Two questions... does she use Lightroom or another photo editing/management tool? Does she shoot raw, or just jpg?
If she isn't using Lightroom or shooting raw, the siblings cover it. Just use Apple Photos with iCloud backup. If she wants most of the photos in full-size on local disk, buy the largest capacity iPad you can.
If she is using Lightroom, they have their own cloud storage that is included (or discounted?) with the monthly software subscription. So, you can still use the iPad, you just have an extra step of importing into Apple Photos, then exporting into Lightroom (this may have changed, but AFAIK, iPad still doesn't allow direct import of files into non-native apps).
There are a few tutorials and blog entries that describe the above process, though I expect there will be updates or new coverage in a month or two, once people have time with the latest iPadOS updates.
FWIW, I use an Ipad and the camera kit on vacation, use Apple Photos, and also have a MacBook at home (it's a bit easier to do some tasks with a mouse, but an all-mobile workflow is possible). My mother use a hodgepodge of Lightroom on Windows, with some photos synced to her Apple product ecosystem, but I don't know the details.
I think she shoots in JPG because of memory budget. A family friend talked her into buying some kind of photo management / photo touch-up application (can’t remember its name), but I think it mostly just makes her angry because it took over as the default handler for photos on her computer, and her computer is too old and slow to run the software acceptably.
How seamless is the iCloud backup when the total volume of pictures is greater than the local storage? Does the photos app smartly fetch the full photo as needed?
The iCloud photo backup work very well, in my experience. My phone and older iPad are lower capacity and have to keep optimized (smaller) photos local. The full size images are downloaded automatically when viewed in Photos.
As noted by another post, iCloud will delete a photo from the whole system if deleted on one device, so you may want periodic backups elsewhere. I just drag the entire photo library file (MacOS keeps the library, photos included, in a single “file”) from my Mac to an external drive. Can’t speak to the best way to do this from an iPad, but with the new external drive support, that might be easy?
If she isn't using Lightroom or shooting raw, the siblings cover it. Just use Apple Photos with iCloud backup. If she wants most of the photos in full-size on local disk, buy the largest capacity iPad you can.
If she is using Lightroom, they have their own cloud storage that is included (or discounted?) with the monthly software subscription. So, you can still use the iPad, you just have an extra step of importing into Apple Photos, then exporting into Lightroom (this may have changed, but AFAIK, iPad still doesn't allow direct import of files into non-native apps).
There are a few tutorials and blog entries that describe the above process, though I expect there will be updates or new coverage in a month or two, once people have time with the latest iPadOS updates.
FWIW, I use an Ipad and the camera kit on vacation, use Apple Photos, and also have a MacBook at home (it's a bit easier to do some tasks with a mouse, but an all-mobile workflow is possible). My mother use a hodgepodge of Lightroom on Windows, with some photos synced to her Apple product ecosystem, but I don't know the details.