Photo Mechanic "App" for new iPad

[andrewross]

I suppose if nearly every one of our customers wrote us and told us that they would rather have an iPad PM than further development on Mac OS X and Windows products then we would definitely listen and change course.

-Kirk

Obviously further development of PM on the Mac OS X and Windows platforms takes priority. Although, personally, I have very little interest in a cataloging feature in PM. I'd much rather have development of a means of basic levels adjustments and crop rotation/straightening.

I think that many people who were maybe a little apathetic to the iPad when it was first announced will change their mind after spending some time using one. With the right apps it really does open up a world of possibilities.

Just my 2c.

- Paul

The levels adjustments and crop rotation/straightening development is an important need, this was brought up in discussion last year about this time I think!

I always thought PM was a quick, functional solution to deadline editorial workflow needs too - certainly most guys I know are using it for that purpose at the moment.

[Didz]

Hi Kirk

I was thinking of a PM lite, no ingest, browse the photos right of the card, the UI for the PMLite similar to iPhoto in the iPhone, IPTC capability for the captions, FTP and Email just as it is right now, and maybe some kind of cropping tool that relly crops the photos or better crops a duplicate of the photo. This would allows us to plug in a camera via a usb cable ( or until camera makers decide to put bluetooth in the cameras ) to and iPhone or iPad 3G, and transmit the photo, in my case, to my newspaper. It's for fast and dirty work, for the paper's website or on really tight to deadlines, anything else would be done as usual with a laptop.

From reading this thread most these ideas are already there and that you already have a full plate. But you can also see that lots of us are also looking for solutions to situation imposed by our employers. The newspaper I work for, is demanding from their photographers faster ways of getting and transmitting the photos from certain events.

Didier Debusschere

[Paul Smith]

I've been checking the App Store and, although there are several "photo" apps, there is nothing currently available to enable iptc captioning of images.  I agree with Didier, some form of PM Lite for the iPad would be really great. It doesn't need to have all the bells & whistles of the full PM - it could just work on jpegs only, either ingest from the card/camera all or selected images, apply a pre-set caption/copyright info etc. with the ability to just add to the caption any image specific info, rename files, crop & send via ftp or email.

Cheers,

Paul
Featureflash.com

[vAfotoriporter]

Check out Idruna's Pocket Phojo software for the Pocket PC OS. It offers quite what a photog needs on the field....just for the Win Mobile platform. Making it for the iPhone/iPad could be a good solution for everyone.

[Didz]

szurkebarat

yep, but my paper's newsroom is all MAC, and the iPhone will also be used for other duties, that's why I was thinking of a PM lite.

Didier Debusschere

[andrewross]

Check out Idruna's Pocket Phojo software for the Pocket PC OS. It offers quite what a photog needs on the field....just for the Win Mobile platform. Making it for the iPhone/iPad could be a good solution for everyone.

FYI: On asking The developer of Pocket Phojo, Paul Nolan, he didn't have anything as yet in the pipeline for the iPad although didn't totally dismiss the idea.

I would have to agree, that a "Pocket Mechanic Lite" would be a much better and preferred workflow solution though than another developers add on, because the program familiarity and some extra benefits of touch screen that it would bring in a "Pocket Mechanic Lite" is what the iPad is also essentially about too.

I'm surprised though the "laissez-faire" about this possibility, when it is clearly been a gold rush opportunity for many a developer.

As yet there isn't a realistic iptc captioning solution app on the iTunes store, accept one which was poorly done out of Japan a few months ago, therefore its not impossible to do at all. I suppose from a developers point of view, its unknown what the risk might be, but looking at the success of apps like DSRemote, Viewfinder, I do wonder why?

[Paul Smith]

FYI: On asking The developer of Pocket Phojo, Paul Nolan, he didn't have anything as yet in the pipeline for the iPad although didn't totally dismiss the idea.

I would have to agree, that a "Pocket Mechanic Lite" would be a much better and preferred workflow solution though than another developers add on, because the program familiarity and some extra benefits of touch screen that it would bring in a "Pocket Mechanic Lite" is what the iPad is also essentially about too.

I'm surprised though the bit "laissez faire" about this, when it is clearly been a gold rush opportunity for many a developer.

As yet there isn't a realistic iptc captioning solution app on the iTunes store, accept one which was poorly done out of Japan a few months ago, therefore its not impossible to do at all. I suppose from a developers point of view, its unknown what the risk might be, but looking at the success of apps like DSRemote, Viewfinder, I do wonder why?

I recently bought the Photogene app for the iPad. Seems like a very useful app for cropping, adjusting levels, applying effects, etc. But no IPTC caption facility or FTP facility. I sent an email to the developer and received a reply from him saying that he's had many similar requests and asking for details from me of what fields would need to be editable, whether in batches or singly, etc. It seems like he may be prepared to at least look at adding those features to Photogene.

However, I've got to agree with Andrew that a lite version of PM for the iPad would be much more preferable. Kirk, I know that it's early days for the iPad, but I really do think there could be a decent market there for PM.

Cheers,

Paul

[andrewross]

However, I've got to agree with Andrew that a lite version of PM for the iPad would be much more preferable. Kirk, I know that it's early days for the iPad, but I really do think there could be a decent market there for PM.

Cheers,

Paul

There are quite a few iPad/iPhone programmers in China, relatively cheap for development.....!

[vAfotoriporter]

Now that the Camera Connection Kit is out there all this comes more and more to reality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44F85wRgXdQ&feature=player_embedded
I watched the video and wanted to replace my netbook for an iPad....but without PM for it I couldn't use it for much.
,-(((

If the CameraBits guys don't want to enter the iPad game (like they did not want to enter the Pocket PC game) - what I can fully understand being a totally new direciton of development - it still would be great to team up with a developer (like those mentioned earlier) to put together their ideas. Not necessarily to call any other app PM lite or iPM or anything similar. But to have something to offer for these needs. Just show PM to the iPad/Pocket PC app developers and say a lot of your customers want this from you but you don't have the will or the capacity to do this. Give them some ideas and offer the possibility to cross advertise your products on each others websites. If one likes their app on the iPad can hear from PM and start using it on desktop. We PM users can use their product on our iPads/iPhones. Maybe work out some cross compatibility for the saved IPTC files, and so on.
If you don't want to compete them on their field then make them allies and work together with them....in case they are interrested of course.
Does it make a sense?

[soren steffen]

Check out Idruna's Pocket Phojo software for the Pocket PC OS. It offers quite what a photog needs on the field....just for the Win Mobile platform. Making it for the iPhone/iPad could be a good solution for everyone.

There is only one slight disadvantage of Pocketphojo.
It doesn't work properly.
At least not with my Nikon D3/D700 and a (recomended by Paul Nolan) ToshibaG1 phone. Neither via cable or WT4.

The Toshiba also runs out of juice very fast.
I have given it up and now I hope for an iPhone app.

[jimb]

There is only one slight disadvantage of Pocketphojo.

There is another not-so-slight disadvantage of Pocketphojo--its cost. The basic price is a whopping $489! Even with a $150 "freelance" discount now in effect, that's pretty steep in today's marketplace, no matter what it does.

[dsidaway]

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

[/quote]

I don't see the iPad replacing the laptop but there may be some field situations where the iPad might be beneficial. Maybe in those situations a photographer would work with multiple cards instead of ingesting to the iPad and just send a photo or two directly from the card or perhaps live ingest only a tagged file.
Then again, if you could create something for the iPad then why not for the iPhone/iPod Touch?
(You would probably get tons of downloads from the app store, at a nominal charge, that could act as a marketing tool for the big brother app.. PM.)
 
It's like asking you to design a piece of software to justify me buying an iPad. No holidays for you! LOL

DS

[Dale Young]

At The Detroit News, our dream would be to be able to use the Ipad tethered to a camera and use a PM app to move the images to a remote server with iptc information pasted to each image.  The ability to use it on remote cameras would be simply fantastic.  We would also use the card-reading ability of the Ipad to send one or two images on deadline situations.  The memory of the Ipad is more than sufficient for those needs, but NOBODY has an app for us....yet.   As we've been using PM since the beginning, everybody on staff is up to speed on the software and it would be a natural extension for us to use it on an Ipad.
 - Dale Young

[greyhoundx]

Hmm, stumbled on this discussion. Interesting but not anything I'm concerned about. Anyone that's been involved on the development side will tell you it's a huge investment of time and money, not to mention limited resources. Unless you've got a lot of time on your hands, or all you do is little Apple Apps that usually sell for $.99 you don't jump into such a project lightly.

80% of iPhone apps sold are games, and Apple is counting on almost the same level of gamer support to keep the iPad alive. Look at the iPad. They couldn't put a USB host connector or a SD slot in it? $29 for a connector kit that should have been built in, stupid. Just something else to lose or break off. Come on, that tells you this wasn't meant to be used for much of anything outside of the little apps from their store. I love my iPhone 3GS but it's not quite a real business device, perhaps iPhone OS 4.0 will change that? Even I have hope for Apple to get a glove and get in the game, but I'm not holding my breath after 1+ year to add cut & paste - LOL !

I think it's great that people are trying to make something really useful out of an over-sized IPod Touch/iPhone. But before anyone would create a real program for it, the smart ones will wait and see if the iPad really becomes a viable development investment over the next year...

[sidewinder]

greyhoundx,

You sound just like the people that said the iPhone would not be a success. The simple fact is that the iPad is already a big success and will continue to sell in ever increasing numbers for a long while. It is an incredible device. Apple takes the time to do things right. They didn't add cut and paste to the iPhone until they were happy with how it worked. They could have released a less user friendly implementation earlier. The same is true for multitasking. The user experience must be a good one.

Does it make sense for Camera Bits, Inc. to come out with an iPad version of Photo Mechanic? Only they can answer that question. But they could sell it for whatever they wanted on the iTunes store.

Scott