Photography
Analog for Mac
04 months ago
For the past few months I have been beta testing Analog for Mac, created by those very clever people at Realmac Software. Today the app finally went live on the Mac App store.
Since the huge array of ‘toy camera’ style applications available for iPhone, I have become a huge fan of giving character and soul to photos that I take with a regular camera. Classic and ‘fun’ camera apps for the Mac are quite limited in comparison to iOS apps, but Analog does just that, quite wonderfully, with 20 built-in filters, 14 borders, the ability to crop and rotate images and publish your finished results to CloudApp, Flickr, Facebook and Picasa with just two clicks!
Here are just a few of the images I have given the Analog effect to over the months…
Analog is currently available on the Mac App store (link) for just £5.49/$7.99 for a limited time so I’d say grab it while it’s on for such a great offer – it really is worth above and beyond that price tag!
If you needed any more convincing of just how cool this app is and how much work the Realmac guys have put into it, then check out their very creative Analog Story video.
InstaDesk
28 months ago
by Sam
in Photography
As a huge fan of the photo sharing app Instagram, I often want the ability to check my feed from my Mac but as yet Instagram do not offer an official web interface for doing so.
I found InstaDesk in the Mac App Store today whilst browsing the Photography category and it didn’t take me long to lay down the low price of £1.19 to purchase the app.
With InstaDesk you can browse beautiful pictures, newest uploads of your friends, or interesting people to follow. Furthermore, you can comment on pictures, like them, download them, or watch them in slideshows.
Features of InstaDesk:
- Find new people to follow
- View your Friend Feed, Popular Tags, Popular Pictures
- Comment on pictures or like pictures
- Save beautiful pictures in albums
- See when you get new comments or likes
- Follow / unfollow people
- View pictures in slideshows
- Download images
- Sadly, NO uploading due to Instagram policies
I’ll still always prefer browsing Instagram on the iPhone as the app is totally intended for that, but if I don’t check on a regular basis then I do have a tendency to miss some friends uploads. By having InstaDesk open on my Mac(s) I will be notified as regularly as I wish via the dock icon badge or menubar icon of how many new pics are available to view.
Another app I discovered a few days ago for the Mac which allows you to view your Instagram feed is Carousel. Whilst a nicely polished app, scrolling through felt too much like the iPhone interface. With InstaDesk I can have the app maximised to cover my whole screen if I so wish, therefore find it pulls me in more.
InstaDesk is available for £1.19 on the Mac App Store [direct link]
[rating: 4.5/5]
Flare for Mac
110 months ago
When it comes to the iPhone, there’s no shortage of apps to give your photos effects and filters to make them look even better than what comes straight out of the camera. Because of the ease of making a photo look great with just a few touches, I do find myself using the iPhone camera to take photos much more than separate camera where things are more painstaking on the Mac to enhance and improve. Step forward Flare for Mac.
Flare for Mac by Iconfactory was released to the Mac App Store [direct link] a matter of weeks ago. I downloaded the trial version and once I saw it’s capabilities, pretty much upon opening, I went ahead and purchased it for the limited time introductory price of $9.99. To be fair, even at the full price of $19.95 this app is well worth it.
When you launch the app and drag your photo in, you’re presented with a bunch of one-touch presets. But that’s only the start of it as every single preset can be edited (and saved for future use) to suit your needs. This is what I love about this app – you can really get stuck in and spend hours creating your own preset based on another, adding effects, borders, lightleaks, textures, grains, vignettes…the list goes on.
If you don’t want to spend too long on your own custom-made preset, then aswell as the dozens that come bundled in the app, you’ll find the Additional Presets page on the Flare website updated regularly with more ready for download. Once you’ve created your masterpiece you can save your image to a file, send to iPhoto, email it and upload directly to Flickr. Moreover, photos created in Flare for Mac retain their EXIF data, unlike CameraBag for Mac which sadly wipes out all such data.
I’ve enhanced several of my photos in Flare recently, including this one which quickly found it’s way to Flickr Explore. I’m particularly pleased about this one as straight from the camera it wasn’t looking nearly as good as it did to my eye at the time of taking and was about ready to be filed under trash, but some quick enhancement soon sorted that out.
My profile on about.me has also had the Flare effect with this excellent ‘Folder Poster’ effect which does the job perfectly…
From chatting to the developer on Twitter, it seems updates for Flare for Mac are never going to be in short supply, infact they have a whole bunch ready and waiting for us. I love apps that are constantly being worked on and improved for us. Now all I want to know is: when can we expect this on the iPhone?!! 
[rating:5/5]
Pentax Optio I-10
610 months ago
by Sam
in Photography
Since I bought the iPhone 4, my need for a digital camera has been almost nil. With the 5MP camera on-board the iPhone and the wealth of photo sharing communities appearing for iOS such as Instagram, I find that method to be the easiest and often most pleasurable way of sharing my photos.
However, there are times where I have wished for just a little more quality and perhaps a little more zoom where the iPhone has just fallen short. I’d considered a Canon S95 after seeing a friends recent photos from New York City, but the £300+ pricetag for something that wouldn’t get major use in my hands did seem like something of a waste.
A couple of weeks ago I was browsing a sale on Play.com when I saw the Pentax Optio I-10 for £69.99, down from £119.99 (now currently at £89.49 for the black version). The first thing that attracted me to this camera wasn’t it’s spec of 12MP, HD video with 5x Optical Zoom. I’m going to be totally honest and tell you that it’s retro styling rather than mahoosive mega-pixels was the head-turner. However, I decided to read a few reviews before hitting the buy button to make sure this wasn’t just style over substance.
The reviews I read were pretty mixed. For every one that said it was awesome, another said it was to be avoided – walk away and don’t look back at it’s beauty. But as hard as I tried I just couldn’t ignore how good it looked, nor imagining scenarios where it would be perfect to just pull out of my pocket and snap away. Knowing I could return the item if I wasn’t one hundred percent satisfied, I went ahead and ordered it.
I found the interface pretty easy to use – quite simple looking menus, no problem there. I have the manual downloaded to my Mac so I will step away from the presets on there and do things more manually once I get familiar with it. The first photos I took were macro, indoors in fairly low natural light. On the 2.7″ LCD screen the pics looked reasonable, but when uploaded to the computer I was starting to feel the love turning to nothing but a short lived cheap animal lust. There was quite a bit of noise and it didn’t particularly look 12MP at all.
I’d already browsed some Flickr groups for photos taken with the Pentax I-10 so I knew it was capable of some really good outdoor shots, so I decided that I would wait for a nice sunny day to really put it to the test. I’d gathered it’s bits and pieces in the box, ready to send back should the photos not live up to expectation – and was chastising myself for even thinking that a camera priced at £69 would give me anything as good as I was expecting.
So, on a lovely sunny day like yesterday I decided to let the camera do the talking:
(click images for bigger)
I am thrilled with the results. They were all edited only very slightly using Flare for Mac, but straight from the camera these were very impressive photos. And to quote one of my Flickr friends who commented on the above photo…
The equipment is mostly irrelevant. It is the photographer that makes the photo. A three hundred dollar pair of Air Jordans does not give you the ability to play pro basketball. You made this picture. Not your camera. Well done.
I do have to agree with him. And I suppose my logic for going ahead and buying the camera despite some scathing reviews was a little to do with the fact that I managed some excellent shots with my old 2MP SONY Cybershot camera, despite it’s low spec. The subject and having an eye for it is so much more important than it having 200 megapixels and a 60x zoom.
My trusty Fuji S5700 7MP camera has served me well for a good few years now, but has been developing some glitches over the past year so replacing it with the Pentax I-10 makes sense. And unlike the Fuji which was quite a bulky chunky thing, this can easily be put into my pocket, much like the camera I always have on me – iPhone 4.
[rating: 4/5]
The Allure of Instagram
1 year ago
Just finished reading a very interesting article named The Addictive Allure of Instagram by Faruk Ate in which I found myself agreeing with many of his points.
One of the things Instagram does very well is making the process of sharing a cool photo you just took to multiple sites really easy. After you’ve authenticated to them once initially, it is but a single tap (for each) to share your photo to Flickr, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook.
And my feelings on Flickr and it’s community today are very much echoed by the author.
…more than anything else, for me personally Flickr has lost its sense of being a community site.
That is one of the saddest realisations I’ve had this year – the dying Flickr community. I am a member of quite a number of groups but have noticed photo views and comments dropping off in the last 12 months alone. This meant my interest in taking photos and in particular sharing them suffered until Instagram and it’s friendly community came along. It’s unlikely that I will now renew my Flickr Pro account next month.
Read The Addictive Allure of Instagram by Faruk Ate in full.
Thanks to Glyn from iPhoneography for tweeting the article.
1 year ago
I’m a sucker for camera apps for the iPhone. I have two folders full of them including Camera+, CameraBag, CrossProcess, PictureShow, ShakeItPhoto and more. I just love trying out new apps to see what effects they give my photos. The latest one to impress me is Instagram.
Instagram is a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures. Snap a photo with your iPhone, choose a filter to transform the look and feel, send to Facebook, Twitter or Flickr – it’s all as easy as pie. It’s photo sharing, reinvented.
The social aspect of Instagram is what makes this app interesting and enjoyable for me. You can add friends from your contact list, Twitter, Facebook or simply search usernames and names. I can view a feed of all the photos my friends are uploading aswell as ‘Like’ and comment on them, reminding me somewhat of Tumblr. You can also share to various websites including Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr and Foursquare.
Instagram comes with 12 great filters to make your photos look great. Images are saved at only 600×600 pixels, but for me this absolutely works fine for sharing through Instagram. I rarely print photos from my iPhone, for which case I would want it saved at full resolution, but for sharing through the app and on Twitter then I have no problem with the low res. Resolution may be increased in future updates.
I’m really excited to see what more Instagram will have for us in the future – and it’s hard to believe that this app is absolutely free! This app has already started to replace Camera+ which was pulled from the App Store almost 2 months ago for violating the terms and conditions. With no word from the developers on it’s return, it seems this will be a forgotten project with no further updates so myself, like many others, are looking to exciting alternatives that do have a future and won’t slide into obscurity when the next iOS update kills it off.
If you’d like to view the photos I’m snapping regularly and sharing to Instagram then feel free to follow me; purplelime.
CameraBag Desktop
52 years ago
A couple of months ago I wrote about how photos taken with the iPhone 3G can be much improved with camera applications such as CameraBag and ShakeItPhoto. These apps can add much character to an otherwise washed out and often bland offering.
Several weeks ago, the developer behind CameraBag for iPhone announced CameraBag Desktop, for Mac OS X. At the time of the release, there was no trial before buying which was a little disappointing, but because I had enjoyed the speedy way to enhance a photo on the iPhone I decided to jump right on in and plump up the $19 asking price. This was done mostly with the intention of checking it out so I could write an honest review here and let you, my dear readers, know whether it was worth parting with your money.
The application is extremely easy to use. Drag a photo onto the app window and you have all of your filters along the bottom as you can see. There’s plenty to choose from: Helga, Lolo, Mono, 1962, 1974, Instant, Magazine, Cinema and Colorcross – a filter that is not yet in the iPhone app. Aside from applying one filter, you also have a multi-filter option.
Let’s have a look at some before and after photos. First up is a photo I took today of my Nintendo DS…
And here is that same photo, with the Colorcross filter applied, along with a medium border…
In just one click, it has made a boring photo look really quite interesting. Here’s another of a sign post I took last year…
And here with the Colorcross filter, once again…
And finally this photo of the Millennium Bridge in Newcastle upon Tyne…
And now with the Instant filter applied…
CameraBag Desktop is a great way to make your photos look interesting in one click without spending time in your usual photo editor. I can’t say I will be using CameraBag Desktop as often as I will Pixelmator for photo editing, but when a photo calls for more than just a little contrast and vignette then it will be very useful.
I’m going to give CameraBag Desktop a rating of 3 stars. It would have received more had the 15-day trial been available when released, to avoid blindly buying.
[rating:3/5]
You can download a 15-day trial of CameraBag Desktop, here. Saving is disabled and images contain a watermark in the trial version.
Video from the iPod nano 5G
02 years ago
In my initial thoughts post on the iPod nano 5G, I promised some video soon so you could all see the quality as that’s been the most requested of me on Twitter. I took the nano out with me today and was approached by someone who thought my bright orange gadget looked rather tasty. Luckily I was able to capture his enthusiasm on video.
Like I mentioned in my last post about the nano, I am seriously impressed with the video quality but I’m also extremely pleased with that of the audio. Of the more expensive camcorders I have owned over the years, the audio quality was somewhat of a disappointment. Either quite muffled or an over-sensitive built-in mic, something that the Aiptek AHD200 suffered from which meant that a gentle breeze would quickly be translated as a force nine gale.
Here’s another video taken with the nano today…
My usual path when uploading video to the Mac from the nano is via iPhoto, then from within QuickTime I can quickly trim a clip and upload it to YouTube from within QT, or pop it onto Flickr. Both of the videos here are direct from the nano and uploaded to Flickr. If I want to do something special with it then I’ll import it into iMovie and do some editing in there. However, one of the things I bought the nano for was quick simple video I could upload to twitvid which will then be auto-posted to Twitter. That’s simply a case of syncing the nano, importing the video into iPhoto, again just trimming in QuickTime and then saving the video (.mov) and uploading to the twitvid site. They’re usually very speedy in processing the video to share instantly on twitter.
I know video quality of the iPod nano is something that many people out there are interested in knowing about, as was I before I decided to purchase. But I hope the above videos go some way to reassuring you that this is no fuzzy pixelated offering from Apple.
As mentioned in this post, if there’s anything specific you would like to know about the iPod nano from someone that is enjoying playing with it then do feel free to ask in the comments 
The iPhone rules Flickr
2 years ago
From The Next Web, regarding the iPhone now being the most popular camera on Flickr…
The iPhone is now showing us what it means when we combine technology. The camera isn’t ‘just’ a lens stuck to an iPhone. The fact that you always carry your iPhone, it is always connected to the web and always knows where you are makes it far more effective and efficient than ordinary digital camera’s that is isn’t surprising that it is quickly becoming the most popular camera.
I was just discussing this with a friend recently. I’ve been spoiled with the ease of uploading a photo to the internet in seconds with the iPhone without the nuisance of wires or docking that I rarely take my digital camera out with me now. I had recently considered buying a digital camcorder but wouldn’t the ultimate all-in-one device be the iPhone 3GS? Why take two bottles into the shower? Indeed.
Manage Your Cameras
62 years ago
How many times have you docked your iPhone and cursed iPhoto for popping up and getting in the way? For me it’s one of the most annoying actions as 99.9 percent of the time I head straight to that little red circle in the top left corner of the window to close it right back down so I can get to the app I want: iTunes.
Now there is a way to silence iPhoto when you plug in your iPhone, with a neat (and free) little system preferences pane called Cameras. You can manage what happens when you connect your Digital Camera(s), iPhone, Digital Media Writer and any photo device.
Upon installing Cameras you plug in one of your devices to get started and the app will ask you what want to do. As you can see from my image above, I have asked it to Open iPhoto for my Digital Camera but to Do Nothing for my iPhone.
Now all we need is a clever little plugin to stop iPhoto going into slideshow mode when we press play on our Apple Remote which was intended for a song….
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