iPhone

Easily browse all the iPhone compatible apps that we have reviewed here.

Photography / Reviews
CameraAwesome

Camera Awesome

I must admit that when I saw the news that Smugmug had released a “camera App” for iPhone, I thought “oh no, not another camera App!” After all the built-in camera App in the iPhone 4s has gotten better and there are lots of great camera and editing Apps already on iOS. What more could this new App do? Everyone seemed to be digging it so I decided to download it and give it a shot. The first thing that got me was that it was “Free”. Most good camera Apps are at least 99¢. I’ll come back to the “Free” factor in a minute. I fired up the App and quickly realized that it could probably replace at least two if not three of the Apps i was already using. It has features of the venerable Gorillacam App by Joby such as a burst mode and self-timer. You can also enable a “big button” to allow you to tap anywhere on the screen to take the photo although with iOS 5 I rely on on screen buttons a lot less since you can now using the Volume Up button as your shutter release.

You have a variety of Composition overlays such as rule of thirds, golden and trisec. It also has a separate focus and expose zone. I was also impressed with how fast the camera snaps the pic and adds it to its built-in camera roll.

Effects galore

Once you snap your pic then you can apply a variety of effects including the “Awesomize” effect that automatically adjusts your photo with a slider to control how much of this Awesomeness you get. Although the App is published by Smugmug they did not bias it to just posting pics to their service. You can post pics to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, and Photobucket as well as email and SMS.

Speaking of effects and here’s where the gotcha comes in. While the App is free and you can use it as much as you want with all that I mentioned above, there are SEVERAL in-app purchase options to buy more effects and filters. While it’s not totally in your face about it, it pops up anytime you scroll past the free effects. I guess there’s nothing wrong with this, but it may annoy some.

The Bottom Line

Camera Awesome is definitely worth the download and like I said for many I could see this App replacing many of the Apps you already use including perhaps the built-in Camera App.

You can get Camera Awesome for Free here from the iTunes

Productivity / Reviews
EmailShotPro

Send Emails to A Group of Contacts with Mailshot Pro

I use Contact Groups all the time on my computer for both work and personal correspondence. It’s much easier sending an email to “The Team” than it is to add each individual team member to every new email. While Apple does allow you to sync groups from your desktop Mac or PC to your iDevices, it doesn’t really allow you to use those groups very much on the device itself. For example, one of my requests for years has been “give us the ability to assign ringtones to groups.” While that’s something that everyone may not find useful, I would argue that anyone that has groups would definitely want the ability to email to those groups from time to time. Yet we’re in iOS 5 and still don’t have the ability to email to a group of contacts. To make matters worse if you don’t have a computer, let’s say you’re “PC Free” as Apple likes to tout iOS 5, then you can’t even create or edit groups on your iDevice at all.

Mailshot Pro let’s you create groups and email to them

I have to give credit to my friend Linda S. for turning me on to this App. I almost didn’t believe it until I tried it myself. The App is very simple. You can create your groups within the App manually by selecting your contacts and their email address that you want to send to with the group (if they only have one email address then it will just add them). You can also import contacts from your existing groups to save time. Your new Mailshot Pro group will be added to your Contacts as a single entry. Now you can fire up Mail and just address the new email to that new Contact (group) and once you send it, it will send the email to everyone in the group! This special contact should work in all of your Apps with the exception of email directly from the Contacts App in iOS.

There’s more: You can even use Siri to send to this group because it’s a Contact. Also since your group is a “Contact” it gets sync’d with iCloud across all your devices.

The Bottom Line

If Apple wants to truly go “PC Free” then they need to remove the last few PC only features from iOS such as working with Groups and creating custom ringtones. There are still some things that can only be done if you have a computer. I’m glad to see an App like Mailshot Pro fill in the slack in the meantime.

You can get Mailshot Pro for $3.99 as a Universal App for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch here from the iTunes

Business / Reviews
Snap2PDF

Snap2PDF – Scan Documents and Share Searchable PDFs

Lately these days I’m finding that when I need to scan a document it’s more convenient to just snap a photo of it with my iPhone and convert it into a PDF using an App. This allows me to do it just about anywhere as opposed to having to wait til I get home to use one of my document scanners. While it’s easy to take a picture, using an App to finish the process makes for a better “document”. For example, it’s hard to take a picture of a document without your hand being in the way and casting a shadow. You can avoid this by holding your phone at an angle, but then the picture will be at an angle too.

Snap2PDF offers a simple solution

Snap2PDF provides a simple solution to the document scanning process. Snap your picture and then use the guides for the “Rectification” feature of straightening the picture out so that it appears flat and not an angle or distorted. You can also rotate the page if you need to. Optionally you can perform OCR (Optical Character Recognition of 21 languages supported) to convert the picture into searchable text. This is great if you plan to ultimately store this PDF on your computer and want to be able to search for word on the page later. In my case I’m usually scanning receipts or other quick documents to send to people, so I really don’t need the OCR feature. However, it’s nice to have.  At this point you’re ready to file the document in the App or export out a PDF via Email or to the cloud using Dropbox.

It’s Good, but could be  a little better

First of all this I would like to see this (and the other Apps in this category) become a native (Universal) App for iPad as well. After all more and more people are using iPads for business and it seems to be a natural fit for this type of App to take advantage of the iPad 2 having a built-in camera. Next, while Dropbox support is there, it’s not very straight forward on how to set it up and use it. Other than these few tweaks, Snap2PDF is a solid choice.

You can get Snap2PDF for $1.99 here from the iTunes

Photography / Reviews
Geotag_Photos_Pro

Geotag Photos Pro Works Great with Lightroom 4

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 brings a new Map Module to the game that allows you to easily geotag your photos. You can geotag photos by using a reference photo that already contains location info (say one from your iPhone), you can manually drag photos onto the map, or you can use a GPX log to match your photos to. Of course if the photos already have location info in them then Lightroom will use that info as well.

What’s a GPX Log?

A GPX log contains an entry with the date, time, elevation, longitude and latitude for each time your location changes (see sample below). The idea is that if your photos are taken within the same time frame as the log entries then applications like Lightroom 4 can extract the location info from the GPX Log and insert this info into the photos that are matching the date and time.  It’s a simple concept and one that’s been around for years. Your iPhone has a GPS chip in it. With GeoTag Photos Pro you can take advantage of your iPhone (iPad or iPod touch) knowing where you are and then have it create this log for you.

How does it work?

GPX Log file example above

Since this process greatly depends on your camera being set to the same time zone/time/date as your iPhone, the App does a great job in showing you a display of exactly what to set your camera’s date/time setting to. Once you’ve done this important step all you have to do is create a new log and tap the record button. Once you tap the record button the App will start logging your location updates. By default the App is set to record your changes every 2 minutes or every 50 yards. I found this setting not to be accurate enough for my taste. I changed the setting to “Continuous” and every 10 yards. Of course this will use more battery power of your iDevice, but the difference in battery drain during my tests was insignificant. When you’re done with your shooting you tap the Stop button. At that point you can email the log to yourself or send it to iTunes for a wired transfer to your computer. The log is pretty small so I always just email it.

The Map Module in Lightroom 4

Once I got back to my computer I imported my RAW shots from my Nikon D7000, converted them to DNG (Not necessary, but I like DNG), and then imported the GPX log file that I created with GeoTag Photos Pro. It plotted a very precise route including the locations where I was inside a building.

Next I just used the AutoTag Photos command and like magic it auto tagged my selected photos and placed them on the map along the route.

The Bottom Line

I LOVE geotagging my photos and while I’ve got a variety of different GPS modules that connected directly to my Nikon DSLRs, it’s nice knowing that my iPhone becomes a wireless GPS module for any camera and I always have it with me. As far as the App goes, it works very well. I would make a couple of UI suggestions to the developer. The 1st one is to put the Camera Date/Time settings button right on the main screen instead of having to drill down to in the settings. The second one is to put the Email log button right on the main screen too. There is room for both of these and since I use them every time it would be nice not having to drill down to find them. Otherwise, this App does exactly what it’s supposed to do and makes a nice compliment for the NEW Lightroom 4.

You can get GeoTag Photos Pro for $3.99 here from the iTunes

You can also get it for Android here.

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News
_instagram2

Instagram Gets a Huge New Feature

Instagram Gets an Update!

A couple of days ago Instagram released an pretty important update to their wildly popular App. This release brings not only an updated user interface but also a new filter AND a new editing tool. The latter is the most important addition. The new editing tool is called Lux saves an entire step in my old iPhone photo workflow.

 

What Lux is going to do for you

Before Lux, my workflow went like this; Take a photo, go to Camera+ and adjust the Clarity. This pumps the midtone contrast of the image and really makes it "pop". I would then save the image to the camera roll, import it into Instagram and apply my filter. Lux is essentially "Clarity" for Instagram. It is activated by tapping the small sun looking icon in the bottom left corner of the screen.

 

A new Filter

Along with Lux, Instagram gets a new filter with this Update; Sierra. Not a crazy different filter, but it has some subtle changes that I enjoy. The next time you are in Instagram try it out, I'm betting that you'll like it.

 

Reworked UI

This is the only downside of the whole update is the new user interface. Instagram replaced words with icons that look (as my buddy Zack put it) very web 2.0 and cheap. I prefer the old interface but just like every other App company they are feeling the need to change things up to keep it fresh. I say, "if it isn't broken, don't try to fix it".

 

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is this; Instagram V.2.1 is a great update (especially the addition of Lux). If you're an Instagram lover, definitely check it out. If you've not tried it out yet, head over and check it out. Oh and don't forget to follow me on there @jlykins.

 

Get Instagram for the iPhone for free from the iTunes store here: iTunes

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