Well the other day I installed the latest Photosmith the Adobe Lightroom companion for the iPad. I also updated the Lightroom plug-in to 1.0.10.
Caroline had been shooting some macro shots of flowers and local wildlife (mainly Damsel Flies, and Toads), so I borrowed her compact flash card to test the update.
I am please to report that it worked perfectly. I imported the photos, keyworded a few. Added some location information to one, and rated them and colour rated them.
I then tested the sync, and wirelessly imported them back into Lightroom. I then made a few changes, sync’ed common information across all the photos and resync’ed again.
This information was then transferred back to the iPad. During the day in spare moments I continued to update the metadata and keyword information on the iPad, and at the end of the day sync’ed again.
I am pleased to report PhotoSmith worked perfectly and can be well recommended. Now we are just waiting for the batch syncing of metadata, and for me the killer feature, two way sync of photos, so I can take a shoot from the Laptop to the iPad, do some work then sync back.
I have greatly enjoyed the iPhone App, iBird UK. For someone like me who does not know their birds its an extremely useful tool.
I am growing increasingly found of bird photography, thanks to the recent purchase of a Nikor TC17MkII which makes my 70-200mm f/2.8 telephoto zoom a 119-340mm f4.8 telephoto zoom.
The one thing that was a shame, was how poor it looked on the iPad, it being a iPhone app and not built for the big screen. While not a reference book it was a useful app and I hoped the developer would produce an iPad version for the UK. I would have willingly paid for it.
Well this weekend an update came out. iBird UK is now a Universal App and works and looks great on the iPad as well as the iPhone.
Highly searchable with photographs, drawings and links to flicker. It can also can play you bird song to help in your identification as well as having a notes field which even allows you to add your gps co-ordinates from the phone.
So thanks guys, but how about a more in depth world version for the iPad?
Check out there website for more details – www.ibird.com
You can now see some new links at the top of the page. The most exciting is our new Shop.
The shop is not live yet, were still in the process of setting up, but I hope to go live on 1st July 2011 for USA sales and a few months later for Europe.
Here I will be offering limit edition prints, fine art prints, and free ecards. Have a look and tell me what you think and feel free to try out the free ecards now (not available on all images).
Visit www.rbphotographic.co.uk and the new shop, have a good look round, first ten people to email enquiries with a comment on the new shop will receive a free coupon entitling you to a 50% discount from the shop.
Discounts valid from the launch of the shop for 3 months.
Update released for Adobe Lightroom, and Adobe Camera RAW.
“Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.4.1
The Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 3.4.1 update includes these enhancements:
• Additional camera support for several new camera models including the Canon Rebel T3i, Nikon D5100 and Fuji FinePix X100
• Corrections for issues introduced in previous versions of Lightroom 3
• The Lightroom 3.4.1 update includes an important correction for a bug introduced in the Lightroom 3.4 release”
The Adobe Lightroom team issued an important announcement concerning a bug that can affect jpg users.
“The Lightroom and Camera Raw team would like to inform you of a potentially severe bug that was introduced in the Lightroom 3.4 and Camera Raw 6.4 update. Please note that this bug only impacts customers who are saving metadata to JPEG files with a rare characteristic.(JPEG files must have an unusually large block of private camera data included in the file to be susceptible to the bug*) This scenario is so rare that we do not believe that it is necessary for customers who have already upgraded to revert to the previous version of Lightroom or Camera Raw. However, the bug could cause image corruption which falls within our highest severity category of bugs. The team believes it’s very important to notify you of the risk and provide an estimate of when we will be able to deliver a correction in the form of Lightroom 3.4.1 and Camera Raw 6.4.1. We intend to have these updates available by Friday, May 27th.”
I am no bird watcher and certainly no twitcher but I do enjoy a trip to the Park or Nature Reserve, either to just enjoy the view, walk or fresh air.
Often I’ll take the camera and photograph the birds.
That often leaves me with a problem. Recognising the birds. While I have books at home, sometimes you want to know there and then what it is you have spotted/photographed.
This is where your iPhone/iPod Touch comes in, together with an app called iBird UK (also available for other countries).
Download the limited free version and give it a trial. I am sure, like me after a short while you will end up buying it.
PhotoSmith, the companion iPad application for Adobe Lightroom is now available.
As soon as it became available this morning I downloaded and installed it.
When I am away from home and don’t have my laptop with me, it will be come an essential part of my work flow.
Import is simple. I just plugged my Compact Flash card reader into the USB connector of the Apple connection kit and I had soon imported the hundred odd photographs I had taken at Whisby Nature Reserve yesterday.
The app itself is relatively simple. With the ability to select all, or by a two fingered tap, just the ones you are interested in, you can create Collections. With a Grid view, Loupe view and a full screen view, interacting with your photographs is simple and direct. Zoom in and check you focus, flag them with Ratings, Keywords and Metadata.
Once your back home, either wirelessly sync or if you have a lot of images, sync with your iPad cable back to lightroom. iTunes is not necessary, just download the free Lightroom plugin from http://blog.photosmithapp.com/index.php/plugin/
A simple but killer app which will make my work flow easier and faster, when away from home.
I can think of a number additional features I would like to see, such as presets to quickly add common details to lots of photos at once, and two way sync, so I can take a batch of photographs out of lightroom and onto the iPad for updating metadata when I have some free time.
So far its worked as advertised, does it have any bugs, well not really, I have been a little unfair to it, such as cancelling mid sync over wireless then trying to continue over a wired connection. I had to quit both Lightroom and PhotoSmith and restart them before they would carry on where they left, but to complain about such things is a little unfair. Sometime the refresh can fail but just click to another section and all is updated.
Can I recommend it, Yes definitely, and I look forward to putting it into some real action next time I take a trip as I will be leaving the laptop at home.
Rating 4 stars out of 5. If it gets the ability to apply presets and two way sync, i’ll make that 5 stars. For the amount of effect the develops have put in and for the amount of time this will save it is well worth the £10.99.
If your an iPad user and you have Lightroom, buy now.
Well the other day I installed the latest Photosmith the Adobe Lightroom companion for the iPad. I also updated the Lightroom plug-in to 1.0.10.
