Over at Macworld, I offer four suggestions to make iPhoto usable again.
Category Archives: Organizing Photos
Macworld Reviews the Seagate Wireless Plus
Over at Macworld, Roman Loyola reviewed the Seagate Wireless Plus Wi-Fi hard drive. Although he doesn’t mention this specific purpose, the Wireless Plus finally delivers on the promise of being able to transfer files from the iPad so you can back up the photos you import. See “Seagate Wireless Plus Appears” for more detail. I’ve been using the drive and like it.
Ben Long’s iPad Photo Workflow
Photographer Ben Long wrote a great post at CreativePro.com about his iPad photo workflow, which includes a HyperDrive Colorspace UDMA 2 device for storing image backups and Photos Info Pro for assigning metadata to the photos on the iPad. Check it out:
iPad Photo Workflow (CreativePro.com)
Watch my Photo Club Webcast
The replay of my Peachpit Photo Club webcast is now live. See how to wirelessly transfer photos from any camera to the iPad — live! Watch as I edit photos in iPhoto for iOS! Marvel at how I can start the presentation without realizing that I hadn’t yet shared my screen with the rest of the webcast! (Whoops. Thanks to my wonderful editor for breaking in and pointing that out. It’s just the first couple of minutes.)
I had a great time doing this presentation — enough to consider doing this type of thing more often. Maybe a few Google+ hangouts going into more depth on some features? Let me know in the comments if that’s something you’d like to see.
Modern Photo Convenience
My daughter’s daycare starts the school year by asking parents to bring in a bunch of photos—of family members, friends, house, and other things that help express who each kid is. The photos are sometimes trimmed and turned into a collage, then mounted on a long wall for everyone to see.
If you’re like me, you can see where this is going. Photos… printed on paper? I never print photos anymore, and don’t own—nor have the desire to buy—a photo printer. And, of course, because I wasn’t paying attention, the daycare needed the photos today.
This is why I love living in the modern world. It turned out to be no problem.
I pulled the images together that I wanted (some from Lightroom, some lying about on my Mac desktop, some already on my iOS devices) and uploaded them to Walgreens, a national drugstore chain that has several locations near me. It turned out to be more convenient for me to do this on my Mac today, but I could have easily also used the Walgreens for iPad app, which I discuss in the book.
I uploaded the image files, chose how many copies of each print I wanted, and placed the order. I specified that I wanted to pick up the prints at a Walgreens just a few blocks away from the coffee shop where I was working this morning. The total cost was about $2, and I paid with a credit card online.
Less than 30 minutes later, I received an email telling me the prints were ready for pickup. A short walk later on the way to lunch, I had the prints in hand, and they look great. At no point did I have to worry about printer ink, dropping off negatives or digital files, or even working with an in-store kiosk.
Book Errata: Chapter 3 update, inactive link
A couple of related post-publishing housekeeping tasks:
- The sidebar on page 52 notes that I’ll be updating Chapter 3 (“Rate and Tag Photos”) with Photosmith 2 information. When I wrote that chapter a few months ago, Photosmith 2 was still in an early alpha stage, but the developers gave me access so I could include it in the book. I’m happy to say that most everything in the chapter is still accurate, and the app’s interface did not change significantly (by which I mean the released app looks cleaner and a couple of labels have changed, but nothing serious got moved). I’m still planning on updating the chapter and posting it for free to people who’ve purchased the book, but I’ve been delayed by waiting for the app to ship (which it has; see “Photosmith 2 Now Available—Go Get It“) and other work. Some of that “other work” is directly related: Look for an ebook devoted to Photosmith 2, coming soon; I’m also updating my book “The Mac OS X Lion Pocket Guide” for the upcoming Mountain Lion release, the timing of which we’ll no doubt learn at this week’s Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC).
- Also in the same sidebar, I note that the Chapter 3 update can be found at http://www.peachpit.com/ipadforphotographers. That link is currently not active, and I’ve alerted Peachpit. It should redirect to the book’s product page here: http://www.peachpit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321820185. There’s no update there yet (for reasons mentioned in the bullet above, for those of you who skimmed quickly), but it is the same location where you’ll find the addendum I wrote that covers iPhoto for iOS and Adobe Photoshop Touch. Sorry about the glitch.
Photosmith 2 Now Available—Go Get It
After a lot of work, Photosmith 2 is now finally available for sale at the App Store! The app costs $19.99, which sounds steep compared to many apps, but is a great deal when you consider that Photosmith is still the only one that lets you rate, tag, and assign other metadata to your photos on the iPad, and then import them all—metadata intact—into Photoshop Lightroom. If you previously owned Photosmith 1.0, the update is free!
I’ve mentioned it before: Being able to write about Photosmith 2 (which was in an early pre-alpha stage at the time) greatly improved my book, allowing me to address one of the big holes in iPad photo workflows. I’m happy that pretty much everything in the book is still valid in the shipping version of Photosmith (with the temporary exception of GoFlex Satellite support).
The app is great, and Chris, Chris, and Nico (as well as others who are helping them out) have done a great job with it. What are you waiting for? Go download it now!
Photosmith 2 Getting Closer, Losing GoFlex Temporarily
The developers of Photosmith 2, which I feature heavily in Chapter 3 of the book, can see the light at the end of the tunnel. In a blog post today, they reveal that Photosmith has reached Final Candidate status and will soon be submitted to the App Store.
Software development is hard work, and Photosmith is a deep app. So it’s disappointing but not surprising that one cool feature won’t be available at launch: backing up photos to a Seagate GoFlex Satellite drive. The feature works from the Photosmith side (I’ve gotten it to work in an earlier beta), but a bug was discovered in the drive’s firmware that compromised the data integrity—and if a backup isn’t reliable, then it’s not really a backup, is it? It’s a really great feature, and I’m looking forward to Seagate squashing the bug and seeing the feature return to Photosmith.
Photosmith 2.0 Getting Closer to Release
One thing of which I’m immensely proud about The iPad for Photographers is Chapter 3, which focuses on how to organize the photos you import into the iPad. Most of it centers on Photosmith 2.0, an app that lets you rate and tag images and then flow them into Adobe Lightroom with all of that metadata intact—a time-consuming task that I don’t always want to put off until I’m in front of a computer.
The developers of Photosmith 2.0 were very gracious and let me work with early builds of the software so I could include it in my book. Although Photosmith 1.0 is a good product, the follow-up makes huge strides in photo organization on the iPad, and is the only app I’m aware of that does it.
But there was just one wrinkle: The app isn’t done yet.
We anticipated that it would be out by the time the book was released, but if you’ve done any sort of software development, you know that a release date is an extremely flexible thing. Chris Morse and Chris Horne have been working diligently to knock down the last of the app’s bugs before releasing it, preferring (rightly) to ship when the app is done, not ship when it would be convenient.
So I’m happy to see that it sounds like the beta period is drawing to a close, based on the duo’s most recent blog post: “We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming…“. (They also include a plug for the book. Thanks!)
The material in Chapter 3 is still current, and I can’t wait until everyone gets a chance to put into action the steps I describe. When the final version of the app is released, I’ll revisit the chapter and note if anything has changed.
Twitterview on April 25
Do you have questions about using your iPad with your photography? I’m doing a Twitterview (Twitter interview) about the book on April 25 at 11 a.m. (PST). Submit questions at Peachpit’s Web site and I’ll answer them live. If your question appears, you get a free copy of the book!
If you want to just follow along, follow @jeffcarlson and @peachpit on Twitter, and look for the hash tag #ipadphotogs.
I’m looking forward to it!
