10 iPhone accessories that can help you with your iPhotography

If you are an iPhone user, you are lucky to have a camera too. This smartphone species gives you the opportunity of capturing real-life snaps by virtue of its high resolution in-built camera. So, this iPhone comes as bonus for the photographers, who will now be able to encourage their photographic spree together with letting him remain connected with the rest of the world. But the exciting news together with this is that there is plethora of accessories that makes photography with iPhone a pleasure.

1. Tripod Holder
This Tripod stand is the perfect companion of your iPhone for a great photographic experience. It comprises of a PVC case that is shaped wisely in order to accommodate your iPhone. The extension of the same is such that it ends up in a three-legged stand made from sturdy steel, just like a professional Tripod Stand. This metallic stand gives your mobile camera the alignment required for an outdoor shoot. Further, the brass threads provided with it lets your pricey handset stay secured while at work.

2. Owle Bubo accessory
This iPhone accessory is one of the most advanced one among the category of smartphone accessories. It is notably a hi-fi camera attachment of your iPhone, but also does a great job in converting the same into a more productive one, if judged from the photographic point of view. It is basically an all inclusive camera attachment for your handset. It adds enhancements, such as external microphone, full size lens, collapsible Tripod mount and an integrated cold-shoe extension in order to add your personalized light for shoot. The ergonomics of this accessory is also noteworthy as it gives the right bulk to your handset, so that it renders a more real camera like situation.

Buy the Bubo for iPhone 4

3. Flip-Cage holder with iPhone 4 and 3GS Mount

This iPhone accessory is best suited to be your table top or desktop companion. It comes in the form of a small flip-cage mount that can be disintegrated and arched on the desk. It has been made as a dedicated companion of iPhone 3GS and 4. So, with this petite iPhone stand your experiences of close shot snaps, movie watching and making Facetime calls will get new dimension.

Gary Fong Flip-Cage with Tripod Adapter for iPhone 4/4S Mount

4. Factron Quattro Case for real camera experience
This high-end accessory will spice up the aesthetic property of your iPhone so that it looks like a real camera! The USP of this accessory is its metallic and leather detailing, which harmonies perfectly well with the look of a real camera. But, the functional splendor of this accessory is equally lucrative. It comes as an integrated set of five interchangeable lenses. Now, this is needless to say that the effect your photographic expeditions will achieve by means of these attachments will be simply awesome. However, it is not a onetime buy. So, you will never get all the five lenses packed in a single package at the first go. You need to buy them separately to complete your set.

http://www.factron.jp/product/26

5. Zacuto Zgrip Handgrip mount
The sole aim of this iPhone device is to render stability in photo shoot while on the move. It is basically a hand-grip device. It is equipped with a thread, which is meant for mounting the hand-grip to the tripod when you wish to perform stationary photo shoots. You will also get a bonus light attachment with it for assistance in night-time photography. The mount meant for installing the mount is located right on top of the device. Thus, this petite iPhone accessory is compact enough to give you the closer to real photography feeling.

Zacuto Zgrip iPhone Point’N'Shoot Handgrip Stabilization System for iPhone

6. USBFever’s Special Effects Lenses
This iPhone accessory is a pocket friendly alternative for the users, which renders a lot of facilities at a much economical investment! At a mere price of $13 to $23 the facilities you get with this smart accessory is simply surprising. It integrates a hi-fi feature like detachable lenses for mobile gadgets that are further equipped with wide angle, fish eye, telescopic and macro shoot abilities. Experimentation of your photographic skills is worth doing with this accessory.

Get them on Photojojo’s site here:

Buy the Fisheye, Macro, Wide Angle and Telephoto Phone Lenses at the Photojojo Store!

7. Griffin Clarifi for iPhone 3G and 3GS
This high end iPhone accessory is specially designed keeping in mind the photographic knack of the 3G and 3GS model users. The best part of the accessory is its in-built camera. It works towards enhancing the resolution and gain of your iPhone counterpart. Thus, living up to its declarations, this accessory gives the users the pleasure of shooting macro and close shot subjects in a much finer detail. However, if you are comfortable with normal photography, you can carry on with the same without any complication. Normal photography is supported in this accessory simply by sliding the lenses aside.

Clarifi for Iphone 3G/3GS Wht

8. Joby Gorilla Mobile for iPhone 4
Joby’s latest gift this time is mostly centered towards giving additional facility to the iPhone 4 users. The Tripod Stand from Joby is all set to improve your photography experience. The aesthetic property of the same is also breathtaking. It is a detachable version that features uniform grids all over, just like the royal Victorian furniture. This eye catching stand offers adaptable positioning of your iPhone. So, you can use it as a simple desk stand too.

Joby Gorillamobile on Amazon

9. ZoomIt Connector
This is another clever accessory for your iPhone. It gives you the opportunity to use SD memory along with your iPhone. Basically, it will be apt if you refer it as a connector accessory. Now, with this accessory viewing, sharing and accessing all the photos and files in your SD card will be easier, as you need not have to connect your camera with a Mac or PC every time you wish to do the same.

PNY zoomIt Memory Card Reader for iPhone 4 & iPad

10. GLIF

This yet to be commercially launched accessory is a great complement for your photographic ventures on iPhone! It is enabled by Kickstarter and serves dual purposes. While you can find it convenient to mount your iPhone on to the stand on one hand, the kickstart allows you to adjust your device according to your preferred angle on the other hand. So, this is definitely going to be a mega hit among iPhone users.

Glif Tripod Mount & Stand for iPhone 4 & 4S

The assortment of iPhone accessories that have been compiled here are all designed to improve your photographic experience from a number of ways. They are available in a range of prices as well. So, you need to judge the prices and facilities offered by each of them before you settle for your hot pick.

About the author: Alia Haley is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology, health and parenting. Beside this she is fond of games and gadgets. These days she is busy in writing articles on her sites: cellphonebeat Gizmowatch.

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If you are considering upgrading to one of the latest Canon or Nikon DSLR’s and want to shoot video then check out this great comparison that I found from Dave Dugdale at learningdslrvideo.com. This has got to be one of the best comparison videos I have seen, he walks through real world situations. He covers everything from shooting video with the Canon 5D Mark III and the Nikon D800 in lots of different lighting situations and also their pros and cons with shooting stills and other functions like white balance.

Also Phillip Bloom has a great comparison review of these 2 cameras along with the Nikon D4. Its a very comprehensive review and check out the great comparisions of the 3 cameras with low light when he shoots video at a bar with all iSO ranges. You can see this around minute 16 in the video and its pretty mind blowing how great these cameras look at high ISO. It’s really amazing how far technology has come and when I tested out the Canon Mark III a few weeks ago what really blew my mind was the amazing performance at high ISO. You can see some shots I had taken to show off the high ISO of the Mark III here: First Impressions of the Canon 5D Mark III.

Full Frame Shootout: Nikon D800 / D4 / Canon 5DmkIII from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

What do you think about these new cameras? Let me know in the comments below

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One certain type of app for my iPad that I have tried a few different apps out for is a great way to display my portfolio on my iPad. Ever since the first iPad was released one huge benefit I saw to the iPad was a really cool way to show my images to new clients. Its a great tool to showcase your work and now with the amazing retina display on the new iPad its an amazing way to really wow people. I reviewed the Portfolio for iPad app awhile back, and today I want to talk about a new app that has just been released called Portfolio Pro.

First of all the app is very straightforward and easy to setup which I do like. It has 2 main sections, the cover slideshow and then a list of galleries. The cover slideshow is similar to Flipboard if you are familiar with that app. It gives you an area at the top left corner to add some text and your logo and then has your images playing as a slideshow to fill the rest of the screen. Simply swipe from the right of the screen to flip open the app and arrive at your galleries.

Setting up the cover slideshow and the galleries is pretty straightforward. Any time you can triple tap to switch between the client view of the app and the edit view. When in the edit view for your cover slideshow you can add your own logo and text however you will only see this option to edit it when you turn the device horizontal. At first I was working with the app in the vertical view and clicked around all settings to find where to add a logo and couldn’t find it. I actually almost gave up and then by accident flipped the screen and saw the ability then.

When in the edit view you will be able to add images or videos from your iPad, Flickr or Dropbox. Adding dropbox as a way to import your images is a nice touch and makes things easier compared to a few other portfolio apps I have tried out. Once you select the images to import you can also add a title and description to the photos and organize the order of the images. Another pretty nice feature is for any gallery or even individual photo within a gallery you can “Hide” the photo or gallery. You might have a gallery that you don’t want all clients to see from the main menu so can hide it from the admin screen and then easily show it when you need to by unhiding it.

The app also has a fair amount of customizations that you can make to various things like the overall theme of the app, colors and fonts. You can’t customize the transitions of the slideshows though which I really would like along with adding audio. The audio for me is a fairly big one, whenever I show my work I want to have the perfect song playing that will add to the emotional pull people get from viewing your work. The audio is all part of the experience and important to have with a slideshow. Hopefully they will add this in a new version.

One thing I would really like to see them add is more file formats to include in the app like PDF’s. After I show my portfolio to a client I like to also have my PDF pricing list that I can review with them and keeping everything in the same branded app would be very helpful. The app also isn’t as responsive as I would like to see, sometimes there is a small lag although on the good side I didn’t encounter any crashes or major bugs that kept me from using the app. Hopefully the next version will speed things up a bit.

Overall the Portfolio Pro app for the iPad is very quick and easy to setup, gives you some nice custom controls over your portfolio and with a few small updates that I mentioned above would be a perfect app. I would give the app a 3.5 out of 5 stars and am looking forward to what they create in the future. You can get Portfolio Pro for the iPad in iTunes here for $9.99.

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I have to admit for as much as I love technology and am a definite gadget lover I do try to only upgrade my equipment when really needed. As photographers in a very rapidly growing digital age it can be easy to get “gear envy” over other cameras, lenses and other goodies you see out there and want to upgrade your equipment every year. I used to really get sucked into this and always want to get the latest body or lens or whatever else was out. Then one day I finally realized, It’s all about the art not the gear. I remembered creating awesome images with my $20 holga camera that were better images than my latest and greatest DSLR. Whenever I choose to upgrade equipment I now really make sure that there is something it will do that I really need.

With that being said though I checked out the Canon 5D Mark III over the weekend to finally play around with. A quick side note, I have been renting some equipment from borrowlenses.com for awhile and love them. Great stock of items and some convenience local pickup spots in the Bay Area (or they can ship). After a full day of shooting with this body all I could say was WOW. I have been shooting with DSLR’s since Canon released the 10D about 9 years ago but the first camera that I really fell in love with on the digital side was the Canon 5D. I love the depth that it gives you for portraits, it was the first camera that reminded me of film in a way but still gave me the flexibility of digital. I have been shooting with a 5D ever since and absolutely love the original 5D.

Spec wise there isn’t a lot that would really WOW you compared to the Mark II. Here are some of the key features on the Mark III

22.3 Megapixel full-frame sensor
61-point autofocus
Up to 6fps continuous shooting
Native ISO 100-25,600 sensitivity
Full HD video with manual control
14-bit DIGIC 5+ processor
Enhanced Weather sealing
8.11cm (3.2-inch) 1,040,000-dot screen
HDR mode with presets

Although nothing jumps out spec wise I do have to say that after shooting with this for an hour I was very excited. Maybe even more excited than I was with the original 5D. The body has a great feel to it, solid but lightweight and if you are a Canon user you will get the hang of the menu in no time. The 2 main things that I really loved were the improved auto focus and the quality of shooting at high ISO’s.

First Canon added a 61-point autofocus system to the Mark III. This is the same 61-point wide-area AF system that the flagship EOS-1D X has. Compared to a prior 5D this focus is fast and nails the focus even in low light. I shot evening photos with the autofocus on and it did a great job with very low light situations. Even focus points at the very edge of the frame respond quickly and get it the first time. As a wedding and event shooter mainly having a really solid autofocus camera is key and the 5D is a great step up in autofocus compared to the past models.

The other part about the camera that really got me is the high ISO. We all know that many cameras can shoot with a high ISO but really what does that mean. Very noisy and blotchy images at ISO 6400 really don’t do anyone good. But the Mark III actually gives you a usable image even shooting at ISO 25,600! Here is a quick comparison of a detail shot of a wine barrel shot indoors. There was a little light coming in from windows so it wasn’t a super dark room but dark enough where I was shooting 2.8 at 1/8th of a second at 1600 ISO. At 1600 there isn’t really much noise at all its a very clean shot. Take a look at these, they have been sized a bit down but no PS work done so right out of the camera. Click on the image to view them a little larger and I can post the original in the comments if you would like to see the full resolution.

Mark III at 1600 ISO

Mark III at 10,000 ISO

Mark III at 25,600 ISO

Also shooting indoors like at a reception this gives you some great creative control. I was able to capture images of the toasting without flash to get a nice soft image using the room light, all very clean looking but still at ISO 6400. This isn’t the best shot but was done at 6400 in a very dark room and shows the potential of what you can do.

Canon 5D mark III at 6400 ISO

Overall this camera is amazing. There are more features that just the autofocus and high ISO levels that make this shine. If you are looking for a new body I would definitely suggest the 5D Mark III. It’s not the cheapest camera out there but one of the best I have seen.

You can order the camera from B&H here: Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera (Body Only)

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Lately my schedule has been so crazy busy that my iPad hasn’t got a ton of use and I haven’t even bought any new apps. This is pretty rare for me since I have to admit I’m an appoholic and love to check out new apps and technology once they come out. Finally the other day I have some time to check out a few apps on my list and have a couple app reviews coming this week. I wanted to start with Paint FX for the iPad which is an app that allows you to paint on special effects with your finger rather than just applying an effect to the entire image.

The app is pretty straightforward and easy to use. You start at the menu icon on the very left and are able to load an image from a few different sources including your iPad’s photo album, Flickr or Facebook. Once you have loaded up your image just tap on the FX icon and start painting away where you would like the effect to appear. There are tons of photo filters the app includes from simple things like Black and White and Cartoonize, many different types of tints to apply and even background textures like a retro starburst. You can adjust the size of the brush using the brush icon menu next to the FX menu and modify the edge, opacity and size of the brush.

All you have to do is start to paint on the photo with your finger to apply that effect. There is an erase tool also if you go too far so you can easily erase the effect from the image.
At anytime if you need to undo something there is an undo and redo button at the very top to backtrack your steps. They also created a mask feature that can be handy to see the mask where the effects will be applied to be shown in a traditional red mask color. Just draw in a mask and then tap and effect to have that be applied to the mask area. One thing that would be very helpful is when you add a new layer to have the mask still remain so you can apply another effect to the exact same masked section. Right now when you add a new layer your mask that you created is removed.

There are layers in the app but not in the traditional sense. When you click the layers button it will allow you to create a new layer on top of the existing edited photo. You can’t go back to that first layer and edit it, just think of the layers as applying these effects on top of each other. Since you can’t really edit the other layers on their own I wish they would just remove this button, when you add a new effect it will layer it on top. Much easier and removes the need for an extra button.

Once you are all done there are lots of different ways you can share the photo using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Email, sending a postcard through Sincerely or your photo album.
Overall the app performs very well, it’s quick to respond, I had no crashes and does a great job. I would rate this app a 4 out of 5 stars and recommend it to anyone looking for a fun and simple way to add filters to your photos.

The app is $2.99 and you can get it in the iTunes store here. Also it is a universal app so will work on the iPad and iPhone.

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6×6 Photography iPhone App Review

This article was originally going to be a normal review of a photography app that I came across the other day. The name intrigued me (6×6) since I used to love shooting with medium format film and have always loved square images. I have been on a roll lately finding some really useful and cool photo apps and unfortunately I think my win streak ends here. The app isn’t terrible but compared to other apps I use for taking photos doesn’t have as many features as I would like and will rarely get used.

The 6×6 app gives you a retro look to be able to capture a square image. There isn’t a ton of effects like some camera apps have (which really can be a good thing, some people throw random filters in that really don’t get used and are unneeded in my opinion). With the 6×6 app you can choose to have the images captured in color or black and white. Once you take an image it sends directly to the camera roll. There is no ability to connect with Facebook or Twitter just a simple click and shoot to save it to your camera roll.

The app does have some nice touches that add to the retro style of the app. Aside from being a square crop it does include some sounds of real shutter clicking to get you feeling nostalgic but that one setting that I did really like the best is the 6×6-Flex (TLR) mode. This will give you the same look that you used to have with a classic twin lens reflex camera where you would view everything mirrored. So when this is turned on and you see a backwards mirror view. This will throw anyone way off if you never used a twin lens reflex camera but if you have it will bring back a little feeling of nostalgia for at least a few minutes. Other than that feeling of nostalgia I don’t think this app will get much use for me. Overall I would give it a 2 out of 5 stars. You can get the app in iTunes for just $.99 here:

Since the review is so short I figured I would roll in the next app I was going to review “Hipster for iPhone”. This was another app that from the name and description looked cool, here is part of their description:

Using Hipster you are able to create and send beautiful photographic postcards. Your postcards will be composed of a photo, text, location, and more, which will provide a window into what you are currently experiencing.

First of all let me say that the app does have a very beautiful design. It’s great to see so many new apps that really have amazing design. Everything is very polished with the app which does make you want to spend a little more time using it. Overall the concept is very easy. You either take a photo or grab one from the camera roll and then can choose from one of many themes. The themes all have different filters applied to the image along with a border and area to enter in text. You choose the theme, edit the location if needed and then type in the text to appear on the postcard.

After you click the OK button you can then share the postcard on either Facebook, Twitter, Tubmlr, Foursquare or Flickr. Also from the main screen they give you many ways to discover other peoples photos. Just like Instagram offers you can like peoples photos and comment on them. You can sort through your Hipster friends (go to the More tab to add friends), look for postcards that were taken nearby your current location or see a global view of all postcards created ranked by either popular or newest.

In the end for me it’s like instagram with annotations. I already use instagram to share with my friends on twitter and Facebook and like the filters better so won’t be replacing it with this app. What I do think would make it very useful since the main difference with the app compared to others is turning the image into a Postcard would be to be able to email these out to groups. I could see a good use to be out on vacation and grab a quick photo with your iPhone, add a border a little text and then on the back some more descriptive text. Then blast that email off to a group of friends.

Because of the design I would give it a 3.5 out of 5, but in reality I probably won’t use the app much at all. It looks good, works well but in a highly saturated market of photo apps doesn’t do enough different to really get me using it. Do you have these apps? Love them or hate them let me know in the comments at the bottom of the page.
You can pick this one up in iTunes for free here:

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One of the first things that I always do when I get a new iDevice is check out the quality of the camera. Although I was happy to see FaceTime included with the iPad 2 last year when I reviewed the iPad 2 camera vs. the iPhone camera I shared my disappointment with the camera quality but also said that you really are going to rarely use the iPad as a actual camera. I can’t see myself out with friends just hanging out and whipping out my iPad to take a few photos. That being said though over the past year I have found a few instances where my phone wasn’t on me and something really cool was going on right in front of me while I happened to have my iPad right on my lap. It was only a handful of times but still did happen and after grabbing a few images was always reminded how poor the camera was.

Even though it doesn’t get much use I was happy to see that Apple was upping the game with the New iPad camera. There really is no comparison between the 2, even in good light the new iPad camera looks much better than the iPad 2 and when you get into dim lighting situations it really is night and day the difference. The camera they are using for the new iPad is a Omnivision OV5650 which is a 5 Mp camera featuring 1.75 µm pixels. This is actually the same camera they used for the iPhone 4. The sensor supports HD (1080p) video at 30 fps.

Here are some sample comparison images to get a feel for the difference in various lighting conditions. You can click on any image to view it full size.

<

iPad2 camera

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New iPad camera

This shot is in a very similar lighting situation with a large window light coming in from the left however there are lots of areas of shadows and you can see how you start to loose detail in the iPad 2.

iPad2 camera

New iPad

Where you can really see the difference is when you crop in tight. Here is a closer view of these images:

iPad2 camera crop

new iPad camera crop

Where you really start to see the difference is when the light goes down. This scene didn’t have bad lighting, again a large window but with the curtains partially closed so not much light was coming through. The iPhone 4S can actually handle a situation like this pretty well but the iPad2 really suffers in these situations and starts to become unusable.

ipad2 camera

New iPad Camera

and for comparison here is the iPhone 4S

iPhone4s

Up close again you see the weakness in the iPad 2 camera (from left to right iPad 2, new iPad and iPhone 4S)

When you get into typical indoor lighting conditions the iPad 2 got very pixelated and blotchy. Here is a comparison that had lighting with 1 lamp in the office, a window with a little light coming through and you can see the iPad 2 (on the left) becomes pretty unusable with this type of light. The middle section is from the new iPad and the right is the iPhone 4S.

iPad2 vs new iPad vs iPhone 4s cameras

Just some quick first testing from the new iPad camera. Again its going to be rare that most of us are running around shooting portraits and landscapes with a iPad (although the size is much smaller than what Ansel Adams used for those beautiful landscapes he created. Although it might not get used a lot it is nice to have a decent camera in there now just in case you need it.

More info and reviews coming on the new iPad over the next few days so keep checking back! Also leave a comment below with any questions or your own thoughts on your iPad experiences.

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As many of you know that have been reading this site for awhile I love off camera lighting and have used PocketWizards for awhile with my wedding work. They have just released an update to their PocketWizard Plus Transceiver, the PocketWizard Plus® III. It’s an update to the very popular PocketWizard Plus® II which has been a standard in the industry for awhile and an extremely reliable Transceiver. It looks like a pretty solid update to the plus II Transceiver and here some some of the key updates:

It looks like a solid upgrade on paper so once I can get my hands on one i’ll do a full review as well as compare it to the Pocketwizard MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 that I reviewed awhile back.

You can order on B&H here, Pocketwizard Plus III for $139.

Check out this great video from Joe McNally using these on cars along with an overview video of some key features of the Plus III

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Today with Apples big announcement on the new iPad Apple also updated many of their own apps like Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Along with these updates they released a new app that is part of their desktop suite of apps, iPhoto. While iPhoto never has been a professional photo editor it has always done a few things that I really liked and wish programs like Lightroom did. Even though its based on consumers iPhoto for your desktop has a lot of cool features like facial detection which will group together photos of the same person to easily find all photos of 1 person without having to go through and manually tag images. They also had geotagging as part of the app long before Adobe added the Maps feature in Lightroom 4.

Although iPhoto for the iPad isn’t geared towards professionals it does give you some great editing ability and at a great price. Here is a quick review of the app and a comparison to the recent Adobe Photoshop Touch iPad app released. First I do have to say that the design of the app is awesome but after watching the keynote announcement of the new iPad and the resolution I really can’t wait to see what this app will look like with that new display. As a side note, i’ll be reviewing the new iPad on launch day just like with all new gadgets so stay tuned next week for a full review of that new retina display.

When you first launch the app it will update with all the current photos stored on your iPad and display them as albums on a very clean looking glass bookshelf. The process only takes a few seconds and you can start editing your images. There are lots of pretty useful things if you want to quickly go through an entire shoot to preview or do some basic edits. The first is once you click into an album of images you will have a thumbnail view at the bottom (if you have the iPad turned vertical) or on the left (if its turned horizontal). But you can adjust the size of this to see more or less thumbnails which will also adjust the size of the main image you are viewing. Everything scales in real time and is totally fluid, they really nailed the performance of this app. If you tap one photo and then with another finger tap another photo it will bring up your entire selection at the top. This is a great way to compare images. See the image below on the left to see what happens when you select 4 images.

Now the cool part is I can tap one of these 4 images to make it larger or I can pinch to zoom. Another very useful feature is once you tap a photo to enlarge it on the screen you can then pinch to open up a loupe and see a zoomed in view. You can even rotate the loupe to go from 1x to 3x zoom and as you move the loupe around the image everything is real time and again totally fluid. The performance of this app is really the stand out feature, nothing needs time to render everything works just as you would expect from a very solid desktop app.

On the editing side iPhoto for iPad is actually pretty basic. The app really isn’t geared towards professionals so you have some simple editing ability however they do present it in a fun and easy to use way. The first thing you can do once you have a single photo selected is click on the brushes icon to open up some basic things you can brush onto the image. It’s simple stuff like saturation, lighten or darken and sharpen. All you have to do is select the brush and start painting away. If you want to see the strokes you are painting on tap on the settings tab at the bottom right and tap Show strokes. This helps by showing a red mask view of what you are painting in. Also in the settings you can adjust the amount of the brush that you are painting but don’t have any input on brush size.

You also have an effects tab that open up 6 different presets. Just tap on a preset like Duotone and then at the bottom use the slider to adjust the effect. You can also copy/paste these effects to other images by going to the settings tab once you have the effect just right.

You can also effect the levels of the image through a unique slider that is under the lens looking icon on the bottom left or use the palette icon to make adjustments to specific colors like skin tones, greens, blues and overall saturation. This is pretty useful if you want to quickly adjust the level of blue in the sky on an image and seems to work pretty well.

So how does this compare to Adobe Photoshop Touch iPad? The honest answer is they are 2 totally different applications, each with their own plusses and minuses. Adobe Photoshop Touch iPad is really geared towards editing a single image. Just like with Photoshop on your desktop you have to open each image into Photoshop and then start to edit. It has layers and many more advanced selection tools that iPhoto doesn’t even attempt to offer. There is much more creative editing you can do with Adobe Photoshop Touch and if you missed our article earlier check this out: Creating a Photo montage with Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad. One complaint I had when I reviewed Adobe Photoshop touch was in the user interface and how things really weren’t optimized for a touch device, there were no creative controls or ways to use the app that other developers have been creating and it felt like the desktop version just paired down and put on the iPad. This Apple does very well and with some of the graphical things like how the brushes are shown as brushes make the app very quick to use and also fun. iPhoto for iPad is more like Lightroom, you can very quickly and easily sort through images, compare images and do some basic editing. Then if you really want to edit the fine tune details you bring those into Photoshop for more creative control.

You can get the app in iTunes for $4.99 here:

If you have used the app or have other favorite apps for the iPad let me know with a comment below.

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I hinted over the weekend that Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad was coming on Monday and it was out even a little earlier on Sunday night. You can check some cool videos that Adobe had released last year here if you want to see it in action: Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad. This app is pretty powerful and gives you much more than the standard image editor does for the iPad. There is a lot to cover here but today I’m just going to start with a quick run through of the app and my initial thoughts. I’ll follow this up with some more in depth analysis once I have a lot more time to spend with the app. If you want to keep up to date with our articles sign up for one of our newsletters here: 3 ways to keep in touch with Digital Photo Buzz.

First when you launch the app they give you the option to check out some tutorials or start a new image. I was going to jump right into it but wanted to see what the tutorials were all about so tried a few of those first. I was happy that I did, the tutorials are all very quick and only a handful of steps to go through but it lets you learn the navigation of the app quickly. The difficult part of the app is that a touch device is so different from a computer they couldn’t just take parts of Photoshop and move it over. And Photoshop Touch for iPad does take a lot of getting used to so taking the tutorials will help you get up to speed quick.

The Layout of the App

Overall the layout of the app has a similar feel compared to the desktop app. On the very left hand side you have your list of tools. For tools you have all of the following options available:

- Marquee selection tool and circle selection
- Lasso selection tool and Polygon selection tool
- Magic Wand tool, scribble selection tool and brush selection tool
- Paint tool and brush tool
- Clone stamp and healing brush tool
- Eraser
- Blur tool and smudge tool

On the tools menu if you tap on a specific tool it will change to give you some tool settings so for example click on the Marquee tool and you will see a button to add a selection, remove from a selection, have rounded corners and anti-alias the selection. Tap on the very top of the tool to go back to the main tool menu. You can also hold down on the main tools menu any item that has a triangle at the bottom right corner to expand and see the other similar tools. If you hold down on the Magic Wand tool you will see it expand with the options for the scribble selection tool and brush selection tool.

At the top you have some of your other menus like Adjustments, special effects, cropping, gradients and many more items. And then to the right of the screen you have your layers.

Back to the top menu and i’ll start at the left and move over pointing out some of the highlights. There isn’t really a save button, but if you click on the arrow at the top left it will return you to the main screen and give you the option to save the file then. If you need to add a new photo just click on the next icon (with a landscape and + button) This will allow you to add another image as a new layer in this scene. Next with the little pencil icon you have a short menu with some options that the Edit menu in Photoshop has. Here you can Copy, Paste, Extract and even have it show you a pointer if you wanted to have the feel of being on a desktop. Personally I don’t see the point in having this pointer at all and with it on see it as very distracting. Maybe Adobe just has to hang onto a few desktop elements but creating stuff in a touch environment I think should have a new way of thinking out UI.

Next you have the selection tools and in here it gives you some nice options like Inverse, Feather, Refine Edge. You actually have a lot of freedom in making selections and even though you are creating selections with your fingers I did a few really detailed selections and was able to make them accurately and very quickly!

And then you move over to to right side where most of the image adjustment menus are. The first is just a standard move button where you will be able to drag the current active layer around the screen. Next you have your image adjustments. Here you pretty much have the standard image adjustments that Photshop is known for:

- Black and White
- Saturatin
- Auto Fix
- Brightness/Contrast
- Temperature
- Replace Color
- Shadows/Highlights
- Color Balance
- Reduce Noise
- Invert
- Levels
- Curves

They also have a effects menu which definitely doesn’t give you the full range of effects that Photoshop has but still a nice collection of some of the top effects. When you go to apply an effect there are a few sliders that you can adjust to fine tune the image which gives you a decent amount of control over the effect.

The final menu on the top will give you tools like adding a gradient or fade and some of the items that would be under the Image menu in Photoshop.

Overall this app does a lot of really cool stuff. It’s much more than just the standard editing app out there. The main negative is really in the interface, it takes a lot of getting used to and doesn’t feel natural. It feels like Photoshop from my desktop, paired down for the iPad, which I think is kind of a disservice to what mobile tablets can bring to the table. I love to see people really clean up the interface of a mobile app and give it a more natural and fluid feel to using it. Photoshop touch doesn’t do this but it also is in part due to how advanced the app is. There are lots of buttons and menus because there are a lot of tools in here.

Stay tuned for a real demo of how to use Photoshop touch to create a composite coming up soon! Also head on over to our Facebook page if you already have the app and let everyone know what you think.

The app is available for $9.99 in the iTunes store here:

If you like our articles remember to share them on Facebook, Twitter or +1 them on Google. I appreciate you spreading the word to your photo friends and it helps me to continue writing content for everyone!

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