# Surface Pro and Lightroom



## Linwood Ferguson

I bought a Surface Pro, and had occasion to try it with Lightroom, and thought I would share.  

For those who do not know, the Surface Pro is Microsoft's tablet, but one that runs real windows (as opposed to their first "Surface" that ran a brain dead variant called "RT").   It's somewhat of a heavy tablet, but it has a stylus (a real one not the capacitive pseudo-finger kind), and an Intel I5 processor and fast disks.  It's also got a very high resolution screen, though for photo editing small since it's 10".

I took it to a basketball game to shoot and then edit the photos while there on the wireless.

Lightroom installs normally, and runs as fast as my (somewhat old) laptop, probably faster.  The SSD in the Surface Pro is quite fast, and the processor decent.  Memory is adequate, and it has a full sized USB3 connector so my card reader ran VERY fast downloading the image.

One thing of note -- the stylus on the Pro is wonderful for handwriting, and it is incredibly precise, but it is not very accurate.  I.e. you can draw with extremely fine detail, but exactly what you touch when you press down is not quite so good.  There is a great "dot" that shows where you are about to touch, even with it an inch or so above, but it is still hard to hit something tiny.

Using Lightoom with a stylus is a bit of a challenge, because the scroll bars and some other controls are very tiny, and when they are near other controls, getting the right one can be a challenge.  Sometimes the finger worked better, e.g. scrolling (the tablet switches how it monitors gestures when you move the pen away, so it requires vastly less precision from the finger touch). 

I uploaded and culled about 500 images, flagging rejects and "do these now" candidates, then I did some quick editing on about 30 of the images to crop and change brightness.  This was slower than it would have been on my desktop, just a bit awkward, but it was about how hard it had been on a laptop.  Just differently so, some things easier (cropping with a stylus is great) and some things harder (as mentioned, scrolling and hitting flags).  People used to keyboard shortcuts may find it easier (if you have the attached keyboard) or harder (since using the keyboard doesn't put you in the best position to use the stylus).  I did not use the keyboard at all except typing titles, etc.

The 128G largest version gives you about 70G free, so you are not going to use this for permanent storage, but as a field use photo download/edit/upload device, it worked quite nicely.  It takes far less room than a laptop, and also takes less room on a press table or ad hoc working surface, which might be relevant in a lot of environments.  

The screen needs some calibration, I did now.  It had good shadow depth and decent blacks, but I think the color was a little off.  However, not nearly as far off as most laptops are by default, really quite decent.  The bright, glossy screen (with by definition finger prints all over it as it is a touch surface) is, well, a bright, glossy screen that you have to work on angle and lighting to have a chance of good image evaluation, but any tablet is going to do that.  having used a Nexus and Ipad I would say this screen ranks right up their with the best general use tablet screens, but is nothing like a real photo editing tablet (if you could afford the purpose built ones) or a nice NEC photo editing monitor.  But then again my 30" NEC won't fit in my camera bag either, and this is unnoticeable slide into the back.

All in all a surprisingly good result.  If Adobe would make it "touch screen" aware, shifting to bigger controls in just a few places, it would really be a dynamite field processing tablet.  And it's pretty good as-is.

Ps. I did not try Photoshop, but it should run similarly -- it's real windows, I have found nothing that my desktop runs that it won't so far.


----------



## Brad Snyder

Thanks for sharing, Linwood.


----------



## vtphotopro

Thank you so much for this post... I have been thinking of getting a Surface just for LR on the go.  Do you know if one can calibrate the screen using something like an XRite or is it just the Windows color calibration tool?


----------



## Linwood Ferguson

I have not tried, as my current calibration is with the hardware LUT's for NEC and their Spectravision, but as it is pretty much native windows I would not expect that to be a problem.  And the windows one is of course there to use.  On the Pro -- RT who knows, since it's neither windows nor android nor anything specific, other than (in my opinion) short lived. Now that a couple months have gone by I pretty much feel the same way.  I am coming to dislike it as a tablet -- i.e. as something to carry around like one would a Nexus or an iPad.   It's heavy, hot, and awkward in comparison.  But as a real Windows PC it's really great -- if what you want is a PC that is tiny and has a stylus, it's really a great solution.  If you want a tablet for general purpose use and occasionally some Photoshop -- well, the tablet side is much better served by Android both from a hardware and OS perspective.


----------



## johnbeardy

Yes, thanks, that was interesting.


----------



## Jimmsp

Great post & summary.
Thanks for sharing. Works like I Had hoped. This makes me want to give it a try.
Jim


----------



## jnazar

*Great Potential*

Hi guys! Thanks for sharing the experience. I am an artist also and bought a Surface Pro 128Gb to use for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop editing and enhancement on the go.

I'll tell you first why I bought the Pro and then will go through its Pros and Cons.

I live on the coast and need to travel 1.5 hours on train each way so I thought Surface Pro would be my best companion. Very exciting. I use Mac Pro running 10.8.4 at my studio and have Lightroom 5 for my everyday workflows and Photoshop CC for external editing and enhancement. When my Surface Pro was purchased I installed those two on it and was ready to go.

My idea was:

1. Export new Job as a catalog with Smart Previews from my MAC machine (Thanks Lightroom 5) onto my micro SD card (Samsung Pro 64Gb)
2. Work on the go from micro SD card while on the go on Surface Pro
3. Import Lightroom catalog changes to MAC machine once job is done (because it is a removable SD card, this process is extremely easy).

My flow now works fine with no issues, however it is very awkward to hold the tablet while commuting on the train. Train is quiet but is not very stable so it swings and shakes a little bit. This shaking is enough to get you very frustrated when you are trying to make a simple yet very important adjustment on the exposure level. Pen is very sensitive and as said earlier not very well calibrated. And that annoying little "dot" that nervously gets on the way. After a little while I got used to the shake and use my pen very closely so I tend to find the right moment when to do the adjustment  Do you guys have any instructions on how to install and Calibrate those WACOM drivers as I had very little luck with them. Pen is either unresponsive or is worse calibrated than the stock.

Keyboard - Touch Keyboard is useless at it is very hard to use once attached to your Pro. When putting your tablet on the stand on your laps its very hard to see the screen as it is too vertical and when you close the stand its very hard to hold with the keyboard attached. So - NO! In Lightroom however, if used professionally, shortcuts are the must!!! Either you are doing a comparative review or making selections or even holding SHIFT to select more than 1 image at the time. 

I have now solved this problem by installing a Remote Keyboard app on my iPhone that I use on such occasion wirelessly. - PERFECT MATCH!

Photoshop CC - looks great however it is not scaleable and everything looks so tiny there, especially hard when commuting on the train with uncallibrated pen.

So yeah, here is a bit of my experience so far. But hey, I have only been using it for 3 days now


----------



## Linwood Ferguson

Thanks, Jnazar.   That echoes a lot of what I am finding.  It's timely, as I went on vacation and took it to cull and do some preliminary editing each night of the day's shoot.   I really think it would be a GREAT solution if Adobe would do just a bit of customization so that it is more touch friendly.  The scroll bars are just too narrow for the finger, and the stupid stylus is just not accurate enough.  If LR had a mode where scroll bars and a few controls were proportionately twice the size, it would be terrific.  Or if the darn stylus would work right.   I do remain impressed that I can upload, cull, edit (with decent color rendition) on such a small, convenient device.   It could be so much better with just a bit of tweaking.


----------



## johngalt

Hi All,

I've put Nikon Camera Control 2 and NX2 on my surface pro. Makes for a fantastic tethering experience.


Doug


----------



## Gunna

I am thinking of buying Surface Pro 2, 256GB, with 8 GB RAM.  Anyone had experience with this & Lightroom 5?  Is it a replacement for my laptop?


----------



## clee01l

Gunna said:


> I am thinking of buying Surface Pro 2, 256GB, with 8 GB RAM.  Anyone had experience with this & Lightroom 5?  Is it a replacement for my laptop?


 That 256 GB represents about 8 -32 GB camera cards full of images.  OS, Applications and other critical user data also need to be accommodated in that 256GB HD.  I own a 32GB iPad and except for storage, I could pretty much replace my laptop but it does not run LR.  However it was storage in the end that determined that a small screen laptop was the better solution.


----------



## Linwood Ferguson

Gunna said:


> I am thinking of buying Surface Pro 2, 256GB, with 8 GB RAM.  Anyone had experience with this & Lightroom 5?  Is it a replacement for my laptop?



I've use my Pro (1) now numerous times at games to provide quick turnaround.   It's a real mixed blessing - it is tiny to carry, and plenty fast and capable.  However it's also tiny -- it is usable with Lightroom, but it is a challenge due to the tiny size of the controls (scroll bars for example).  If Lightroom was touch enabled more that would be fine (i.e. if a swipe would scroll the grid -- but it won't).

I would not, however, consider it as a laptop replacement, as in "no more laptop".  Especially if the laptop was my desktop also.  It's just too small, too limited.  It's a great travelling editor when space is an issue.  I slide it into the back of my camera case and don't even know it's there.  The charger is bigger than it is (in a camera-case sense in that it takes up the room of a lens instead of being flat and disappearing into the padding).

If 5.mumble brought more touch enablement, it would be better, but even things like the sliders require very careful positioning of the stylus.   It's OK for under-deadline, quick turn, do a few shots.  I wouldn't want to edit for hours on it, would make me nuts.

PS. Since I won't use it permanently, I never keep more than one shooting session on it, so tiny amounts of storage (I have 128G) are fine for me, but modern cameras will fill up 256G pretty fast if it's your only editor.


----------

