Adobe announced new tools today that lets developers create tablet apps — called Photoshop Touch Apps — that interact directly with Photoshop CS5. They also created a few apps to showcase some of the possibilities of using a tablet while working in Photoshop, including one called Adobe Nav. Basically it turns your iPad into a separate interface for controlling Photoshop, allowing you to select tools, customize the toolbar, or manage your open files by conveniently showing them as thumbnails. It’ll be available for $2 starting in early May, but we can’t wait to see what other apps developers will unveil before then!
Sure this might be an April Fool’s joke, but it’s also a pretty interesting concept demo. Perhaps this is a glimpse of how we might be operating cameras in the future.
Adobe is working on a full version of Photoshop for the iPad for people who need more than the Photoshop Express app that’s more designed for mobile phones. At Photoshop World, which kicked off earlier this week, Adobe gave a neat demo of the app in action, and Eric Reagan over at Photography Bay recorded the video above. It’s a neat look at how they’re trying to rethink the popular program for a different kind of computer.
When the iPad 2 was announced a week ago, many people were undoubtably excited that front and rear-facing cameras were added to the device. However, rather than endow the iPad with a rear-camera equal or superior to the iPhone 4′s, the geniuses at Apple decided to add a pretty lame one, giving it the (dis)honor of being the first “camera” to have a sensor resolution lower than the display resolution.
While the iPhone 4 packs a pretty sweet 5-megapixel sensor that allows it to suffice as a compact camera for many users, the iPad 2 was only given a paltry .7-megapixel one. This means it shoots 960×720 images while displaying them on a 1024×768 LCD screen, making it suitable for video chatting but horrible as a still camera.
When Apple designed the iPad, they opted for simplicity and omitted things like a USB port or memory card slots. This made it more tedious for photographers to transfer a large number of photographs onto their iPads, since the Camera Connection Kit needed for USB and SD Card support comes in two separate dongles. Luckily, there’s a made-in-China knockoff that can ease a little of the pain — the 3-in-1 iPad Camera Connection Kit combines the two dongles into one nicely designed apparatus. Available in both black and white, it comes with a USB port, a SD Card slot, and a Micro SD Card slot. Pick one up over at the M.I.C Gadget store for $29.90.
onOneSoftware’s DSLR Camera Remote is a convenient way to control your camera remotely with an iPhone or iPad, but a major downside is that the camera needs to be connected via wire to a computer running the software. BlueSLR is a dongle that connects to your DSLR and allows it to be controlled using an iPhone or iPad, allowing you to shoot remotely from up to 300 feet away. It also geotags your photos, writing its GPS location to the EXIF data of your images. Sadly, it’s only compatible with Nikon DSLRs for now, though they’re working on releasing a Canon version as well.
Be warned though — portability will come at a great price. While the basic version of DSLR Camera Remote is free (the pro version is $20), the BlueSLR dongle will set you back $149. Hmmm… If the geotagging isn’t what you’re after, maybe carrying around a laptop isn’t such a big deal after all.
After photographer Ross Ching came across Dentsu London’s creative 3D light painting technique with an iPad, he decided to give it a try, combining it with timelapse photography to make a music video for “I’ll Try Anything Once” by The Strokes (seen above). The app he used was Holographium, which you can pick up for $5 from the app store. Read more…
Here are a couple mockups by MacRumors showing what Photoshop might look like on mobile computing devices like the iPad or iPhone. Adobe recently published a presentation they did on various things they’re exploring with such devices. An example was using Content Aware Fill to modify a scene by painting over objects to be removed using your finger. Read more…
You’ve probably seen weird DIY light experiments before, but what about using only iPads as your main light sources? Photographer Jesse Rosten did just that, using 9 iPads (worth a cool $4,500) on maximum brightness on a recent photoshoot. On his blog, he writes,
Now before the haters start commenting let me first agree with you, yes, this is totally impractical (sidenote: most of my best ideas are often also my worst ideas). Nine iPads will set you back around $4,500. That amount of money can buy you a LOT of lumens in the form of a generic monobloc. This is not intended to be an exercise in excess, but rather a self-imposed limitation to help flex the creative muscles, and to make a point.
Think about it. One 60 watt bulb can put out more light that a truckload of iPads. And you don’t have to spend truckloads of cash to find a 60 watt. This whole making art thing is all about what you do with what you have. We just happened to have a bunch of iPads laying around so we went with that. Today’s dSLR sensors are sensitive enough that you could easily do this with some flashlights, headlights, headlamps, real lamps, or even – heaven forbid – real strobes! Now go forth and do!
Now we just sit back and wait for some copycat to try this idea with 81 iPod touches.
Back in September we featured a creative technique that used an iPad to “light paint” 3D objects and text. Now there’s an app called Holographium that allows anyone to light paint words with an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. All you do is provide some text, start taking a long exposure photo, and then drag your iPad (or whatever iDevice) through the photo while the app slowly displays the various slices of the text. The resulting photograph will show the text spelled out in 3D and floating in the air. Read more…
