, on its way out in a year or 2, was great once”. Think “Classic car”.)
But for any professional photographer, Lightroom CC (new cloud based) is utterly useless.
Coming home from a session/travel/hike, my most-used camera without even thinking of swapping memory cards holds 96 GB. Each photo at 40-50 MB, and with bracketing spewing out 3-5 of those image files on each button click, it can fill up rather easy.
Since the cloud based Lightroom WILL import to cloud, and in fact by their FAQ stops if your current cloud account runs full, to import that session would then require up to 96 GB in the cloud. PER import. Apart from all the upload wait times on slow upload speeds and limited small-town networks. (Add waiting time to import while you buy a larger cloud allowance from Adobe. )
Adobe simply cannot sell large enough cloud configs for large session photographers. Which of course is their real purpose, since their Cloud space is VERY expensive compared to others. Nor can Verizon/AT&T sell large enough Internet data plans to support travelers using such Cloud solutions. (Verizon stopped selling their last truly unlimited data/speed Internet plan back in 2011 because of it’s abuse. About the same time Microsoft dropped “Unlimited storage” for their OneDrive accounts.)
Cloud-based Lightroom also cannot work with add-ons like Studio and others. Think about it… It would require that massive image file to be downloaded from the cloud to your local system, and then after editing uploading the edited image again. Single images at 35-50 MB, HDR and panorama files MUCH larger flying each way on each call to an external editor. Every operation would be at a crawl. Off to get coffee and watch the news while exiting Topaz Studio or other external editing software.
Lightroom CC (any cloud based software) will also be a serious problem for anyone traveling a lot.
For example, ALL my Internet needs are handled by carrying multiple Wireless Mifi devices along (both Verizon and AT&T plans), managed/hidden by my router.
So no ultra-fast fibre-optic uploads, only whatever capacity remote, small-town America has on their wireless towers, which makes for slow upload speeds, dependence on who is streaming video nearby, and a limited and expensive data-bucket every month…
So for Lightroom, I will stick to Classic (until they throw that out, loosing all serious photographers in the process).
As for other Cloud based photo solutions in general. They are toys for the single-image, family photo crowd, whose photos from phone and tablets already automatically sync to various cloud systems (Google, OneDrive, DropBox, …).
Since only on-device (on phone/tablet) Unlimited data plans exist today. NO wireless plans in the US today offer unlimited tethering (connections for computers, TVs, Roku, …)
Cloud based imports can potentially be used by the photographer/artist who only take single or a few artistic photos.
But don’t even think of Wedding, Travel, or similar types, who come home with 500-600-800 photos that must be quickly culled and cut after importing them.
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I think if it’s not a tough thing to port over to the iPad, you should do it… There are many folks I know who would use a tool like this. Procreate is good, but there are many who already own Topaz tools for Photoshop and would like to see them available for iPad Pro.
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I’m a wildlife photographer and use my iPad Pro 12.9" 4th Gen to edit all of my photos in Lightroom Classic. I would love to see a Topaz Studio version for iPad iOS.
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Sure. But they haven’t continued development on the desktop version either 
so sadly I doubt that will happen.
There are millions of iPhone camera photographers out there. You can ignore them but that doesn’t make them any less real. I would put iPhone images up against many images made with SLR cameras and come out ahead. Just like with the old film cameras, we are entering a new paradime in photography.
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Use the Affinity products on my iPad Pro and don’t see any reason why a stand alone app for Topaz Photo AI wouldn’t be a hit for photographers. I don’t think apple allows much in the way of plugins on iPad apps so having to use cloud service like Adobe really isn’t needed. I have and 11" iPad with TB of storage and import photos directly from my camera to it while travelling so this would be something I would buy immediately and it would make carrying a laptop on trips or having to finished processing when I get home on the desktop disappear.
I would love to have this on even iPhone: no need to wait to get to “big computer” at home to enhance noise, you can just post top-quality pics on the go.
The problem is the system requirements.
Both Topaz Photo AI and Video AI for Mac require at least 16 GB RAM, and the only Apple handheld devices with 16 GB RAM are the 5th and 6th gen iPad Pros with 1 TB or 2 TB storage (the cheapest of which costs $1499 new).
IIRC Gigapixel required “only” 8 GB, which is met by any M1 or M2-based iPad down to the $599 iPad Air (5th gen).
Even though I assume that the overlap between Topaz users and 1+ TB iPad Pro users is relatively large, I think the market is too small to justify releasing an iPad version unless it’s extremely easy to do so (I don’t know the development process). Perhaps Topaz could develop an iPad version that can run well enough on 8 GB RAM, but that may not be a direction that they want to go in.
Furthermore, it’s not clear if Apple will increase the RAM on the iPad Air or the iPad Pro in the near future. Apple has typically been stingy with RAM on its mobile devices (the iPhone 6 Plus was infamous for its 1 GB of RAM and aged like milk), and Apple does not provide RAM options for the iPad that aren’t tied to storage capacities. Maybe Apple could go to 12 GB in the next few years (the Windows version of Photo AI requires 12 GB RAM).
Very good explanation of possible limitations. From what I understand, the M chips and unified memory requirements are not the same as other systems and can handle more with less, but my understanding of that is limited. I still think it can be done for photo Ai though video processing is much more resource intensive so I doubt we will see that. I have been using the affinity suite for book design and illustration with no memory or speed issues at all.
The memory requirements are straight from the Topaz website. It would be helpful if a Topaz representative could give their insight on the memory situation.
