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Posts tagged with "photos"

Better Camera Roll Integration in iPhoto for iOS 7

iPhoto 2.0

iPhoto 2.0

I’m playing around with the new iPhoto for iOS 7, and I’ve noticed an interesting change from last year: edits that you make in iPhoto are now synced back to the original photo in the iOS Camera Roll. To my knowledge, no other iOS app can overwrite the original file – apps like Instagram, Facebook, and even the original iPhoto (if you still have it installed) can only save edited photos as new files in the Camera Roll.

As I noted today on Twitter, this is a big change from last year’s iPhoto workflow. Here’s what I wrote in March 2012:

After a few minutes, which I spent playing around with the app’s UI and various editing functionalities, I stopped editing and went back to the main page, thinking that all my edits would automatically carry over to the system Camera Roll. My reasoning was: if iPhoto for iOS, unlike the Mac, can pick from a central location (the Camera Roll), then maybe edits will sync automatically as well. Not so fast. It turns out, the Camera Roll isn’t centralized at all, as every modification you’ll make in iPhoto will have to be exported to the Camera Roll as a new file. Even better, if you edit something in iPhoto in the Camera Roll “album”, then edit the same file in the system Camera Roll from Photos.app, iOS will fail at communicating changes between the two, and you’ll end up with two different files in the same Camera Roll like I did.

In the new iPhoto, Apple has changed the communication layer between the system Camera Roll and iPhoto to allow for a more direct integration between the two: once you choose a photo in iPhoto and make some edits to it (such as an effect), the edits are automatically saved to the original photo in the Camera Roll without having to manually export the edited photo or create duplicates like the original iPhoto did. This makes for a more streamlined workflow and experience, but it raises some questions, so I wanted to dig deeper. Read more

CameraSync Updated for iOS 7

CameraSync

CameraSync

In my Boxie review yesterday, I mentioned the role of the official Dropbox app on my devices:

Boxie is so feature-rich, I want more from it: there’s no iPad app at this point, and I would love for Tapwings to consider an automatic upload feature for photos that would allow me to completely eschew the official Dropbox app. Right now, the only reason I keep Dropbox on my devices is for the iPad client and automatic background uploads, but, for everything else, I’m doing just fine with Boxie and I enjoy the increased efficiency made possible by the app’s feature set.

I should clarify two points: the Dropbox app is also the easiest way to authenticate with your credentials for third-party Dropbox-enabled apps; and, in a sweet coincidence, CameraSync has been updated today with a new design and bug fixes for iOS 7, which means I have turned off Camera Uploads from the Dropbox app again. Read more

Testing The iPhone 5s In Patagonia→

This iPhone 5S beats out the 5 in every camera test and in many ways I prefer it to my DSLR. Sure it has its pros & cons… but for the first time ever, I didn’t bring my Canon 1DX and I didn’t regret it one bit. That’s saying a lot.

Austin Mann (via Shawn Blanc) went to Patagonia to properly test the new iPhone 5s camera, and he came back with some amazing photos and videos. Even better, he provides explanations and comparison shots between the iPhone 5 and 5s, showing how the 5s takes better pictures better suited for processing. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to take pictures as good as Austin’s, but the fact that Apple is hiding complex technology behind the software gives me hope that, when I’ll get my 5s, I’ll enjoy features like SloMo and better Panoramas without having to care about their settings.

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How Nate Boateng Almost Lost Every Family Photo He Has→

This stuff isn’t for everyone. Catastrophes like this probably won’t happen to most people. But the thing is, you don’t have a problem until you have a problem. It’s the same cringe-worthy talk we’ve had a million times with our parents about backing up data. I’d argue that this is more dire. Databases can be very stable, but I’m no longer willing to keep life’s memories in something that can seemingly turn on me in an instant. I still don’t know what actually happened; it could even have been my own fault.

You need a good photo backup workflow, and you need it now. Especially if you’re a parent with thousands of photos of your kids. I’m still relying on the Hazel + Dropbox workflow that I originally shared here (and then here), but I wish CameraSync would get an update for iOS 7. In the meantime, following Bradley’s advice, I’ve started using Everpix too. I’m liking the Flashback feature a lot.

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Simple Photo Collages with Diptic PDQ

I’ve never been into the idea of sharing my photos as “collages”, especially because all the iPhone and iPad apps that promised to make it easy to assemble collages looked overly social, filter-oriented, or just badly designed. However, I recently wanted to send a photo collage of my dog to my parents, and I conveniently came across Diptic PDQ on the App Store thanks to Apple’s feature for iOS 7-ready apps. Apparently, PDQ (a Universal app) is the “lighter” version of Peak Systems’ more advanced Diptic app, which comes with all sorts of settings, textures, and In-App Purchases. I just needed to create simple collages with thin borders, so I bought PDQ and have been using it for the past week with nice results. Read more

Photowerks Enhances Apple’s Photos App with Smart Albums

Apple’s Photos app is often criticized for its lack of organizational features that go beyond a list of photos and screenshots, and the company will bring some improvements in this area with iOS 7 and a Photos app capable of organizing items in Moments and Collections. Photowerks, free on the App Store, enhances Apple’s default solution with sorting options and smart albums available today to iOS 6 users.

Photowerks comes with two main features: sorting, which is included in the free download, and Smart Albums, which can be unlocked with a $0.99 In-App Purchase. Once you’ve granted Photowerks permission to access your photos, the free version will allow you to load photos from your Camera Roll, show them as thumbnails on a grid or a list, and sort them (in ascending or descending order) by:

  • Date Taken
  • Location > City
  • Location > State
  • Location > Country
  • Camera > Make
  • Camera > Model

Even without unlocking the IAP, these features prove already handy as, in my opinion, they provide a better view of a stream of photos than what Apple has (or, more appropriately, hasn’t) done with the Photos app. Photos can be viewed in full-screen (where the app will display available information at the bottom), shared to Mail, Facebook, and Twitter, and grouped together to create a new album. Alas, there is no Open In support to send photos to other installed apps, like Evernote and Droplr in my case.

The Smart Albums feature is what really sells Photowerks. As the name suggests, they’re similar to iTunes’ smart playlists in that they let you automatically group photos based on pre-defined criteria that work with the sorting options mentioned above. By using a familiar any/all system for matching rules, Photowerks lets you specify attributes such as “date is after/is not/is/is before” or “model is/is not”; these attributes can be combined to create albums that will be populated with items that match your criteria and that you’ll be able to sort using the same sidebar that you’d use in the IAP-free version of Photowerks. On my iPhone, I have created an album that fetches screenshots taken after June 30 (“date is after June 30, model is not iPhone 5”) and photos taken at the beach (“city is Tarquinia” or “city is Montalto” with Match: Any).

I believe that iOS 7 will reduce the need for Photos.app replacements such as Photowerks, which is why I think the developers should focus on improving the feature that Apple won’t replicate in the short term – smart albums. It would be nice to be able to keep albums in sync across devices (Photowerks is a Universal app) and have access to more attributes for dates (like “past two months” or “this week”), image size, source (like Photo Stream) as well as nested conditions for even smarter filtering. I’m a big fan of the idea of having smart albums based on user-defined criteria, and I hope that the developers will keep on supporting and enhancing Photowerks for iOS 7.

Photowerks is free on the App Store.

Photochop for iPhone Chops and Distorts Your Photos

Released last night by Matt Comi of Big Bucket (well known for his work on The Incident), Photochop is an ingenious iPhone app that allows you to break your photos into tiles and distort them to create either artistic or ridiculously funny collages.

I downloaded the app last night, and started playing around with some photos of my friends (they don’t know I’m using their faces to test new apps). The first thing that I noticed is that Photochop, built for iOS 6, uses a clean UI that looks already fine for iOS 7: with clean lines and iconography, translucent bars, and a photo picker button modeled after the new Photos icon of iOS 7, Photochop looks already at home on my iPhone 5 running iOS 7. There are also some distinct choices, though, that give Photochop a unique look.

Photochop lets you work on one photo at a time, and once you’ve picked a photo from your Camera Roll you can choose between three different grid sizes before breaking it up into tiles; to start editing, you simply tap on the grid. The editing screen is fun: there are buttons at the bottom to nudge, scale, rotate, and delete tiles, and controls at the top to switch between tile mode (the “artistic” one) and warp mode. According to the developer, warp mode is meant to make “people’s faces look weird”, and that is a message that I can completely understand because that’s what I’ve been doing in Photochop with my friends’ faces. Once you’re done editing, you can put pictures inside two types of frame (or leave them without a frame) and export them to the Camera Roll, Instagram (with Open In), Twitter, and Facebook.

From a technological standpoint, I’m quite impressed by Photochop’s image distortion and manipulation, which I’m pretty sure has been made possible by Apple’s advancements in APIs offered to developers in recent years (Update: It’s actually a game engine). In using Photochop, you can see how the app will benefit from the new physics engine APIs of iOS 7: right now, the tiles feel “weightless” in how they don’t bounce and slide across the screen, and I wonder if supporting iOS 7 with new effects and physics effects is something that Comi is already working on.

Photochop is a fun little app with some nice technology under the hood. It’s only $0.99 on the App Store.

IFTTT for iPhone: A Different Kind of iOS Automation

IFTTT for iPhone

IFTTT for iPhone

I used to heavily rely on IFTTT for my daily automation workflows that involved appending bits of text to files in my Dropbox, forwarding tweets to my OmniFocus inbox, generating PDFs, or archiving Instagram photos to my Dropbox account. IFTTT, acronym of If This Then That, is a web service that lets you connect other web services together to create automated workflows that run every time a piece of data is triggered: by leveraging a variety of APIs from compatible channels (such as Facebook, Dropbox, Evernote, Feedly, and more), IFTTT lets you automate the web in powerful (and sometimes unexpected) ways. Browsing Popular recipes on the IFTTT website can give you an idea of the scope of web automation that’s made possible by the service, and we’ve covered IFTTT in the past on MacStories as well.[1]

However, I stopped depending on IFTTT because, once I got more comfortable with my own Mac mini server as a remote automation assistant, I wanted to control the pipes of my personal data. I’m still using IFTTT for things like receiving an email if it’s going to rain tomorrow or a new SMS for press releases published by Apple (just an example of the power of IFTTT channels and recipes), but it’s not the primary system that I rely upon for automating daily tasks. The new IFTTT app for iPhone, which I have been testing and has been released today on the App Store, may make me (partially) reconsider my decision. Read more

Photos Needs to be Simpler→

Apple’s Photos app is the default location for saving and sharing photos with friends on iOS. It’s a place where I spend a lot of time either deleting old screenshots (unique to us bloggers) or sorting images into albums as best I can before syncing them with iPhoto. The app has never made much sense to me, between how it simply handles moving images into albums from the Camera Roll or into Photo Stream, and I don’t particularly care for how it whisks away old photos after a period of time on a per device basis in Photo Stream. Peter Nixey was featured on Hacker News earlier today for his thoughts on how managing photos could be better on iOS, and I agree with the general idea:

I want the canonical copy of my iPhoto library in the cloud. One iPhoto library in the cloud, many devices with access to it. I want to edit, organise and delete photos on any device and see the same changes on all other devices. No master/slave setup - just straight cloud access.

I get that there are limitations and lots of things happening in the background, but a lot of that makes itself evident in Photos if you look closely enough. I don’t necessarily agree with Peter’s pricing ideas or that Dropbox and the like are even a threat. But what I do agree with is that the dumb syncing silo that is Photo Stream has to go. Camera Roll can stay as it is — I don’t necessarily need the two merged. When I move photos from the camera roll into a new album, that photo should be gone — moved from my Camera Roll. And those albums should simply show up everywhere from my iPhone to my iPad and on my Mac or Windows box. The “duplication” that happens everywhere with photos right now on iOS is absolutely crazy. And if I want to use the iPhoto app on iOS instead… can’t I just make that the default?

I love taking pictures on my iPhone. But the syncing, the managing, the sorting… it’s not great.

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