Photo Mechanic "App" for new iPad

[DanTermnato]

What are the chances of seeing a Photo Mechanic App for the new iPad device?

I'd gladly pay the same license fee currently charged for a PC seat. 

[Kirk Baker]

Dan,

What are the chances of seeing a Photo Mechanic App for the new iPad device?

I'd gladly pay the same license fee currently charged for a PC seat. 

I don't know what the chances are at this point in time.

-Kirk

[DanTermnato]

Kirk,

I hope you'll give it some serious consideration.  I think the greatest strength of Photo Mechanic is the ease of use in the field on a laptop.  But like many location photographers I'm constantly evaluating and omitting the unnecessary pieces of kit that make my bag heavier.

Getting rid of a laptop and using a device like the iPad cold potentially streamline my workflow and save some wear and tear on my body.

The iPad device is still months away and probably still a beta device for all intents and purposes.   At some point though,  it could be a laptop replacement that does everything current laptops do but in a much more efficient way.

Even a stripped down Photo Mechanic app that offers captioning, sorting and keywording would seem like not just a killer app for pros but also for regular folks who shoot with their iPhone.



 

[Kirk Baker]

Dan,

I hope you'll give it some serious consideration.  I think the greatest strength of Photo Mechanic is the ease of use in the field on a laptop.  But like many location photographers I'm constantly evaluating and omitting the unnecessary pieces of kit that make my bag heavier.

Getting rid of a laptop and using a device like the iPad cold potentially streamline my workflow and save some wear and tear on my body.

The iPad device is still months away and probably still a beta device for all intents and purposes.   At some point though,  it could be a laptop replacement that does everything current laptops do but in a much more efficient way.

Even a stripped down Photo Mechanic app that offers captioning, sorting and keywording would seem like not just a killer app for pros but also for regular folks who shoot with their iPhone.

If the iPad is what I think it is (an iPod Touch on steroids) then it would be a serious undertaking to port Photo Mechanic to it.  The UI capabilities of iPod Touch/iPhone apps is severely limiting.  For instance you cannot have two top-level windows open at a time and be able to interact with them both.  The application would require a serious rewrite.

We'll know more when we get our hands on one.

-Kirk

[Chris Parent]

I think a simple version would work great. A photo viewer as part 1 that works like Apple's camera roll. Click the photos you like and then move to phase 2, captioning. Same as now, small picture view and the IPTC information. Then the third step move to FTP or email. Just something simple to do simple on the run work.

[vAfotoriporter]

I was thinking on this myself, but the iPad in itself has more open questions than answers yet. It has to hit the shelves. We will see how Apple designed its connectivity with the Camera Connection Kit, and what possibilites they leave open for developers to use it. It has some possibilities but I think they will be limited.

My opinion is the iPad won't be much more use for photographers on the field than the iPhone is now. Maybe it will be possible to utilize it, but it will be marginal. Maybe I am mistaken.

Due to the specific design of the OS (like window handling, keyboard handling, etc) features of a PM app would be limited and they would require a great deal of redesigning. However once it will happen I surely will buy it (also for the iPhone if it will be capable of running it as well).

Even if not for working for full sized RAW images in a great stack, I could very well use it for my sorting and culling tasks with smaller res JPG-s and export the metadata I added to them (this is my workflow now on a netbook while I travel).

But first of all let's wait for the iPad to appear and be available to buy. We will see the rest.

[mbbphoto]

Wait and see is of course the sensible thing to do but Dan does have a point that an iPad would be a lot less hassle to carry around.....
Even limited functionality (ingest,ratings, tags, colors and captions....) that would then seamlessly integrate with a full system could be fantastic.
Initially I dismissed the iPad as an overglorified Kindle but the more I think about it the more excited I get....
Anyway, please get back to work on the cataloging app and we can wait and see on the Pad!

[Alex McKenna]

This was the first thing I thought of when I saw the iPad video :-)

I will definitely be getting one, because it will be so useful for work on the move, even WITHOUT any photo work, but having a cleverly-adapted PM would be very nice. Not sure how it would work, but there IS a way I know. Waiting to surprise us with its simple and obvious practicality.

I don't yet have an iPhone, but a fellow pro photographer is in the habit of showing off his best pics on one, and the iPad will be just that little bit better, without having the hassle of a laptop. (I have long given up dragging laptops around, and my Eepc netbook is incapable of anything much, except reducing me to a frustrated mass of red-hot fury, so that's back in its box these days. Awaiting techno-museum interest.

[vAfotoriporter]

Just a thought I had one day around: how nice sometimes it could be to have a catalog on the iPhone. The catalog itself does not take that many storage as the original photos do and the search ability on a handheld could be very useful while on the road in some cases. Not to mention the possibilities if the catalog will have server side functions as well and an iPhone / iPad could be a remote control for it to access images and have them sent by the server at home running the PM catalog.
Just a thought....on the other side. ,-))

[lloydclayton]

I want to use the iPad as a customer interface or customer kiosk at sporting events.
I would like my customers to tag their favorite images and move them to a folder.
Then come to the sales booth for finalizing their order. It sounds simple right?
I wish Photo Mechanic could write a very simple app like this.
It would completely change my sales model.

[vAfotoriporter]

I want to use the iPad as a customer interface or customer kiosk at sporting events.
I would like my customers to tag their favorite images and move them to a folder.
Then come to the sales booth for finalizing their order. It sounds simple right?
I wish Photo Mechanic could write a very simple app like this.
It would completely change my sales model.

For this maybe no app is really necessary. Just to set up some kind of gallery export template (or more likely to set up a server side solution) for displaying the images in a Safari page (what is clearly a feature of iPad) and an option to place orders in one form either saving the order list in a text file or submitting it through the web or just a local network the iPad connects to.
This particular use I think is less likely to urge for a PM development.

I sometimes hand over my laptop with PM showing the images and say the customer press key T (or any other marking method I don't use for anything else) on images you like. This method works but I don't find it that efficient to be used on a large event where many customers queue after each other.
A website ordering interface seems me a better way to go for this.

Using PM or at least a PM Light of some sort on the iPad however could be a great option for certain uses - especially in connection with the catalog features.

[dcayers]

I don't want any resources diverted from cataloging for an iPad solution.  As a PC user I have some apps that don't run a Mac and therefore will have a laptop with me at all times. I would not replace my laptop with an iPad as I travel.

[andrewross]

Now the iPad is out, I think the iPad will make a great platform for Photo Mechanic, especially for sending pix in the field, so I would like to second this wish! The iPad version does not need to be a full blown version of PM, a simple ingest, iptc editing and ftp/email syndication, it would seem possible to do; as on the iPhone there is FTP apps, meta edit app (basic) readily available.

The real benefit of having an iPad Photo Mechanic app is its instant start up and the ability to really quick edit, add the AirStash card reader and you have a really interesting wireless solution to a deadline workflow.

Really hoping for this!

Cheers

Andrew

[Kirk Baker]

Andrew,

Now the iPad is out, I think the iPad will make a great platform for Photo Mechanic, especially for sending pix in the field, so I would like to second this wish! The iPad version does not need to be a full blown version of PM, a simple ingest, iptc editing and ftp/email syndication, it would seem possible to do; as on the iPhone there is FTP apps, meta edit app (basic) readily available.

The real benefit of having an iPad Photo Mechanic app is its instant start up and the ability to really quick edit, add the AirStash card reader and you have a really interesting wireless solution to a deadline workflow.

But doesn't it seem like having 16 or 32 GB of capacity on the iPad would be severely limiting when today's flash cards are pushing 32 GB?  You'd have to send the data and delete it as the new photos are coming in since you'd run out of space (assuming you don't already have several GB of iTunes on the device or iBooks.)  You can download the images faster than you can upload them, and pausing to caption them would only slow things down.

The iPad is just an iPod Touch with a bigger screen and a few bells and whistles thrown in.

-Kirk

[Paul Smith]

But doesn't it seem like having 16 or 32 GB of capacity on the iPad would be severely limiting when today's flash cards are pushing 32 GB?  You'd have to send the data and delete it as the new photos are coming in since you'd run out of space (assuming you don't already have several GB of iTunes on the device or iBooks.)  You can download the images faster than you can upload them, and pausing to caption them would only slow things down.

The iPad is just an iPod Touch with a bigger screen and a few bells and whistles thrown in.

-Kirk

I totally agree with Andrew and others that would love to have a version of Photo Mechanic for the iPad. Regarding capacity, this would only really be limiting if you are considering a cataloging function or dealing with RAW/TIFF files. However, I see this as something that would only be used for JPEG files. Perhaps, for those shooters who shoot JPEG+RAW, it could be set up to only ingest the JPEG files? You would use it for each job and then remove the images or export to another computer. If one was only dealing with JPEG images and on a per-job basis, it would have to be a very big event to fill up 20 or 30 GB.

Of course, until Apple's iPad Camera Connection Kit is available at the end of the month, we don't know for sure how easy it will be to ingest photos to the iPad. The CCK only appears to work with SD cards or via the USB cable from the camera. Hopefully it may be possible to connect a CF card reader to the USB slot on the CCK.

On the other hand, the ability to shoot tethered onto the iPad, auto-ingest into an iPad version of Photo Mechanic then select, caption and FTP out would be amazing.

Have you got an iPad yet, Kirk?  I have and I think it is much more than just an iPod Touch with a bigger screen. The processor is much faster and more powerful and the larger screen real estate opens up many more possibilities.

Here's hoping..... ;-)

Cheers,

Paul