I purchased and iPad Pro 12.9" (1st generation) for my presentation. It only has 32mb memory so I don't know how effective it will be for running LR mobile with raw files.
It sounds like you found a first-generation iPad Pro with 32GB (not mb) of storage, since the later generations start at 64GB. That 32GB won't hurt the ability of Lightroom to edit raw files, because:
- That 32GB is storage, not RAM. An iPad Pro has 4GB RAM (some have more). 4GB RAM is too low for a Mac or PC to run Lightroom well, but we cannot think of iPads in the same way because the CPU/GPU architecture is completely different, and more efficient. The non-Pro and older iPads had much less than 4GB RAM; this is one of the reasons the Pro is a relatively powerful iPad.
- If you're just presenting, not editing, that will be a light load for Lightroom. It should be no problem.
- Lightroom is not going to store all your original photos on the iPad at all times. It's only going to download and cache the images you're currently editing, send the edits up to the master copies in the cloud, cache the previews of edited versions, and dump any local copies you haven't edited in a while. If you're going to edit 50 raw images on the iPad, 32GB of storage (minus iOS and installed apps) is more than enough to get that done.
32GB storage will only start to get cramped if you install a bunch of big iOS apps, copy in a lot of music or movies, or import hundreds of raw images directly from a full 16GB or larger camera card.
Right now I only need access to about 50 photos from LR desktop. What is the best way to sync these to my iPad ? Can anyone provide a link to a good overview of syncing desktop and tablet?
Since you're posting this in the
Lightroom mobile/web apps (cloud-based service) forum, it should take 0 steps to sync them, because if you already set up the images in any of the Lightroom cloud apps (desktop, phone, tablet, web, but not Classic), they are already synced to Lightroom Photos in the cloud. After you install the Lightroom app on your new iPad Pro and sign into your Creative Cloud account from it, all your Lightroom Photos should just show up in it.
To organize the 50 photos for your presentation, use Lightroom on any device to create an album, put the 50 photos in there, and arrange them in the sequence you need. That album will sync across all devices. But you might be happy enough just organizing the presentation in Lightroom on the iPad Pro itself.
It would be a good idea to run through the presentation a few times on the iPad in advance. This will give Lightroom a chance to download and cache local previews of all the images you want to show, to minimize delays during the presentation.