bgrier
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ElizabethS
Now I know what you're thinking -- Brad, the iPad doesn't have a camera so why would I want photography apps on it.
Well, because the iPad is portable, has a great screen that presents photos better than any other mobile device, and lets you do imaNow I know what you're thinking -- Brad, the iPad doesn't have a camera so why would I want photography apps on it.
Here's three of many photo apps I use most regularly on my iPad -- starting off with an offering from Adobe, the Photoshop people.
To illustrate, I've used an image I captured this morning on my wife's iPhone4, which I then uploaded to Flickr and then downloaded to my iPad and processed.
There are other ways to get your images into the iPad, such as the Apple Camera Connection kit, but this seemed the simplest for this post.
Similar to the way a print will move from tray to tray in a wet darkroom, Photoshop PSExpress is the first stop an image makes in my digital darkroom on the iPad.
It's a free app from Adobe, that ties directly into the free Photoshop online storage and editing application.
Basically, here I do my initial crop, minor brightness, contrast and colour correction tweaks, as well as tweaking the image alignment. There are other effects and filters available, which I may test out on the image, but usually I save that work for the next apps.
Now it's possible that the image could be finished at this point, and if so, I can either save it back to my iPads Photo Roll, or upload it to my Photoshop PSExpress account, or send it to Facebook.
On to the next 'virtual' tray...
This app has been around for a while on the iPhone, but recently made an appearance on the iPad.
Camera Bag adjusts 3 elements of the image you're working with; Border, Cropping, and Filter.
Each filter comes with a predefined crop and border setting, but you can select from each crop or border setting as best suits the image too.
Once I've got the processed image looking the way I want, Camera Bag will either save it to my Photo Roll, or let me email it somewhere. It would be neat if it offered integrated Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter image sharing, but that can be accomplished when the photo makes it's next dip into the final 'virtual tray'.
This is an iPhone app, that will run on the iPad, but isn't optimized for it. Actually, I use Instagram to quickly share and play with images, but if I've got something that i want to display at a much higher resolution, I'll not run the image through Instagram, rather manually upload it to Flickr, as Instagram will reduce the size of your image when it shares it.
That caveat aside, Instagram is a fun app for your iPad. Again, you're dealing with Borders and Filters applied to your image, but Instagram's strength is it's sharing capability -- allowing you to post to Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Posterous, and FourSquare, as well as sharing them with your 'friends' on Instagram's own channel.
But again, if you're looking to share a high-rez version, maybe use an app like PixelPipe -- at least until a high-rez version of Instagram shows up -- something that Instagram fans have been clamoring for.
Obviously those aren't the only three photo processing apps that work well on the iPad, but they're the three that I use the most. Perhaps I'll delve into others in the future, but in the meantime, if you're into digital darkroom on your iOS device, let me know what you use and why!
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