The big thing with USB-C (something I'm hoping for) is that the need for Apple specific adapters goes away. This would be a huge improvement for ALL iOS devices. The question then becomes will Apple free up developers to use that port without having to sign up for MiFi. Likewise will iOS get the ability to support third party drivers.
Force Touch really has little to do with bezel size.
One of the guys at the agency I freelance with has one of those rigs. What I wouldn't give to marry that surface with a Wacom and put my keyboard in a drawer most of the day.
I actually did some research one day to see if anyone ever made some kind of adobe driver for that hardware. No dice
I've actually found myself using my iPhone for most communication tasks, like email and IM during the day, so I can leave my keyboard propped up on the far side of the Wacom tablet where I can jab at it for tool shortcuts but not really type that well.
That said, a revolutionary take on UI of the professional tablet workflow is something I'd be very interested in trying out. Even mstone's screenshot of the shortcut-printed keyboard just illustrates how we have bolted an ultra-task-specific UI to an extremely general-purpose input device. Reimagining how this is done seems like a good thing.
I'm still not completely sold on the iPad pro being the device that makes this kind of revolutionary change. I mean, apple took 20+ years to add multiple buttons to its mouse. I imagine their pen offering will err on the side of pared-down and beginner-friendly.
I remembered that at one time I was backing a Kickstarter project called CTRL+ Console which facilitated it being used as an extension of Adobe Lightroom and Premier on the Mac.
Here's some feed-back on the above project, as well as thoughts regarding Adobe Nav (iOS) for controlling Photoshop, which was later "killed" by Adobe.
There was some other people with the iPad as an extension or controller for Adobe software even on Windows like [URL=http://www.lrpad.com/]LRPAD[/URL], but nothing really seemed to take off. Mainly for the same reason that John Nack mentioned in his blog:
[I]What do you think? It’s great-looking, but I remain a bit skeptical about using touchscreens (which obviously lack the physical variation of a keyboard or dedicated hardware controller) in this way. If you’re a Photoshop user with an iPad, are you using Adobe Nav–and if not, why not? I suspect the problem is that one has to keep glancing over at a touch screen, whereas one can navigate a keyboard (or physical jog wheel, etc.) simply by feel. Yet the concept remains alluring, so I’m curious about others’ assessment.[/I]
One of the improvements that I've been hoping for with Wacom, is that they would introduce Multi-Touch to their tablets as well as their superior PATENTED pen tech. I could see something along these lines being introduced with iPad Pro. HOWEVER... once again it then would be just the marriage of the iPad Multi-Touch with a pen.
AND... the biggest drawback that I see using such a device in a professional environment:
1) if you're truly a professional you're using calibrated displays.... so yes, I would expect the iPad to have some sort of calibration, and Color-Sync profiles;
2) the biggest problem that I've come across over many years, was matching colors across different displays when used in a multi-screen setup. No matter your calibration software, how often you calibrate, nor even having the exact same monitors, they will always color shift differently over time. Not a big deal for the enthusiasts, but a huge deal for "pixel-peepers". That's why most people with 2 screens use one for tools and reference and the other for the proofing and editing.
I've actually worked over short periods of time on different Wacom Cintique's. I think they're great for modeling and 3D software, but lack with pre-press, photo and retouch. This is mainly due to Adobe's bad GUI, but regardless... that's all we have (at the moment) to do our work.
There's however a new award-winning company, [URL=https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/]Affinity Serif[/URL] that is making some seriously good software and have caused a number of us to keep an eye on them. There's a few little things they need to iron out, but in about a year with the right support I think they may be the new contender on the block for professionals wanting to break the chains of Adobe.
It's the guys at Affinity and also Pixelmator that I expect will make the iPad Pro into a serious productivity machine. We'll just have to wait and see what Apple comes out with first for the aforementioned talented developers to build their Apps for.
AND... the biggest drawback that I see using such a device in a professional environment:
1) if you're truly a professional you're using calibrated displays.... so yes, I would expect the iPad to have some sort of calibration, and Color-Sync profiles;
2) the biggest problem that I've come across over many years, was matching colors across different displays when used in a multi-screen setup. No matter your calibration software, how often you calibrate, nor even having the exact same monitors, they will always color shift differently over time. Not a big deal for the enthusiasts, but a huge deal for "pixel-peepers". That's why most people with 2 screens use one for tools and reference and the other for the proofing and editing.
I've actually worked over short periods of time on different Wacom Cintique's. I think they're great for modeling and 3D software, but lack with pre-press, photo and retouch. This is mainly due to Adobe's bad GUI, but regardless... that's all we have (at the moment) to do our work.
There is a fledgling effort to bring color management to iOS devices. X-rite has an app called TrueColor which uses i1profiler software as a server to host the calibration device and manage the calibration process. After completion an ICC profile is sent back to the iOS device and is hosted by TrueColor. Apparently there is some kind of way other apps can access this profile if they are written with this intent. Right now there aren't a lot of supporting apps, which is unfortunate. But maybe the idea will catch on? Like audio units did. And perhaps it can be either rolled into iOS. Or Apple could open up color profiles to the user so we can generate profiles ourselves and install them just like we do on MacOS.
There's however a new award-winning company, Affinity Serif that is making some seriously good software and have caused a number of us to keep an eye on them. There's a few little things they need to iron out, but in about a year with the right support I think they may be the new contender on the block for professionals wanting to break the chains of Adobe.
I have the Affinity apps sitting in my dock but I have yet to use them.
I remember when Quark was the professional's standard for DTP but in a year or so after the release of inDesign the momentum shifted very quickly. A few reasons were the ability to use Photoshop, Acrobat and Illustrator native files so no need to make tiff or eps files. Two, the ability to create drop shadows and adjust them with multiply settings. Three, drag images from the desktop directly on to the page. That, and the smooth integration with other Adobe Suite applications and the PDF workflow also was also much better in inDesign. In about a year Quark was basically killed. I still get emails from them and they have all of those features, and then some, but it is too late, the standard is now inDesign.
The important part of that story is that the 'standard' is necessary because of collaboration. That is why I can't see anyone dethroning Adobe any time soon. Their ecosystem is just as significant as Apple's. Quark was a stand alone product. They tried to expand into multimedia but it never caught on. They were a one trick pony. Adobe is so diversified I can't see anyone challenging them unless they come to market with a full suite of applications that are all on par with Adobe's offings.
Think about a greater use of multi-touch. Pen in one hand, using the fingers on the other for controls on the screen. The iPad Pro will have more screen real-estate to allow this type of use. And this is with pre-designed icons/buttons on the screen that can explicitly show the intended use rather than just remembering key combinations on a separate keyboard. Then think about the possibility of having multiple devices daisy-chained through USB-C - you want your keyboard? How about having the primary screen you sketch on be an iPad Pro linked to a series of keys on an attached iPhone 6+ or an iPad mini?
It's going to take time to get there, but a larger screen with multi-touch and an option for stylus use opens up more possibilities in interacting with a single space as we used to do in the days of pen and paper as opposed to looking at a screen, controlling direction with one hand, and functions with another. And the ability to link multiple screens means people that want things out of their way can push the functional buttons to a separate device. All this changes the way we interact with the devices we use, inventing new paradigms that more closely emulate the way we used to work before technology got in the way and forced us to adopt things like keyboards.
There is a fledgling effort to bring color management to iOS devices. X-rite has an app called TrueColor which uses i1profiler software as a server to host the calibration device and manage the calibration process. After completion an ICC profile is sent back to the iOS device and is hosted by TrueColor. Apparently there is some kind of way other apps can access this profile if they are written with this intent. Right now there aren't a lot of supporting apps, which is unfortunate. But maybe the idea will catch on? Like audio units did. And perhaps it can be either rolled into iOS. Or Apple could open up color profiles to the user so we can generate profiles ourselves and install them just like we do on MacOS.
A bit late... but just wanted say thanks for the info!
I have the Affinity apps sitting in my dock but I have yet to use them.
I remember when Quark was the professional's standard for DTP but in a year or so after the release of inDesign the momentum shifted very quickly. A few reasons were the ability to use Photoshop, Acrobat and Illustrator native files so no need to make tiff or eps files. Two, the ability to create drop shadows and adjust them with multiply settings. Three, drag images from the desktop directly on to the page. That, and the smooth integration with other Adobe Suite applications and the PDF workflow also was also much better in inDesign. In about a year Quark was basically killed. I still get emails from them and they have all of those features, and then some, but it is too late, the standard is now inDesign.
The important part of that story is that the 'standard' is necessary because of collaboration. That is why I can't see anyone dethroning Adobe any time soon. Their ecosystem is just as significant as Apple's. Quark was a stand alone product. They tried to expand into multimedia but it never caught on. They were a one trick pony. Adobe is so diversified I can't see anyone challenging them unless they come to market with a full suite of applications that are all on par with Adobe's offings.
Standards are literally the "stick in the mud" for all companies, workflows and processes, and why I agree that it will take a lot to pry loose the grounded ship that is Adobe.
However, new generations, new tools, new software.... who's to say that at some time in the near future things don't start to change. You, me and a host of other regulars here went through the anologue to digital, handcrafted litho to DTP (hate the name, love the process!) years ago, and think of the big names we killed in doing so. Linotype, Hell, Kodak, and so many more but just to name a few.
Also, as "good" as Adobe has gotten integrating their suite of software apps... it's still nowhere close to being friction-free across the software. I've written tons of posts about this at Adobe, but no matter how many agree that Adobe needs to pick up the pace, possibly even re-writing a large portion of their apps... in this case i think it will once again take a strong contender for them to do so. Let that be a lean mean innovation machine at Serif or Pixelmator.... which is why I support them... but still work with mission critical and standards-based software like Adobe CC.
Q: do you also have to get ISO 9001 certification for your process/workflow management? That multi-month review process alone holds innovation back for the big shops I work with. Once you pay out of the nose and get it, you don't want to change too much in order to have to go through it again any time soon or after a review process(!)
Standards are literally the "stick in the mud" for all companies, workflows and processes, and why I agree that it will take a lot to pry loose the grounded ship that is Adobe.
The reason I am so set on adopting standards is because we now have 11 global offices and we share a lot of content. Affinity looks ok but it is only Mac and a lot of our other offices are on Windows version of CC which is really pretty seamless with the Mac version.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ThePixelDoc
Q: do you also have to get ISO 9001 certification for your process/workflow management? That multi-month review process alone holds innovation back for the big shops I work with. Once you pay out of the nose and get it, you don't want to change too much in order to have to go through it again any time soon or after a review process(!)
Yes and I was the principle author of our department's procedures and also control the documentation as well as host the annual audits. For me it is not such a big hassle because we have an extremely efficient approval process for publishing. I also wrote a few pieces of software for automatic archiving of documents and also auto web page reviews and archiving. The web page review is something that many ISO companies do not have and how they get away with it is inexplicable. It is pretty difficult to do actually. You have to keep a duplicate server and when you make edits on the dev server with one click it archives the old page as a PDF and makes all the modifications on the live server, uploads the images and updates the live database.
The reason I am so set on adopting standards is because we now have 11 global offices and we share a lot of content. Affinity looks ok but it is only Mac and a lot of our other offices are on Windows version of CC which is really pretty seamless with the Mac version.
Yupp. That's another huge reason at present. I also have 3 large multinationals with the same requirements, since places like Brazil it's almost impossible to get good local service (and prices!) for a large production office based on Macs. The facilities were also purchased in the early 00's when we were struggling on the Mac side with the new OSX. from around 1999 until around 2006 I was also working primarily on Windows, with my Power Macs as "my passion" and my Winboxes as "back to reality".
Yes and I was the principle author of our department's procedures and also control the documentation as well as host the annual audits. For me it is not such a big hassle because we have an extremely efficient approval process for publishing. I also wrote a few pieces of software for automatic archiving of documents and also auto web page reviews and archiving. The web page review is something that many ISO companies do not have and how they get away with it is inexplicable. It is pretty difficult to do actually. You have to keep a duplicate server and when you make edits on the dev server with one click it archives the old page as a PDF and makes all the modifications on the live server, uploads the images and updates the live database.
Toot-toot!!! Not bad Curious: you mention software... was that actual software or advanced scripts (server-based PHP, MySQL, ImageMagick, PDF plug-ins, etc.), or a combination? I contributed to a similar project at one of the multi-nationals I mentioned for updating/archiving/retrieving printing plates. My "contribution" as it were was simply defining the logic, but alas I'm still not much of a programmer (especially with SQL!) so of course that was handed off to the pros in that field. Can't be a pro in everything!
Story: just a stone's throw away from where I lived up until a couple of years ago, was one of the largest boom-to-bust go-go dot-com bubble companies in Germany. They specialized in archive management plugins for SAP process management, and I knew a number of people there. The craziest thing that happened was that since they were being payed mostly in options before the IPO, a few months after most of them were instant multi-millionaires. They all tended their resignations and within a year the company was decimated by almost half... mostly the lead engineers. Apart from the dot-com boom going bust... they died mostly because they couldn't find quality engineers to keep the place running. Besides the part that a number of insider trading scandals also hit them hard. Those were the days!
My Big Q is whether it will be comparable to a high-end Wacom tablet for professional creative work with all the benefits of not requiring full-time comp connection.
My Big Q is whether it will be comparable to a high-end Wacom tablet for professional creative work with all the benefits of not requiring full-time comp connection.
If it is, Wacom’s dead. I certainly hope that Apple at least matches the Intuos line in sensitivity.
My Big Q is whether it will be comparable to a high-end Wacom tablet for professional creative work with all the benefits of not requiring full-time comp connection.
My guess is it will be close. Hoping for superior, but realistically, I'm thinking "close enough"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
If it is, Wacom’s dead. I certainly hope that Apple at least matches the Intuos line in sensitivity.
Me too. The day iPad was announced I saw the writing on the wall for Wacom. Talk about a company who's had a monopoly stranglehold on their market.
Comments
The big thing with USB-C (something I'm hoping for) is that the need for Apple specific adapters goes away. This would be a huge improvement for ALL iOS devices. The question then becomes will Apple free up developers to use that port without having to sign up for MiFi. Likewise will iOS get the ability to support third party drivers.
Force Touch really has little to do with bezel size.
Third party drivers.... No way, not a chance.
[IMG]https://images.blackmagicdesign.com/media/products/davinciresolve/product-grid/davinci-resolve-11-control-surface.jpg[/IMG]
One of the guys at the agency I freelance with has one of those rigs. What I wouldn't give to marry that surface with a Wacom and put my keyboard in a drawer most of the day.
I actually did some research one day to see if anyone ever made some kind of adobe driver for that hardware. No dice
I've actually found myself using my iPhone for most communication tasks, like email and IM during the day, so I can leave my keyboard propped up on the far side of the Wacom tablet where I can jab at it for tool shortcuts but not really type that well.
That said, a revolutionary take on UI of the professional tablet workflow is something I'd be very interested in trying out. Even mstone's screenshot of the shortcut-printed keyboard just illustrates how we have bolted an ultra-task-specific UI to an extremely general-purpose input device. Reimagining how this is done seems like a good thing.
I'm still not completely sold on the iPad pro being the device that makes this kind of revolutionary change. I mean, apple took 20+ years to add multiple buttons to its mouse. I imagine their pen offering will err on the side of pared-down and beginner-friendly.
I'd love to be wrong.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jeffchow/ctrl-console-creativity-unleashed/description
Here's some feed-back on the above project, as well as thoughts regarding Adobe Nav (iOS) for controlling Photoshop, which was later "killed" by Adobe.
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2012/11/ctrlconsole-ipad-control-for-lightroom-premiere-pro.html
There was some other people with the iPad as an extension or controller for Adobe software even on Windows like [URL=http://www.lrpad.com/]LRPAD[/URL], but nothing really seemed to take off. Mainly for the same reason that John Nack mentioned in his blog:
[I]What do you think? It’s great-looking, but I remain a bit skeptical about using touchscreens (which obviously lack the physical variation of a keyboard or dedicated hardware controller) in this way. If you’re a Photoshop user with an iPad, are you using Adobe Nav–and if not, why not? I suspect the problem is that one has to keep glancing over at a touch screen, whereas one can navigate a keyboard (or physical jog wheel, etc.) simply by feel. Yet the concept remains alluring, so I’m curious about others’ assessment.[/I]
One of the improvements that I've been hoping for with Wacom, is that they would introduce Multi-Touch to their tablets as well as their superior PATENTED pen tech. I could see something along these lines being introduced with iPad Pro. HOWEVER... once again it then would be just the marriage of the iPad Multi-Touch with a pen.
AND... the biggest drawback that I see using such a device in a professional environment:
1) if you're truly a professional you're using calibrated displays.... so yes, I would expect the iPad to have some sort of calibration, and Color-Sync profiles;
2) the biggest problem that I've come across over many years, was matching colors across different displays when used in a multi-screen setup. No matter your calibration software, how often you calibrate, nor even having the exact same monitors, they will always color shift differently over time. Not a big deal for the enthusiasts, but a huge deal for "pixel-peepers". That's why most people with 2 screens use one for tools and reference and the other for the proofing and editing.
I've actually worked over short periods of time on different Wacom Cintique's. I think they're great for modeling and 3D software, but lack with pre-press, photo and retouch. This is mainly due to Adobe's bad GUI, but regardless... that's all we have (at the moment) to do our work.
There's however a new award-winning company, [URL=https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/]Affinity Serif[/URL] that is making some seriously good software and have caused a number of us to keep an eye on them. There's a few little things they need to iron out, but in about a year with the right support I think they may be the new contender on the block for professionals wanting to break the chains of Adobe.
It's the guys at Affinity and also Pixelmator that I expect will make the iPad Pro into a serious productivity machine. We'll just have to wait and see what Apple comes out with first for the aforementioned talented developers to build their Apps for.
There is a fledgling effort to bring color management to iOS devices. X-rite has an app called TrueColor which uses i1profiler software as a server to host the calibration device and manage the calibration process. After completion an ICC profile is sent back to the iOS device and is hosted by TrueColor. Apparently there is some kind of way other apps can access this profile if they are written with this intent. Right now there aren't a lot of supporting apps, which is unfortunate. But maybe the idea will catch on? Like audio units did. And perhaps it can be either rolled into iOS. Or Apple could open up color profiles to the user so we can generate profiles ourselves and install them just like we do on MacOS.
There's however a new award-winning company, Affinity Serif that is making some seriously good software and have caused a number of us to keep an eye on them. There's a few little things they need to iron out, but in about a year with the right support I think they may be the new contender on the block for professionals wanting to break the chains of Adobe.
I have the Affinity apps sitting in my dock but I have yet to use them.
I remember when Quark was the professional's standard for DTP but in a year or so after the release of inDesign the momentum shifted very quickly. A few reasons were the ability to use Photoshop, Acrobat and Illustrator native files so no need to make tiff or eps files. Two, the ability to create drop shadows and adjust them with multiply settings. Three, drag images from the desktop directly on to the page. That, and the smooth integration with other Adobe Suite applications and the PDF workflow also was also much better in inDesign. In about a year Quark was basically killed. I still get emails from them and they have all of those features, and then some, but it is too late, the standard is now inDesign.
The important part of that story is that the 'standard' is necessary because of collaboration. That is why I can't see anyone dethroning Adobe any time soon. Their ecosystem is just as significant as Apple's. Quark was a stand alone product. They tried to expand into multimedia but it never caught on. They were a one trick pony. Adobe is so diversified I can't see anyone challenging them unless they come to market with a full suite of applications that are all on par with Adobe's offings.
Think about a greater use of multi-touch. Pen in one hand, using the fingers on the other for controls on the screen. The iPad Pro will have more screen real-estate to allow this type of use. And this is with pre-designed icons/buttons on the screen that can explicitly show the intended use rather than just remembering key combinations on a separate keyboard. Then think about the possibility of having multiple devices daisy-chained through USB-C - you want your keyboard? How about having the primary screen you sketch on be an iPad Pro linked to a series of keys on an attached iPhone 6+ or an iPad mini?
It's going to take time to get there, but a larger screen with multi-touch and an option for stylus use opens up more possibilities in interacting with a single space as we used to do in the days of pen and paper as opposed to looking at a screen, controlling direction with one hand, and functions with another. And the ability to link multiple screens means people that want things out of their way can push the functional buttons to a separate device. All this changes the way we interact with the devices we use, inventing new paradigms that more closely emulate the way we used to work before technology got in the way and forced us to adopt things like keyboards.
A bit late... but just wanted say thanks for the info!
Standards are literally the "stick in the mud" for all companies, workflows and processes, and why I agree that it will take a lot to pry loose the grounded ship that is Adobe.
However, new generations, new tools, new software.... who's to say that at some time in the near future things don't start to change. You, me and a host of other regulars here went through the anologue to digital, handcrafted litho to DTP (hate the name, love the process!) years ago, and think of the big names we killed in doing so. Linotype, Hell, Kodak, and so many more but just to name a few.
Also, as "good" as Adobe has gotten integrating their suite of software apps... it's still nowhere close to being friction-free across the software. I've written tons of posts about this at Adobe, but no matter how many agree that Adobe needs to pick up the pace, possibly even re-writing a large portion of their apps... in this case i think it will once again take a strong contender for them to do so. Let that be a lean mean innovation machine at Serif or Pixelmator.... which is why I support them... but still work with mission critical and standards-based software like Adobe CC.
Q: do you also have to get ISO 9001 certification for your process/workflow management? That multi-month review process alone holds innovation back for the big shops I work with. Once you pay out of the nose and get it, you don't want to change too much in order to have to go through it again any time soon or after a review process(!)
Standards are literally the "stick in the mud" for all companies, workflows and processes, and why I agree that it will take a lot to pry loose the grounded ship that is Adobe.
The reason I am so set on adopting standards is because we now have 11 global offices and we share a lot of content. Affinity looks ok but it is only Mac and a lot of our other offices are on Windows version of CC which is really pretty seamless with the Mac version.
Quote:
Q: do you also have to get ISO 9001 certification for your process/workflow management? That multi-month review process alone holds innovation back for the big shops I work with. Once you pay out of the nose and get it, you don't want to change too much in order to have to go through it again any time soon or after a review process(!)
Yes and I was the principle author of our department's procedures and also control the documentation as well as host the annual audits. For me it is not such a big hassle because we have an extremely efficient approval process for publishing. I also wrote a few pieces of software for automatic archiving of documents and also auto web page reviews and archiving. The web page review is something that many ISO companies do not have and how they get away with it is inexplicable. It is pretty difficult to do actually. You have to keep a duplicate server and when you make edits on the dev server with one click it archives the old page as a PDF and makes all the modifications on the live server, uploads the images and updates the live database.
Toot-toot!!! Not bad
Story: just a stone's throw away from where I lived up until a couple of years ago, was one of the largest boom-to-bust go-go dot-com bubble companies in Germany. They specialized in archive management plugins for SAP process management, and I knew a number of people there. The craziest thing that happened was that since they were being payed mostly in options before the IPO, a few months after most of them were instant multi-millionaires. They all tended their resignations and within a year the company was decimated by almost half... mostly the lead engineers. Apart from the dot-com boom going bust... they died mostly because they couldn't find quality engineers to keep the place running. Besides the part that a number of insider trading scandals also hit them hard. Those were the days!
If it is, Wacom’s dead. I certainly hope that Apple at least matches the Intuos line in sensitivity.
My Big Q is whether it will be comparable to a high-end Wacom tablet for professional creative work with all the benefits of not requiring full-time comp connection.
My guess is it will be close. Hoping for superior, but realistically, I'm thinking "close enough"
If it is, Wacom’s dead. I certainly hope that Apple at least matches the Intuos line in sensitivity.
Me too. The day iPad was announced I saw the writing on the wall for Wacom. Talk about a company who's had a monopoly stranglehold on their market.