So, yer all going hate me.... (and I need Ipad App help :) )

DeVore

So, I finally saved up and booked my dream trip around Asia this Feb! Bangkok, Phuket, Ankor Wat, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. My 550D and I are going on the road and I'm going to shoot roughly a squillion images and try to learn as I do it. I have been dabbling with taking the training wheels off and this is me, jumping into the deep end.

Now, I'm bringing my iPad and an SD reader to read photos in (I dont want to be dragging a laptop with me) but I'm looking for a good, reasonably powerful iPad app for post processing images. Any suggestions?

I am bringing my beloved 50mm and an 17-85mm that I picked up recently (and which I'm still trying to figure out how its any better than the stock lens I must admit).

So, any suggestions for the trip or for the app? I'm going to blog the whole thing, mostly focusing on what I'm learning about photography.

I'm hoping to have my SSF book photo in early this year

DeV.

thebaz

adobe have a ps express , its free - havnt used it - but looks good for ipad editing - let me know how you get on with it - or anyone else might have some feedback on it

http://www.photoshop.com/products/mobile/express/ios

Gumbo

DeVore wrote: »

So, I finally saved up and booked my dream trip around Asia this Feb! Bangkok, Phuket, Ankor Wat, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. My 550D and I are going on the road and I'm going to shoot roughly a squillion images and try to learn as I do it. I have been dabbling with taking the training wheels off and this is me, jumping into the deep end.

Now, I'm bringing my iPad and an SD reader to read photos in (I dont want to be dragging a laptop with me) but I'm looking for a good, reasonably powerful iPad app for post processing images. Any suggestions?

I am bringing my beloved 50mm and an 17-85mm that I picked up recently (and which I'm still trying to figure out how its any better than the stock lens I must admit).

So, any suggestions for the trip or for the app? I'm going to blog the whole thing, mostly focusing on what I'm learning about photography.

I'm hoping to have my SSF book photo in early this year

DeV.

how will you get your images from the cameras SD card onto the iPad?
Dont you have to sync the iPad with a specific folder to get the images or can you use it as a mass storage device to save them onto?

thebaz wrote: »

adobe have a ps express , its free - havnt used it - but looks good for ipad editing - let me know how you get on with it - or anyone else might have some feedback on it

http://www.photoshop.com/products/mobile/express/ios

I use this on my iPhone, very handy for cropping, and a few other little touches.

BigDaddyCan

thebaz wrote: »

adobe have a ps express , its free - havnt used it - but looks good for ipad editing - let me know how you get on with it - or anyone else might have some feedback on it

http://www.photoshop.com/products/mobile/express/ios

its ok but not great!

being honest there aren't many great options (that I know of) for image processing on an Ipad short of the likes of instagram etc!

when I go on the road with my cam and Ipad I usually use instagram! that being said I might only share 5% of the pics i take before I can actually get back to my mac!

if anyone has any other good apps I'd love to hear about them!

gloobag

Snapseed by Nik software, who also make Cofor Efex Pro, probably the best Photoshop plugin on the market.

I think Apple even named it as the best photo app of the year or something.

It's very easy to use and has tons of tweakability, unlike the likes of Instagram etc...

PCPhoto

you could sell your ipad and buy tonnes of SD cards ...then put them all on your laptop when you get home.

problem solved !!

(Ps. at the moment planning Thailand for the thai new year in April .... supposed to be a fantastic time...oh and will do some underwater work while out there.)

copacetic

kceire wrote: »

how will you get your images from the cameras SD card onto the iPad?
Dont you have to sync the iPad with a specific folder to get the images or can you use it as a mass storage device to save them onto?

The camera connection kit has an SD card reader you connect to the dock connector, it lets you see the photos on SD card and import the ones you want into folders in the photo app on the iPad.

Good overview here, with screenshots

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/reviews/entry/apple-ipad-camera-connection-kit/

With the kit, the long battery life and the decent screen it makes the ipad perfect for reviewing and sorting/blogging photos when travelling. (unless you plan to do detailed or advanced editing)

As far as apps go snapseed mentioned above seems to be the popular higher end one.

Hugh_C

I think they're all useless if you shoot RAW, which of course every self respecting photographer should

McVitae

recently did a similar trip to thailand, Laos and vietnam with my canon 400d, sigma 30mm f1.4, canon 50mmf1.8 and also my stock lens. I have to agree that unless the iPad lets you edit raw easily then forget it. I brought lots of cf cards and just waited till I came home. If your not shooting raw..... Start shooting raw ;-)

another thing I found invaluable, especially when scrambling about on treks, boats, elephants, etc was my lowepro slingshot bag. To be able to swing my bag pop my camera and pop it back while being able to use both hands at any moment was invaluable.

if ur going to Hanoi check out halong bay. Watch your gear though.

enjoy:-)

PCPhoto

Hugh_C wrote: »

I think they're all useless if you shoot RAW, which of course every self respecting photographer should

not in my line of work !!

news and sports photography should not be done in RAW - no point....shooting RAW slows the camera down and news/sports require fast multiple shutters.

thebaz

Hugh_C wrote: »

I think they're all useless if you shoot RAW, which of course every self respecting photographer should

I'm an apple fan, but i hate the whole apple sync'ing itunes process - for a company that produces such great products, and had a perfectionist genius at the helm, i see itunes functionality as v. unuser friendly - rant over - it does however support RAW -

iPad and the Camera Connection Kit support standard photo formats, including JPEG and RAW, along with SD and HD video formats, including H.264 and MPEG-4.

ScumLord

PCPhoto wrote: »

not in my line of work !!

news and sports photography should not be done in RAW - no point....shooting RAW slows the camera down and news/sports require fast multiple shutters.

I would have thought it would be the opposite seeing as the camera would have to compress the picture when saving in JEPG which would slow down the process or is it all down to the time it takes to write it to the card?

samhail

Hows about....
As suggested bring loads of sd cards and upload and edit the photos as necessary online.
I'm quite impressed with pixlr and how much you can do with that.

http://pixlr.com/


Also in one of my books I read I recall a suggestion of an sd card copier I believe. Think it has an sd card reader and a hard drive maybe, hp make them if I recall. I'll have a look into it in a few days when I get home

stcstc

even with the biggest IPAD, with no applications on it. its only got enough storage for about 8 8Gig cards. which by the sounds of your trip aint gonna be enough

i would suggest that a portable drive, and card reader, that you could go into internet cafe and dump stuff from the cards and have a quick preview of etc

would be a better option

or another option would be buy a bunch of cards, save JPGs that you can work with for blogging etc, and then send the cards home

and just buy more cards like you would film locally

DeVore

Storage is not a problem. I will have a couple of 8 meg cards and already have the camera kit for the iPad. I have a pro Flickr account and will dump most of them there or to a Dropbox account. My issue is that i want to blog on the road and post pictures of people I meet and places I go. So I want to post process my images, nothing fancy just noise, colour, the usual. So I'm using the iPad for its size and weight and the fact that I can do lots of other things with it on the road

I've downloaded the apps mentioned abve, many thanks, and I'll let you all know which ones are working well for me along the way.

Any more suggestions do please add them as so far I haven't seen anything I would describe as "advanced" or "powerful". They'll do me, no doubt but I dunno is they are fully featured enough to do everyone.

DeV.

stcstc

sorry i misunderstood the issue


i have played with snapseed a few times and for something simple seems quite good

not sure your going to find anything much more advanced though

DeVore

Ok so I had a quick look at these plus two others called Photo-toaster and Filterstorm. I have to say, of the all, photoshop is surprisingly poor. I would have expected more from adobe but maybe it's an Apple vs Adobe thing, I dunno but I know PS express is low on features and the ones I *did* want I had to buy with their expansion (the base product is free). It does nothing the others don't do and only exports to photoshop.com and facebook.

Each of the others appears to have its strengths. Phototoaster is very fast for getting general filters applied and punching up a shot, it gives very clear thumbnails, side by side for its extensive preset filter selection. Snapseed has a tasty interface and gives more control than Toaster it feels, but you have to dig around to find the options you want and sometimes the selections are a bit off to my mind... It doesn't have noise reduction but it does have tilt-shift....?
The winner in the power editing stakes is Filterstorm by a million miles. This is what PS Express should have been. It has just about every option that the full PC version of photoshop has by the looks of it including things like layers, cloning, resizing, transparency etc etc. it's power makes its interface cluttered a bit and it's certainly the fiddliest of them all but it offers so much that I can forgive it. I can see myself working on some photos in this when I have a bit of serious post processing to do.

So there's you have it, next step it to take these bad boys on the road and see how they compare when used in anger

DeV.

CabanSail

I have recently been playing with an iPad and really like it.


But ......


If I were to be doing a trip like that I would pack a MacBook, a graphics tablet and a 1TB USB drive. They are the best tools for the job. It's not that much more weight and you can then use Real Photoshop where you can learn what you are doing. There is enough capacity to shoot RAW for the whole trip and have a back-up copy on the USB drive along with the worked PSD's

I think an iPad is going to become tiresome after a while. Lovely piece of kit but just not for that job.

DeVore

My buddy is packing a MacBook Air. I don't own one so I don't want to add to the cost, which has already blown the limits by a country mile
I'll dump onto his if needs be.

DeV.

DeVore

Ps for a guy who likes his tech, I do surprisingly little PP... Just punch up the color a touch, sharpen and maybe some levels/exposure fiddling. I do hear you though and I have two short trips before I go on the big one so I'm going to try it out and see how awkward it is.

DeV.

the_syco

DeVore wrote: »

Ps for a guy who likes his tech, I do surprisingly little PP... Just punch up the color a touch, sharpen and maybe some levels/exposure fiddling. I do hear you though and I have two short trips before I go on the big one so I'm going to try it out and see how awkward it is.

DeV.

When shooting, it depends what you want others to see. Next time you take a shot, ask someone what they're drawn to. You may shoot a tree, but they'd be drawn to the bright cardboard box to the side. The "burn tool" and the "patch tool" can be your friends* in removing stuff in your pictures that you don't want people to look at.

*I've no idea what you're shooting, or how you shoot. Also, can you get a bluetooth mouse and roll-up keyboard for the iPad? It may make typing up a long story easier?

Also look up automated batching. If you do the same to pretty much all photos, record what you do to one, so you can automate a batch of the photos at once. Example: sharpen image, resize to 40%, save as a JPEG. If you'd do this to all images, running it as a batch to an entire folder of images could save you time. Or course, it depends on what you wish to show.

I would say to store your most epic images in RAW to some sort of online box, so when you get home you can spend time fine-tuning the pictures. For example, a sunset of a landscape, etc.

Finally, I'm a learner photographer, so you can take the above advice if you want, but meh.

DeVore

the_syco wrote: »

When shooting, it depends what you want others to see. Next time you take a shot, ask someone what they're drawn to. You may shoot a tree, but they'd be drawn to the bright cardboard box to the side. The "burn tool" and the "patch tool" can be your friends* in removing stuff in your pictures that you don't want people to look at.

*I've no idea what you're shooting, or how you shoot. Also, can you get a bluetooth mouse and roll-up keyboard for the iPad? It may make typing up a long story easier?

Also look up automated batching. If you do the same to pretty much all photos, record what you do to one, so you can automate a batch of the photos at once. Example: sharpen image, resize to 40%, save as a JPEG. If you'd do this to all images, running it as a batch to an entire folder of images could save you time. Or course, it depends on what you wish to show.

I would say to store your most epic images in RAW to some sort of online box, so when you get home you can spend time fine-tuning the pictures. For example, a sunset of a landscape, etc.

Finally, I'm a learner photographer, so you can take the above advice if you want, but meh.

Well I'm very much a learner too!!

I must look into auto-batching for the iPad... I do use it at home on the main PC when processing lots of images.

Typing on the iPad doesnt bother me at all (except the stupid autocorrects sometimes, but I'm teaching it slowly about Irish slang ). I can type an essay on it quite quickly.

I hate to say it, but probably for expedience sake I will be shooting in Jpeg unless I can find a decent workflow for iPad for raws. But I'll probably use Jpegs

Post Processing is a weird thing, I guess its each to his own but I draw lines
1. "correcting to replicate what it actually looked like"

2. "changing the picture to create an artistic representation of what it actually looked like"

3. "editing the picture to alter the scene".


So, 1 is like minor contrast, balance, sharpness etc. 2. is more like extreme level changes, harsh burns or monochrome etc while 3 is anything which gets in with a pixel pushing brush like clone or stamp or eraser.

I dont have a problem with any of the above I just like to know which category a picture is in (1 and 2 are easy, 3 not so much). I think a lot of the "skill" in photography is getting a great pic with just the camera but some wonder art is produced by 2 and 3 as well. Horses for photography-courses

DeV.

copacetic

Snapseed is free today for iPhone and iPad for anyone who is interested

thebaz

I'm planning a smaller trip to the West coast of america / dessert , and plan using an ipad too , and usb reader - on the ipad you can not post pics direct to facebook - can you post directly to flickr or pix.ie ?? - havnt tried

DeVore

copacetic wrote: »

Snapseed is free today for iPhone and iPad for anyone who is interested

Fncking typical lol....

As for Flickr... Snapseed and Phototoaster both export to it (with PT having the more comprehensive list of social sites between the two). Filterstorm has a neat thing which lets you set up exports and Flickr was a doddle to do. Weirdly, PS Express only allows Facebook and Photoshop.com. Disappointing.

DeV.