Posts Tagged
photography
I have owned an iPad for quite some time now, and found it to be an excellent tool for both amateur photographers like myself and professionals alike. Sure, an iPad will never be able to replace a computer for serious photo editing (well, for me, anyway,) but I feel that it has definitely earned a place in the discerning photographers kit bag.
Hit the jump to discover ten iPad essentials that every photographer should own.
Let’s face it – whether or not we own an iPhone, most of us are aware of its proficient picture-taking ability and the abundance of apps to support it. The popularity of iPhoneography has driven developers to produce apps of the highest quality, and to fill numerous photographic niches.
The iPad, however, isn’t known for its camera, yet plenty of iPad owners can be seen at concerts and events, taking pictures and video. It seems bizarre that these folks haven’t had a quality iPad-specific photography app to work with.
It comes as a relief, then, that this void in the App Store’s catalogue has started to be filled. The new arrival is Blux Camera, the latest in a series of photo- and videographic apps by Blux Touch, which have been hugely popular on iPhone. But can this app turn your iPad into a truly usable, if rather overgrown, photographic companion?
In every category of the App Store, there are one or two top-of-the-range apps which attempt to elevate themselves above their competitors. They are usually a joy to use, both because of their feature set and because they are pleasing on the eye. This quality and exclusivity often brings with it an inflated price, but often enough, users are happy to pay more.
At $14.99, image editor Process is clearly attempting to fall into the category of apps mentioned above. In fact, the App Store profile of Process tells customers directly that this app is different from its competitors — providing a large selection of presets and editing tools as well as rapid processing.
Based on the price alone, you might reasonably assume that Process is immeasurably better than Snapseed, Photoshop Touch, or Photogene – but is it? Let’s find out for ourselves.
In the world of desktop image editing, there is only one name that springs to mind in front of all others – Photoshop. But when it comes to the iPad, the choice isn’t so clear, despite Adobe’s presence in the App Store.
With this in mind, I approached this review of Photogene with the hope of discovering a more heavyweight alternative. Mobile Pond, the developer of Photogene, is hardly a household name – they only have this one iPad product in the App Store – but this is an app which is slowly gaining popularity. At $2.99, it’s certainly a cheaper alternative to the products produced by the software giants, but when it comes to serious editing, is it a better alternative?
Guardian Eyewitness debuted in 2010 and is still tremendously popular on iPads. Not unlike The Wider Image, the app is a way to get news via visuals instead of blocks of text. Once a day, the app is updated with a photo hand picked by The Guardian’s editors. There’s a little info bubble that displays information about the photo and a pro photographer tip to help you capture similar moments with your own camera.
That pro tip is what really separates Guardian Eyewitness from other like-minded apps. The focus here is primarily on photography; news is a secondary function. This is an app meant for photographers, and probably designed by photographers too, which is definitely a good thing. (more…)
Have you ever seen those photos where there is one color highlighted in the scene and the rest of the image is grayscale? That’s a very basic photo editing technique known as “color splashing.” Don’t they look great? How would you like to take any photo you have and achieve the same effect in minutes, right there on your iPad?
ColorStrokes HD not only makes this process possible, but enjoyable, easy and downright great fun. You may enhance the odd photo here and there, or you may go a little bit Color-Crazy and churn out photo after photo as I did in my testing, simply because it is genuinely good fun. Either way, this little gem is sure to add a little more color to your life. (more…)
Showboat is an inexpensive scrapbooking app, with some good basic features for throwing together collections of photos quickly. This app will provide a way to showcase your photo collections of app screenshots, real estate summaries, art portfolios, items for sale, etc. It’s an ideal app for when you know you’re Internet access will be absent or patchy.
Although it’s still undergoing development, this is an app to watch. Lets take a look at what it offers out of the box right now. (more…)
The level to which people are willing to go to get their photos touched up never ceases to amaze me. Even before Instagram, it wasn’t like there was any dearth of image touch-up apps.
Mashing up multiple images without drastically changing the moment captured for posterity is something that most people love to do. Instead of just clicking through a folder full of pictures, it is so much fun to look at collages or mashups instead. After the break, let’s take Diptic for a spin and see if it can add some spice to our images. (more…)
Have you ever thought to yourself, “I’ve got enough photography apps I don’t think I’ll ever get another one.” Nah, me either. The thing is with all that’s out there for the iPad — iPhoto, Snapseed, Filterstorm and many others — they exist because we love taking pictures and we love to edit, filter and rearrange them in as many ways as possible.
After all, our pictures represent our memories frozen in time. With the introduction of apps like these we can add an artistic touch to those memories without having to spend hours learning high-end software like Photoshop. So, if you’re one of those people who can never get enough photography apps then this look at the latest app climbing the charts is for you.
Read on to see what Layout has to offer and how it compares.
