This Week's Sponsor:

PowerPhotos

The Ultimate Toolbox for Photos on the Mac

Posts tagged with "photos"

Vowl: Free, Simple Mac App For Flickr Slideshows

Vowl by Steven Frank is a straightforward Mac app, available for free in the Mac App Store, that generates an automated Flickr slideshow based on tags assigned in the app’s preferences. The app is really simple with its translucent black window style, and also allows you to click on any picture to get to the Flickr photo page with your default Mac browser.

In the preferences, you can set the delay between photos, add and remove tags (by default, the app comes with “cat”, “dog”, and “chicken” tags) and make the app float above other application windows. When resized to take the most part of your screen, Vowl becomes a pretty effective way to get random Flickr photos on your desktop, and I have to admit I loved the kitten ones.

The app is a free download here, or on Steven Frank’s website.

This Is The iPhone 4 Like You’ve Never Seen It Before

Italian photographer Paolo Rossi realized a series of macro shots with his Canon cameras that show the details of the iPhone 4 as close as possible. The photos show the rear and front facing cameras, the speaker, the amazing design of the iPhone’s flashlight. On Rossi’s website, you can also check out some 3D views of the shots.

The flash and front-facing camera macro shots are simply incredible. It’s hard to believe we actually hold these things in our hands every day, unable to take a look at these (beautiful) details.

Check out more photos here. [via iSpazio]

Fuel Collective’s ImageGlitch Destroys JPEGs, TIFFs

If you’re designing for a Trent Reznor project, Fuel Collective’s ImageGlitch literally achieves the task by having users delete lines of code from the image’s code makeup. A glitchy app will have glitch results: you can’t just delete any line of code, but some fidgeting in the text editor allows you to suddenly edit out lines, alter color, and completely screw up any of those vintage family photos you’ve saved to your hard drive. I don’t know how safe this is, but it’s recommend that you back up anything before you start deleting data from those image files. I might try it to create some new graphics for a site I’m working on, but I think Fuel Collective has already beaten’ me to the punch.

Download the destructive image editor in the Mac App Store for $.99.

Hipstamatic Update: Faster Photo Organization, Camera Bag

It is no secret that Instagram, the popular image sharing service, has been collecting an incredible user base lately. With more than 2 million active users and commercial brands jumping on board to promote their products through photos, Instagram has become many people’s choice when it comes to applying quick and neat effects to photos snapped with an iPhone, ready to be shared online.

But Hipstamatic, another popular iPhone app that’s been around for years and was featured on publications such as The New York Times, is not standing still. Hipstamatic allows you to apply effects to photos and share them on your favorite social networks, but it’s more geared towards “pro” users with a quite complex interface that’s based on the concept of changing films, lenses and flashes. Unlike Instagram, Hipstamatic really wants to put a vintage camera in your hands, with all the options that come with a real camera. The latest update to the app, which went live in the App Store last night, aims at fixing many of the issues with “complicated UI” by providing faster photo snapping and organization, a camera bag menu to easily sort your virtual camera accessories.

Hipstamatic 2 (the iTunes page says version “200”) adds a Camera Bag system that lets you organize the films, flashes and lenses you want to take with you all the time. It’s a simple list that helps along with getting exactly the items you want in your Hipstamatic. This may come in handy if you’ve always hated the fact that the app presents a long list of accessories that can’t be disabled / rearranged. Now it feels much better and it’s easy to use.

Simplicity was also the main reason why the developers added a “Quicksta Snap film queue system” that processes images in the background as you shoot, allowing you to take 9 images in a row without waiting for each one to finish. iOS 4 is required for this feature. Last, major improvements went into the Hipstamatic market – HipstaMart – which is the store embedded into the app that you can use to acquire new lenses, films and flashes as in-app purchases. New packs are offered, the interface is much cleaner now.

Overall, we’re very satisfied with this Hipstamatic update. The app is faster, easier to use and has more options than ever – yet it doesn’t overwhelm you like before. Check it out here.

This iPhone App Takes Pictures With The Microphone

Back in December we saw Apple approved an app called Quick Snap that allowed users to take pictures with the iPhone using the volume buttons instead of the regular camera icon on screen. As you know, Apple doesn’t really like applications that re-purpose hardware elements of the iPhone to perform specific tasks inside an app – just like, again, volume buttons used to snap pictures.

But it looks like they did it again, although we’re not sure whether or not Camera Mic violates Apple’s iOS guidelines. Basically, this app can take photos using the iPhone’s internal microphone; the app’s camera shutter can be triggered by a spike in volume caused by a quick tap on the mic or (this is the option I like the most) a quick whistle or a word like “click” or “go”. The app doesn’t offer much besides this functionality which, after a few tests, I have to say really works as advertised. You say something or tap on the mic, and the app snaps a photo. Of course, the downside is that if people are talking around you the results might not be so effective. But, and here’s another neat feature, it also supports the iPhone’s headphone cord, which can become a remote trigger cable so you don’t have to touch the iPhone’s screen when, say, the device is on a tripod.

There’s the possibility Apple will pull this app soon. So go download it here if you’re into this kind of things, while it’s still available at $0.99.

Update: As noted by our friend Jonatan Castro, Camera Genius offers a similar functionality inside the Settings. I have tested the feature in Camera Genius and it works similarly to Camera Mic, although I got better results with “tap on microphone” with Gamblus’ app. A few readers suggested using the mic’s audio to trigger the camera isn’t breaking any rules, as I wrote above. Still, this is an interesting (and curious) way to take pictures with an iPhone.

Vivid Gives Your iPhone A Wallpaper A Day

Vivid, a $0.99 app for the iPhone released last week, is a simple utility to get a new wallpaper on your iPhone every day. If you’re that kind of user who’s always searching for new backgrounds and lockscreen walls to make your iPhone a little more personalized, Vivid might just be what you’ve been looking for. Once you fire up the app you’re given a preview of the daily wallpaper, usually a photograph from an internet database the app connects to, which you can save to your Camera Roll, email, send via MMS and print. An archive button in the bottom toolbar lets you see previous images, and you can hit the “Today” button to make sure you’re staying up to date with Vivid’s daily offerings.

Vivid is a simple app that accomplishes the simple task of pushing new wallpapers to your iPhone every day. Go download it here.

New York Times Giving iPhones To Reporters

It’s no secret that the camera of the iPhone 4 has dramatically increased the quality of photos and videos shot with the device. The New York Times noticed this as well, and has decided to provide iPhone 4s to reporters for news video gathering. The reporters will be able to record videos and upload them to the NYT’s servers using Aspera’s file transfer tools.

Speaking to Beet.TV, Editorial Director for Video and Television Ann Derry called the Apple iPhone 4 a “game changer” for mobile video shooting and uploading, confirming that reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin used the device during Davos. Videos have become prominent in the paper’s website homepage, and the adoption of the iPhone as a portable camera will extend the staffers’ capabilities of recording videos in almost real-time, as events happen.

Check out the interview below. Read more

Scopy: A Visual Browser For Your Twitter Timeline

Scopy, a lightweight Twitter client developed by Ignition Software, aims at providing a unique visual experience for your Twitter timeline. Scopy, in fact, is a Twitter app for iPhone that displays all the photos shared by the people you follow, inline in your timeline. The app doesn’t support regular status updates as it only visualizes messages that contain one or more pictures. Read more

PhotoToMac Is The Fastest Way To Transfer Photos to OS X

I share a lot of screenshots and photos between my iPhone and Mac every day. Up until today, I’ve relied on third-party apps like iFiles to import pictures into its library and get them on my Mac using Cyberduck, which can connect to iFiles’ built-in WebDAV server. PhotoToMac, a $1.99 app by Galarina, improved my workflow with a system that allows me to import photos and videos without using additional Mac apps. Files shared with PhotoToMac, in fact, end up directly in the Finder. Read more