News tagged with "app"

At last week's I/O developer conference Google announced a number of upgrades to the photo section of its Google+ social network, including features such as 'Auto-Highlight', 'Auto-Enhance' and 'Auto'-Awesome'. To make the same experience available on its mobile platform the search giant has released an upgraded Google+ app for Android. Click through to Connect to find out more.

A recently released app in the Apple App Store promises the focus-shifting experience of a Lytro camera for a much smaller price tag. FocusTwist takes a series of images with different focal planes and allows users  to choose a focus point after they have taken the photo. We take the app for a quick spin and offer our take at connect.dpreview.com.

If you strive for postcard-perfect images to document your travels, Picfari may pique your interest. Available via a website or as a free iOS app for mobile devices, Picfari offers photo maps of various tourist attractions around the world with easy access to EXIF data to help inform your take on the perfect shot of the landmarks. Users can pick from a curated Picfari photo tour featuring geotagged Flickr photos, or build their own tour using Picfari's library of images along with their own uploaded photos. Read more about the app at connect.dpreview.com.

The latest generation tablets and even phones are great for presenting your images. But if your workflow involves evaluating detail and critical focus on a mobile device the situation is less than ideal. This is because the standard image viewers, such as Apple's Photo app or Android's Gallery app, don't display the actual images but a version that has been reduced in size to maker better use of the devices' limited resources. Actual Pixels is a free app for iOS that allows you to view images on your iPhone or iPad at a 100% magnification. We've checked it out for you.

Dblcam is a new free iOS app that simultaneously captures images with the front- and rear cameras of your iPhone. The app by developers Social Print Studio then combines the two pictures to a collage. Self portrait/scenery combinations are the most obvious results to come out of this process but some users are using Dblcam in a more creative way. Read more about the app and check out some sample images at connect.dpreview.com

Flickr has updated its web interface and released an updated version of its iOS app as it tries to reassert its relevance in a post-Instagram landscape. The refresh of the web interface sees the navigation bar at the top of the site get slimmer, to devote more page space to photos. The 'Explore' page has also been redesigned - taking on the full-width, large tiled design used in the 'My Contacts' page. Flickr has also updated its famously poor iOS app, adding processing filters and better discovery tools.

Smartphones aren't just about catching grab-shots and applying heavy processing filters to cover up any flaws. As the cameras get better, processing to get the best out of those images becomes increasingly important. Perfectly Clear, a processing app for iOS devices, provides a host of tools to fine-tune your mobile photography (or edit any photos when away from your computer). It even has a tool to correct the iPhone 5's notorious purple flare. Click here to see what we thought.

Connect: Photographers who use the photo sharing platform 500px can now access their images via an iPhone app released today. Previously, only iPad and Android versions of the app were available. The iOS version is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, and requires iOS 5.0 or later. The app features a minimalist interface to avoid distraction and focus on photography, it says.

Triggertrap Mobile, the camera triggering app, is available for free between now and the New Year. The idea is to make it easier to give the mobile dongle (that costs $24.99) as a gift, without the recipient then having to buy the associated app. The app is available for both iOS and Android and allows a smartphone to perform as series of sophisticated camera triggering actions, when connected to the camera using the mobile dongle.

We've reviewed the multi-platform mobile app Photo Editor by Aviary. Even if you're not familiar with this app, you've likely seen Aviary in effect in other mobile applications as the photo editor is available to other app developers as a software development kit (SDK) for Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7, and there's a Web Widget too. We take a look at Aviary's version, optimized for both phone and tablet screens, on Connect.

Triggertrap Mobile, the app-based camera trigger can now be used remotely if the user has two smart devices. The latest version of the app, that allows a wide range of cameras to be triggered in response to a range of events or with sophisticated time-lapse functions, features a Wi-Fi mode. In Wi-Fi mode, a 'master' iOS device can be used to remotely configure and trigger a camera that is connected to a Triggertrap mobile dongle and a second smart device (either an iOS or Android phone or tablet).

Connect: The Beamr app allows full-res iPhone and iPad images to be shared as virtual magazines. We spoke to Dror Gill, Chief Technology Officer of ICVT about the way it uses the company's JEPGmini technology to make file sizes manageable and how this is just the consumer-facing beginning.

A new app from the online photo storage service Snapjoy makes it easy to view your online photo library from your mobile device. With a well-organized timeline view, we imagine photographers may find the tool useful for sharing online portfolios with clients from their iPad.

Google has acquired Nik Software, the San Diego-based maker of standalone and plug-in image editing tools. While Nik has a wide portfolio of products for photographers, industry insiders agree that the impetus behind the move was to acquire Snapseed, Nik's mobile image editing and sharing app. In light of Facebook's earlier acquisition of the highly popular Instagram app, the acquisition of one of its rivals is seen as an effort to make Google+ more attractive to mobile photographers. Financial terms have not been disclosed but Google's Senior Vice President of Engineering has stated the company's committment to Nik's plugins and high-end software.

Nokia has shown-off an app including photographic features unlike anything yet available in compact cameras - suggesting camera makers will need to consider apps if they're to remain competitive. The Camera Extras app includes a 'Smart Group Shot' mode that takes five images and chooses the 'best' faces for each of the subjects. It's also possible to manually select which face you want for each of your subject. It's a useful and consumer-friendly feature that helps to underline the challenge that compact camera makers face - competing not just with the convenience and connectivity of smartphones, but also their app-based approach that allows extra features to be offered, separately from the normal model development cycle.

Woven, a free app for iOS, Android, Kindle Fire and Nook allows you to browse all of your photos from services such as Flickr, Facebook, Picasa and Smugmug in a single place. Once you've logged into each of the services, through the app, it downloads thumbnail versions to your mobile device, allowing you to scan through all your pictures. The app maintains the folder or grouping structures from each service, so you can easily find images and work out where you uploaded them to, even when you're offline.

Facebook has announced a free app called Camera that focuses on viewing and sharing photos. Instead of showing what your friends are doing and thinking, it just dives straight to their photo galleries. The app also allows you to share multiple photos at a time, including descriptions and tagging. There are also tools for cropping and applying filters to your images. The app allows Facebook to be used in a much more Instagram-like manner (and it seems too soon for this to be a product of the Facebook buyout). Updated with first impressions.

Apple has taken the well-known iPhoto app that’s bundled with Apple computers and adapted it for the iPad and iPhone. Although the iPhoto app offers a range of image editing tools including global and localised adjustment control (using multi-touch tools) there’s a lot more to it than that. Joanne Carter takes a look.

Software maker Visual Supply Co has created the VSCO Cam iOS camera app, to go alongside its 'VSCO Film' film simulation software. The $0.99 app works with both iPhone and iPad cameras, offering ten filters and a series of simple editing tools, including Grain, Fade, Contrast and Fill Light. It also makes it easy to share the images via social networks. Unusually, the app applies its filters to the pre-compression camera output. The company's blog features a selection of images taken on the launch day of the app, to give a taste of what its users can do.

Triggertrap has announced a mobile app that converts your iPhone into a highly-configurable remote release for your camera. It works in concert with two hardware components, a 'Mobile Dongle' that connects to the phone plus a suitable camera cable, to offer a wide range of methods to release the shutter. These include timelapse, distance lapse (based upon the phone's GPS), face recognition, and sound, motion, and shock detectors. It can also control High Dynamic Range bracketing up to 19 exposures. A free trial version of the app is available for evaluation purposes. The full app and Mobile Dongle each cost $9.99, and are available now from the iTune App Store and Triggertrap web shop respectively.