Photography
You can never learn all the possible combinations of what can be done with Adobe Photoshop. While you can certainly learn the tools and the menu commands, the combinations of how these tools work together offer an infinite number of possibilities. This is why even though I've been using Photoshop since version 2.0 in the 90's, I still learn something new every time I watch someone else use Photoshop. There are tons of books, online tutorials, online classes, YouTube videos, etc. offering to teach you Photoshop. However, Photoshop CS 5 now offers a remote connection capability that includes the iPad. This opens Photoshop up for Apps to drive it. The folks over at Dark Glass Media have taken advantage of these new hooks in Photoshop and have begun offering digital magazine/tutorials that not only walk you step-by-step through various tasks, but also at the tap of an onscreen button the app can drive Photoshop and perform the task for you!
Learn Skin Softening, Pro Sharpening, Tint & Tone and More
I bought a couple of these Apps to try out and I was really impressed with how well they are put together. Once you enable Photoshop CS 5 (5.1 or 5.04) to allow remote connections, you can then launch one of the DI Direct Apps and connect to you copy of Photoshop via your WiFi connection. Then you can proceed with the lessons and whenever you want to have the App perform the task in your copy of Photoshop just tap the button. The App can even transmit and open up the same sample image that you see in the App to your copy of Photoshop so that you have the exact image that you see in the tutorial. Of course you can use your own photos too.
This opens up a whole new door for learning software and this is a great example of how a developer can exploit the new Photoshop CS 5 Remote Connection hooks. The Apps work as advertised and when you rotate to landscape view you can see a gallery of different effects to try. Awesome App! My only ask would be a mode that allows me to try an effect, but do it step-by-step instead of running through all the steps instantly. Let's say an effect takes 5 steps, I'd like the option to tap a manual mode and apply each step one-by-one so that I can see the effects build up. Currently when you try one of their gallery effects it just does it all in one swoop. Otherwise, I have no complaints. The App is well designed, works as advertised and is cost effective! Each App focuses on a single area of Photoshop, so if you're looking for an end to end class, this probably isn't what you want. If you're looking to learn a technique here and there, then you'll love these.
You can get DID SkinSoft for $2.99 here from the 
You can get DID ProSharp for $2.99 here from the
You can get DID Tint & Tone for $2.99 here from the
If you've ever read any of my iPad portfolio App reviews here then you know that I usually ding them all on one thing I'd like to see and that is syncing with Dropbox.com. I love Dropbox and use it all the time for all kinds of things. I pay for their top tier (100GB of space) and have been very happy with the service to date. One of my uses for it is that I use one Adobe Photoshop Lightroom's features called "Hard Drive Publish Service" and this allows me to publish and update a select number of photos to a folder on my hard drive. That folder happens to be in my Dropbox folder. This way I can use sub folders for each subject of my portfolio (beauty, fashion, etc.) and that folder is then sync'd to not only all my computers, but it's also available via the Dropbox App on iOS and Android. What I would LOVE is a portfolio App that not only can load photos from Dropbox (which most do), but actually keep them in sync!
CloudAlbums answers this request
CloudAlbums is NOT a portfolio App. It doesn't have all the cool features of the dedicated portfolio apps such as customization, music, slideshows, transitions, etc., but what it does do is the one thing that the dedicated portfolio apps don't. It can actually "sync" your Albums with the photos in your Dropbox folder. This is great and it's exactly the feature I've been asking for from several developers. The problem is is that it's in the wrong app. 
Don't get me wrong, CloudAlbums isn't trying to be a portfolio app, so it's not their fault. CloudAlbums is an App that designed for ANY user that is tired of having to manually sync photos between your iOS devices and your computer via iTunes. While Apple is promising some cloud photo syncing features with iCloud, CloudAlbums is delivering this functionality today!
How does it work?
Once you launch they App you will be prompted to sign in or create a FREE Dropbox.com account. You can then create your Albums in the App and add photos to those albums via your existing photos on your device. As you might expect this is creating folders (one for each album) in an "Albums" folder in your Public folder. The minute you tap the sync button those photos will be uploaded to your Dropbox folder. While that's great, the real magic is when it works in the other direction. Now you can just drop photos into that folder from your computer and the next time you tap the sync button those photos will be added to your album in CloudAlbums. It's this two way syncing that all the other Apps lack.
As you would probably expect, there is photo sharing via email, Facbook and Twitter right in the App. You can also save images to your Camera Roll to be used by other Apps. There is one catch. While the App is FREE, you only get ONE Album for Free. If you want multiple Albums you can unlock unlimited Albums via a $1.99 In App Purchase. Once you've made the In App purchase you'll be able to easily create additional albums either on your iDevice or on your computer by just creating additional folders in the main Album folder.
The Bottom Line
CloudAlbums does EXACTLY what it claims to do and nothing more. The App is targeted towards a broad user base of iOS users that want to easily and wirelessly sync their photos to their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. If you want more in terms of presentation of those photos then you're going to be disappointed. You can see your photos full screen and swipe between them and that's about it. It would be nice if you could rearrange the photos in an Album but I didn't see a way to do that. Lastly and probably most surprising is that there doesn't appear to be any support for landscape orientation and I find that to be very odd for ANY App designed to sync and display photos full screen.
If you're looking for a way to "sync" photos with Dropbox.com and display them on your iOS device, this is it.
You can get CloudAlbums for Free here from the
You can sign up for a FREE Dropbox.com account here.
A little less than a month ago I reviewed Sylights for iPhone and iPod touch. It's a great App that allows photographers to create and share lighting diagrams on their iPhones or iPod touch devices. However, the one thing that this App was screaming for and I requested in my review was an iPad version. This App screams iPad. While the functions are pretty much the same, it's just great having the extra screen real estate.
The same App, bigger
Like I said, it's pretty much the same functionality as the iPhone version. However, the user interface has be designed and optimized for the iPad screen. While this is welcomed and exactly what I asked for, my original feature requests from the iPhone version are still in play here. The App is VERY EASY to use and you can quickly create and share diagrams. It's also the only one that I know of that is iPad native. Not to mention that it's FREE. This makes it very hard to complain. So I'm not complaining, but I would like to see a few more features. While you can attach a photo to your diagram, I'd like to be able to have the photo on the diagram itself. I'd also like the ability to represent the height of certain gear. With a 2 dimensional diagram it's hard sometimes to give the complete picture of how things were setup. This is why I'd like to have the Photo and a photo of the lighting setup on the actual diagram itself. I'd also like to see a lot more built-in symbols ore the ability to add my own. Lastly I'd like to see the App sync with the excellent sylights.com website.
You can download the awesome Sylights for iPad App for Free here from the
A portfolio App for the iPad. Sounds like a no brainer right? However, It must be harder than it looks because I was stunned to see that there weren't really very many good options out there. Where most of the iPad portfolio apps fail is that they make it painfully difficult to get the images into the App to begin with. As a photographer, your portfolio is always evolving (or at least it should be). This means that you'll always have a new image to put in and an old one to remove. Yet most of the Apps in this category concentrate the bulk of their efforts on the presentation of the images and not so much on the ease of updating. Don't get me wrong, presentation of the images is the reason we're here talking about portfolio apps, but if I can't get my images in it to begin with then there isn't much to present I looked at earlier versions of Xtrafolio and passed on doing a review. The goal of this site is to only review the "BEST" Apps and therefore we don't waste time with Apps that aren't the BEST or at least really good. At the request of the developer I decided to give Xtrafolio a second look and I'm happy to report that 99% of my initial gripes have been resolved.
Ease of getting the images in
Like I said, If I can't easily get images in/out of the App not much else matters. Xtrafolio now does a good job by offering several options for importing images. You can import via Dropbox (my preferred method and I'll tell you why in a minute). You can import via iTunes or from the images already on the iPad including those in the Camera Roll that you brought in from your camera via a card reader/connection kit. While I'm happy to see the Dropbox support I did encounter a bug with their implementation of it. My images are in a folder on my Dropbox and then in sub folders within that folder. However, for some reason every time I'd tap on that main folder it would show the contents of the folder directly above it. I finally just gave up because no amount of tapping would allow me to see the actual folder below. It's odd because it did highlight the correct folder, but it would always show the contents for the one above.
The reason that Dropbox support is key for me is that I use it in my Lightroom workflow. I use the Lightroom Hard Drive Publish Service feature to publish each of my portfolios to a folder on Dropbox. That way my portfolios are always up to date. For the purpose of the review I just decided to continue by using a gallery of images that were already on the iPad. Those images imported just fine. When you import images they sit within the App, but they are not accessible until you add them to a folder (Portfolio). I actually like this metaphor.
Arranging the images
Once you get your images in, you can arrange them into Categories and/or Folders. The folders are what really matters, but let's say you had a category of Travel, then you could have different folders for the places you went. Each Category/Folder can have its own settings. Also same image can be in more than one folder if you like. The settings include things like a Category/Folder Image to be displayed when at the main menu. You can choose whether or not the folder can play as a slideshow, transitions, and a song for the folder. You don't have to have a slideshow. As a matter of fact it's off by default. If you don't go with a slideshow then you'll simply swipe from image to image. Speaking of images you can create custom captions for each image. Yes, images can be resorted within the folders as well. This is probably one of the better implementations of this that i've seen.
More Options & Customization
You can choose to have a folder be visible or not visible. This could be used to keep some galleries from being seen by a different client. You can also passcode protect the App. At first I found the tap-both-sides-of-the-lower-right-corner-to-get-to-the-settings to be annoying, but now I really like it. When you launch the App you're taken to your Portfolios (folders) without anything else jumping out or standing in the way. This way you could hand someone your iPad and they could look at all of your visible portfolios without accidentally getting into the settings and screwing things up. Images can be shown in their full resolution if you choose that option for the Portfolio. This new version also supports showing PDFs.
Xfolio offers several options to customize the look and feel of the App to be more like the rest of your brand. You can even create your own startup screen for when you launch the App.
Room for Improvement
None of these portfolio apps are "perfect" but Xtrafolio has come a long way and could easily be the one I use with a few tweaks. With that said, there are a couple of things that need to be addressed. First and foremost is the Dropbox bug. Secondly the App did crash on me when I went to choose a song for a folder. However, once I got back in it was fine and I was able to use the song. So stability could be improved. Lastly and the thing that I haven't seen any of them do yet is give me the option to "SYNC" with folders on Dropbox. This way as long as my Dropbox folders are up to date, my Portfolio on my iPad would be up to date too! That would be the killer feature that would make me switch without a second thought.
The only other thing I'd like to see is that when I have a Portfolio (Folder) set to be a slideshow then it should just start playing when I tap that Portfolio. The way it works now, I still have to tap the Portfolio, then the first image, then the play button to start the show. Too many taps if I've setup the folder to be a slideshow with music. That's what I want it to do with one tap!
While the App does offer some nice options to customize the startup screen, it would be nice to see a preview of what its going to look like without having to leave the settings area and relaunch the app to see what you've done.
Lastly, how about some AirPlay love? It'd be cool to have the Portfolio play wirelessly via Apple TV 2.
The Bottom Line
Xtrafolio gets a lot of things right that the others don't. There are several customization features to make it look and feel more like a custom Portfolio App designed just for YOU. I would have no problem recommending this App to others.
You can get Xtrafolio for iPad for $16.99 here from the
Every now and then an App comes across my desk that not only makes me take a step back, but it also forces me to switch from what I was using to it. This is one of those times. I get literally dozens of "please review my App" requests a day. We try to get to all the ones that we can and at least look at them to see if they are potentially a "Best" App. In many cases there is a natural bias when an App shows up that competes with one that we're already using. However, I usually look just to make sure that I'm not missing out on something really cool. Flickr Studio is just such an App.
Complete Access to your Flickr Account in a BEAUTIFUL Interface
I'm a sucker for a pretty interFace. The first thing I noticed when I fired up Flickr Studio (and after logging in) was the that interface was gorgeous. It's very easy for an App developer to put too many things on the screen at once and with a Flickr App you could easily end up with every possible option on the first screen. Instead Flickr Studio starts off with a self running slideshow of images from Flickr, your contacts, etc. From there you can see the tabbed interface and access any part of Flickr that you want. The "You" option of course just like Flickr takes you to all of YOUR images, sets, etc. You can quickly and easily see any of your photos as well as share them as needed. You get full access to the image's metadata, EXIF data, geo-location, comments, views, favorites, etc.
Beyond access to your content you can go to your Contacts and see their photos as well. If you're participating in any Groups you have access to those photos too. You've got it all. Beyond your existing photos you can search the map for photos taken nearby or anywhere in the world.
It's an easy interface, but I was lost for a bit at first. While I could immediately see how to do just about everything I wanted to do at first there was a couple of features that I knew the App had that I couldn't find at first. There is an onscreen help button that you can tap at any time you want to see what a particular button does.
Even with this I couldn't immediately find how to upload new photos or geotag existing photos. I knew the App could do it, but I didn't see those options right off the bat. Nothing jumped out and said "upload". The options I was looking for are in the "Studio" tab. From the Studio tab you can upload a single photo or an entire batch. Photos that you're uploading can be geotagged with your current location, which is great for those photos that you import via the Camera Connection Kit from your regular camera. You can also batch geotag images that you've already uploaded. Just find the location that the photo was taken on the map first and then simply tap all the photos that were taken at that location.
Did I mention slideshows with transitions?
You can view any of your photos via an instant slideshow (Ken Burns Effect and all) just by tapping the Play button whenever you want. Sharing options include email, Twitter, Facebook and Addthis.
This App is Freakin' Sweet and has become my NEW default Flickr App for iPad.
If you're a Flickr user and looking for the BEST Flickr App for your iPad, this is it!
You can get Flickr Studio for $4.99 here from the
Sometimes I feel like saying "another month, another new photo editor for the iPad." Yes, it's time to take a look at yet another photo editing App for iPad. However, this time things are a little different. At this point if you're a photographer and you have an iPad you've probably dabbled with putting your own photos on your iPad to either display to clients/friends or to review. You can get images onto your iPad directly from your camera using the Apple Camera Connection Kit, the MIC CF Card Reader or even wirelessly using an Eye-Fi card. Once those images are there, you'll probably want to start doing some initial image manipulations. There's certainly no shortage of good capable editors on the App Store. So what possibly could Nik Software bring to the table that we haven't seen before? At this point we expect to be able to Crop, Rotate, do Tonal Adjustments, Apply Frames, Save and Share our edited images. Of course Nik's Snapseed does all of these things and more. What's different is the User Interface (UI). The Snapseed UI shows that companies can still innovate beyond the obvious. It's this fresh take on a NEW image editing UI that makes this App down right addictive.
How is it different?
First off let's start with the fact that it's clean and gets out of your way. There's no tool panel. After you open the image you want to edit you tap on a category of adjustments that you wish to make. At that point you then just tap on the image to bring up a selection of different adjustments you can make. You drag up and down to make your choice and then drag left or right to make the actual adjustment. While this is cool, what Nik brings to the iPad is what they brought to the desktop with their Award Winning Plug-ins for Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. They allow you to affect areas of the image WITHOUT having to make selections. Using their Control Points you just tap to add a Control Point on an area of an image and then use a pinch to adjust the size/radius of the area to be adjusted. Your image is automatically masked behind the scenes. Then you just drag left or right to make the adjustment you want or to apply the filter you want. There is an instant Before/After button that you tap and hold to see the before version and release to see the after version. Of course there are also Undos and Redos and if you leave the App it will remember where you left off. I should point out that Snapseed also has the ever important White Balance adjustment that so many other Apps miss.
Sharing and Room For Improvement
There isn't really much if anything missing from this App and that's why I'm giving it one of my highest ratings. However, when it comes to sharing your choices are Email, Print, Flickr and Facebook. The one that's missing is Twitter. It's not the end of the world because I can save the image and then open it up in my Twitter App of choice and Tweet it. However, it would be nice to have it built-in. The other more major omission is online sharing through Dropbox.com. At this point I really don't want to see any more new Apps that don't integrate with Dropbox.com. Since iOS lacks a built-in user accessible file structure I've come to rely on Dropbox to get files back and forth between Apps and my own devices as well as easily sharing them with friends and colleagues without having to resort to email. Other than the limited sharing features Snapseed is a solid app at a very attractive price. It makes the other Pro level apps in this category seem expensive.
You can get Snapseed for $4.99 here from the
A few weeks ago I reviewed Instagram, my new favorite camera/social media App for the iPhone. While Instagram gives you quite a few options in the way of filters to use on your photos, I'm always looking for more! 100 Cameras in 1 gives me tons of more options! Now, 100 Cameras in 1 isn't a new App, but with the integration into Instagram it has taken it up to the top of my favorites list of Photography Apps on my iPhone and iPad.
An Awesome App All By Itself!
To be fair 100 Cameras in 1 is a really nice App even without the Instagram integration. I first downloaded this App when my buddy Brad Moore (who happens to be one of the best concert photographers that I know) wrote about it on Scott Kelby's Pimpy Thursday blog post months ago. I was instantly surprised with the quality of the filters. There was a lot of time and effort put into development. I have seen so many "filter Apps" that produce cheesy, "not useful on virtually any image" filters just to raise the number of available filters. This App is not like that. Each filter is well thought out and designed, and while you're not going to be able to use every filter on every image to achieve a cool effect, the majority of the time most of the filters will produce something different and cool on any image.
Loading an image is simple. Launch the App and you are given a choice of taking a photo or create from library(note if you're on the iPad 1 you only get create from library since there is no camera). Once you have your image loaded you are presented with 10 pages, each containing 10 filters per page. There are small thumbnails next to each title to show you a preview. I say title not description because they really don't provide any sort of clue as to what the effect will do. Each filter adds a different effect to your image. Some are more bold than others, but each is unique. But wait there's more! The App isn't limited to the first set of 100 filters that you get initially. By tapping the more button on the upper right side of the screen you have a choice of 10 different sets of filters. That's 1000 filters total! Next to each group, the App tells you what subjects that particular set of filters is best for. Be it people, landscapes or the beyond they have something for everyone!
Of course just like any good mobile photography App, there is Social media integration. Offering uploading to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Smugmug, and Dropbox right from within the App and of course transferring to Instagram( I'm getting to that). This App has you covered in the Social Media department!
Now to the reason that I have recently started using 100 Cameras in 1 a lot more as of late, Instagram integration. Here's the workflow. Take your image with the default camera App or through the 100 Cameras built in camera function. Add your filter to your image within the App. Click the share button on the bottom right of the screen and choose "Send to Instagram" from the options. The image is opened in the Instagram App giving you all of the editing options you would normally have within that App with the 100 Cameras in 1 filter already applied. This gives you the freedom to add your Instagram filters, and upload it to the Instagram community, Facebook, and Twitter just like you normally would! This integration has added literally thousands of possibilities to your image editing for Instagram.
You Should Get It!
Even if you're not a Instagram person (RC I'm looking squarely at you buddy) 100 Cameras in one is an awesome photography App to have on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. If you ARE a fan of Instagram, you can't go wrong by adding thousands of possibilities for your filters. I would recommend this App to anyone that likes to take pictures on their iOS device.
You can get 100 Cameras in 1 for your iPhone or iPod Touch for $.99 Cents from the iTunes store here:
You can get 100 Cameras in 1 for your iPad from the iTunes store for $3.99 Here:
Over the past couple of years I've been doing a lot more portrait photography and even getting my work in print. I've also been teaching some lighting and workflow workshops here and there. Now whenever I do a shoot I try to remember to document the setup because inevitably if the shot is popular someone will ask "how did you light that?" Sylights is a website and an iOS App that allows you to create lighting diagrams using common symbols. You can drag in the symbols you need to document your setup from the built-in library of symbols. Once the symbol is on the layout you can move it, rotate it and resize it. You can also lock these attributes so that you aren't accidentally changing them once you have them where you want. The App makes good use of multi-touch gestures.
It's great, but I want more
The Sylights App performs as advertised and it's definitely hard to beat the price (FREE). However, now that I've used it I want some more features and perhaps it's time for a "plus" version that is paid. In the Paid version I'd like to have the ability to not only save my diagrams to the device, but also to the cloud so that I can create, edit or view diagrams either on my device or the website. I'd also like to be able to add my own custom vector symbols. These apps usually lack a tri-flector symbol and I use one all the time. While this is great to have on the iPhone, I'd use it even more if it were a native iPad app. Lastly I'd like to be able to incorporate a picture of the setup. Why not allow you to use your iOS device's camera to snap a photo of the actual setup? Sylights as is performs as advertised, but this free version only makes me want more features that I'd be willing to pay for in a paid version.
Update: I was informed by the developer that you actually can attach up to 5 photos to your diagram, both via the website or in the App. Thanks! Off to go play with that feature now.
You can get Sylights for FREE here from the
Red Giant Software, the makers of the fantastic Plastic Bullet App are back again with a new App. The new App is Noir Photo. This App allows you to use the photos on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch and apply dramatic lighting effects to them as well as convert them to black and white. The controls are very straight forward. First you pick your lighting pattern. Then you can choose the shade of color that you want and lastly you can dial in the angle or use your finger, the intensity and contrast. Once you've completed your masterpiece you can save it back to your camera roll. The App also features built-in documentation.
It's simple!
It's almost too simple. After I used the App a few times I was left wanting for more! That's not a bad thing, it just means that the App was so easy to use that I almost felt like I must be missing something. The effects work well and they are what they are. Also unlike other effects apps Noir Photo lets you dial in the numbers. This makes it easy to repeat the same look on different photos. If you like an effect that you've customized you can make it the new default.
The bottom line
It's fast and easy to create lighting effects right on your device. I would have liked to have seen an opacity slider for the effects so that I could blend back in some of the original color. Otherwise, it does what it says.
You can get Noir Photo for your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch for $2.99 here from the
Photographers have been eyeing the iPad since day one trying to figure out ways to incorporate it into their existing workflows. One of the most popular photo organization and processing tools on the desktop is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. While Lightroom will bring in photos from just about any source, including your iPad, photographers have dreamed of a way to do image selection, metadata/keyword work, and other tasks while still out in the field and yes on an iPad. The form factor, touch screen, built-in wireless capabilities and long battery life make the iPad more attractive than a laptop for many situations. That brings us to today's review of a NEW App that promises to help bridge the gap between the iPad and Lightroom on the desktop.
Photosmith Lets You Organize in the Field
Lightroom does a lot of things and I want to make sure you don't walk away from this review thinking that Photosmith is Lightroom for the iPad. It's NOT! What it does do though is appealing to many. Think of Photosmith as most of the most commonly used features of the Lightroom Library Module, on your iPad. When you import your pictures into Lightroom you can use the Library module to organize them into collections, make picks and rejects, rate them, assign color labels, add keywords and other metadata. That's exactly what Photosmith allows you to do on your iPad. While that's great, what makes it even better is that the organizing that you do on the iPad is then sync'd to Lightroom on the desktop!
What's the workflow?
The first thing you'll need to do is get the images from your digital camera into your iPad. There are several ways to do that not the least being using Apple's own Camera Connection Kit that allows you to bring images in from an SD card OR directly from just about any camera using a USB cable. Yes this works with both JPG and RAW. If your camera shoots to Compact Flash Cards you can either use the USB option of the Camera Connection Kit or this new CF Reader for iPad, which is in route to me as we speak (I'll review it when I get it). I've also covered wireless options here and here. Once you get the images into the iPad's Camera Roll presumably while you're still out in the field, you would then be able to see them the minute you launch Photosmith. At that point you could then do all the things I mentioned above for organizing the shots into collections and making your selections. Once you get back to your computer you can then wirelessly (or via USB) sync everything you've done on the iPad to Lightroom (with their free Lightroom plug-in) on the desktop. What you would end up with are only the images you wanted and they would already be organized into collections, have ratings, titles, etc. and be ready to go with the rest of your workflow in Lightroom. There is a full-screen mode that shows just your image as well as mult-gesture support.
Yep, there's sharing too
The App let's you upload your images directly to the most popular sites as well as email.
Sounds great! What's missing?
Well you have to first remember that this is a 1.0 product and yes there are known limitations. The first limitation is that there are no image processing features in the App. Any image adjustments you want to do should either be done back on the desktop in Lightroom/Photoshop or in other Apps on the iPad. There is no support for bringing in the videos from your camera. Although you can reject a photo in Photosmith, neither Pick flags or Reject flags sync over! That's a biggie! I rarely use Pick Flags as it is, but if you use this App you're going to have to use either color labels (which I use) or star ratings to identify picks in Lightroom. If you reject a photo in Photosmith, that photo doesn't sync over to Lightroom to begin with. In this case my workflow is to reject in the field, put the images that are left in a Collection in the App and then mark my favorites with a Green Label (Blue for client picks). Lastly, while you can sync back to Photosmith when you make changes in Lightroom, it doesn't sync everything back. For example, once the Collection was in Lightroom I did some experiments where I made some picks, rejects, color label changes, star ratings and keywords. I also edited one shot in the Develop module. When I performed another sync the only things that seemed to go back to the iPad were the keywords and the updated image preview from the changes I made in Develop. Granted, I don't see this as a huge problem since most people will be using this going in one direction, but it would be nice to have an official list of what gets sync'd in either direction. Lastly one thing I found a bit odd was that i couldn't see any way to apply the same keyword to multiple photos at the same time. Hopefully, I just missed it?
What I'd like to see in the next update – While you can select multiple photos, the UI seems a bit clumsy. Perhaps some type of two finger tap to start selecting more than one photo would work better. Also I'd like to see the ability to size thumbnails. There needs to be additional ways of bringing in photos besides the Camera Rol. While you can export to Dropbox, there is no import (or better yet, sync) to Dropbox. I know that the App is designed to work with images off your camera, but since this is an organizational tool you might have images in other places (like your existing albums) that you want to incorporate in a collection. Also they give you several choices of image size for uploading to Dropbox & Flickr from small jpg all the way to RAW (for Dropbox), but for email you have no options. While I'm on the sharing topic, it would be nice to see some watermarking support. It would be nice to have the option for visible watermarks when sending photos to a client to review.
Ultimately I'd like to see either a direct tie to the Shuttersnitch and/or the Eye-Fi App or this App needs its own ability to do a wireless tethered workflow! As it stands right now I'm more interested in a wireless capture and review process than a wired/card reader one.
The Bottom Line
This is a good step in the right direction for making the iPad a "better" mobile tool for photographers. The workflow is still a little clunky and the App is still missing some needed features. However, for what it does and having to basically engineer this thing around Apple's limitations as well as not having direct access to the Lightroom code, these guys have done a great job. I look forward to watching this product evolve!
If you have an iPad and you're a Lightroom user with a desire to leave your computer behind, this is a good App to have in your ever evolving workflow.
You can get Photosmith for $17.99 here from the
