Up early and having fun playing with various iPad photo editing apps. This is that Ford pickup truck shot from yesterday but tweaked a bit in Painteresque and Photoshop Touch.
A lot more interesting with this treatment!
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Category: iPad
Since the launch of the iPad (3rd Generation) with that beautiful Retina display earlier this year, mine has been an almost constant companion. At breakfast each morning, it has been my go to machine – with Verizon LTE speeds and the beautiful display. Same for lunch if I’m alone. It’s gone of many airplane flights with me across the country – and has been a real workhorse – replacing my use of my 11-inch Macbook Air much of the time – except at the office where I plug the Air into a larger Cinema Display and use it with the Apple Bluetooth Keyboard and Magic Trackpad.
But, about two weeks ago, I bought a new iPad mini – and just never looked back. In fact, I’ve just sold that big iPad – after becoming very pleased with the even more versatile, small iPad mini form factor. I was even pleasantly surprised by the screen on the mini – a non-Retina version to be sure (as pointed out by many reviewers) but one which still looks great on the smaller mini screen. The feel of the iPad mini reminds me of the feel I had when I first got the 11-inch Air – compared to the 15-inch Macbook Pro that had been my everyday workhorse machine. Small is beautiful!
I noticed that Nick Bilton seems to feel the same way. In a post earlier today on the New York Times Bits blog, Bilton writes “If you’re still on the fence about whether you should buy the iPad Mini, I have a tip for you: you’re on the wrong fence.”
Yep, I agree! These iPad minis are going to start being seen everywhere.
Three months ago I had major surgery to deal with an important health issue. A few days before my surgery, I happened to discover an app that sounded like it might be useful for me to use as a journal following my surgery. That app was Day One.
Since the day of my surgery three months ago, I’ve been using Day One to journal my thoughts every day, noting my progress (or, sometimes, maybe a lack of progress!). Day One is there for me every morning – and it’s been where I’ve captured how I’m feeling, what I’m learning, and more. I mostly write in the morning – but, sometimes, I write later in the day – adding to my morning thoughts based on the events of the day.
Day One has both iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Mac versions – and they fully synchronize – so you can write whenever and wherever you are – with the device that’s with you. Day One is one of the best examples I’ve seen of using “the cloud” to make things seamless. It just works.
I’ve never been up to a keeping a daily paper-based journal – but I’ve been enjoying how easy daily journaling is to do so with this app. It looks great – and its cross-platform features just help encourage journaling wherever I am. It’s my version of a Photo 365 project – writing sometime every day about how I feel…and more. A delight – especially now as I’m looking back on three months of my daily notes! And, with the latest update, I can add a photo to each journal entry – just makes me happy!
Thanks to the Day One team for making such a wonderful app! You guys “done good”!
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Wasting Time
For the first time in the last few days, I’m back in my home office this morning using my normal computer configuration (MacBook Pro, external display, etc.). While I’ve been away, I’ve been relying exclusively on my iPad for my online activities. And, it’s been different.
This forced separation – of me from computer and big display to using only an iPad – made me realize a few things about how I’ve been doing and getting things done. All in all, the experience of just using the iPad has been refreshing. No extra windows (like a perpetually running Twitter feed on the right side of the screen) to pull my attention away, an integrated email experience so that I’m not flipping between email accounts in my browser, no urge to click on any of the other 20+ tabs that I have open, by default, in the browser on my computer.
On the iPad, I get done whatever task that is in my mind – and then I’m done. On the big screen, I’m much more tempted to click around and get lost in new things. As I finish a task on the iPad and put it down, it’s different – I can go do other things away from the device. Refreshing in a way!
I know some folks use Lion’s Mission Control to setup separate screen spaces that provide this kind of isolation on the big screen. This recent dedicated experience with the iPad makes me want to explore that approach further!
A while back, I posted about a home screen that I put together for my iPad from a photo taken on a late spring morning in Sausalito using my tiny Canon PowerShot S90.
Recently, I put together another version of this same image – this time converted to black and white. I enjoy a black and white background on the iPad screen – the color icons of the applications “pop” off the background. Try it, you’ll see what I mean. Click here for the light box version!
A colleague asked “So Scott – tell me again what you do about emails you open with 1) PDFs and 2) links – that you want to read later, on the airplane?”
Here’s what I’ve been doing:
- If I’m on a web page that I want to read – just not now – I quickly archive it (using a bookmarklet) to Instapaper. Instapaper has both an iPhone and an iPad client as well as a browser interface I can use on my Mac – so I can go back and read the article anytime, anyplace. If I sync my iPhone/iPad Instapaper apps before getting on a plane, the articles are all stored in the Instapaper app on the device – so I can read even without network access. I use Instapaper ALOT for asynchronous reading of articles.
- If I’m on a web page that I want to remember – perhaps not an article to read but something else, then I bookmark the page using Pinboard (using another
bookmarklet) – see: http://pinboard.in/tour/. Pinboard provides me a chronological history of interesting pages that I might want to go back do. Has a lot of other features (tagging, etc) that I’m just beginning to learn how to use effectively. - For PDF’s, I just download them to my Downloads directory and periodically go back and review what’s there. If it’s a PDF that I might want to be able to read on my iPhone/iPad, I may save to a Dropbox directory instead – so that I
can access it wherever I have a network connection. This works great when you’re bored at lunch, etc. – except when on a plane. For the plane, you have to remember to download the PDF into your device using Dropbox and to also mark it as a favorite so that it’s saved locally in the device.
How about you? How are you managing your online life?
I’d like to highly recommend this TidBITS article by photographer Jeff Lynch about how to use Lightroom to effectively manage a great looking photo portfolio on your iPad. He’s got all of the tricks and techniques clearly outlined. A great reference! [Note: Jeff’s article is also available directly from his blog. I highly recommend Jeff’s blog by the way – he does a great job!]
Early yesterday, I took off on a photo shoot expedition up to Marin County – and ended up capturing one of my favorite shots of San Francisco Bay with my tiny Canon PowerShot S90.
It’s been a very popular photo on Flickr – and tonight I made a version of it available for personal use on iPads – 1600 pixels wide, 132 pixels/inch – just perfect. It’s available for non-commercial use (like on your iPad!) via a Creative Commons license.
If you’ve got an iPad and are looking for some new wallpaper, take a look at this image! You can customize it (using Photoshop or Preview) to add you own personal information to the image – so that if you happen to leave you iPad behind it’s got its own “luggage tag” built-in. If you want to license it for commercial rights, contact me: licensing@sjl.us.
Enjoy!
PS: You may also want to check out Trey Ratcliff’s iPad wallpaper app – based on his spectacular HDR images that he shares on StuckinCustoms.com daily.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been using my new iPad in a number of different settings – and have some definite thoughts on where it plays really, really well – and where it doesn’t. Here we go…with the two extremes based on my experience.
iPad Plays Really Well – I recently traveled from SFO to JFK and back on Virgin America – whose optional AirCell wireless works reasonably well cross-country. Let’s just say that it’s not a speed demon (try downloading a new iPad app from the App Store enroute!) – but for basic email, browsing, etc. it works great on the iPad. Both going and coming, the only device in my hands was the iPad.
My iPhone stayed in my pocket – why wouldn’t you opt instead for the huge iPad screen as your content consumption device?
My MacBook Pro stayed in my backpack – even in Virgin’s economy section there’s just not enough room for a 15-inch screen to be used comfortably.
But, with the iPad, even basic email tasks are handled with ease – without the physical constraints. For this kind of travel – on a wifi-equipped airline like Virgin America – the iPad works really well. It’s really “all you need” enroute!
iPad Plays Poorly – When I’m at home – and my MacBook Pro is nearby, it’s the ultimate content creation machine for me. The iPad doesn’t come close – even though many of the basics are present on the iPad. It sort of feels like the days of the TRS-80 Model 100 – which I used to read CompuServe forums back in the good old days – but which wasn’t capable of much else.
As an example, I had a flurry of reading this morning – a typical Sunday morning. Using Safari on the MacBook, I was able to read, decide whether to tweet a story, if so – invoke Bit.ly to post the tweet quickly and get right back to reading.
Along the way, I might decide to save a text copy to Instapaper for reading later (by the way, I’ve recently become totally addicted to Instapaper – but that’s another story!) That straightforward workflow just isn’t possible – yet – on the iPad. On the iPad, there’s too much back and forth through the Home button, selecting different Safari windows (oh how I miss Tabs on the iPad version of Safari!), etc. According to the recent iPhone 4.0 announcement, the iPad will get some new support in the fall – look forward to seeing how those enhancements might enhance my workflow. Meanwhile, there’s an on-going role in my heavy content-creation world for the laptop!
Comparison of iPad to Kindle – That said, it is a very funny feeling to go from working on an iPad for several hours to picking up a Kindle 2 and trying to read! Immediately, the lack of the touchscreen on the Kindle screams out at you! You get over it quickly – the TRS-80 Model 100 comes to mind again!
That said, the Kindle iPad app that Amazon has provided is great – allowing me to access all of my Kindle purchased books on the iPad. It’s very efficient, very easy to use, works just like you’d expect it to work.
But, what’s especially irritating about the Kindle and about to result in my canceling a couple of subscriptions (New York Times, Washington Post) is the lack of periodical support on the Kindle iPad (or iPhone) app. One of these days Amazon will wise up and make periodicals available across a user’s devices in the same way that purchased books are available today. In the interim, paying to subscribe to periodicals on the Kindle just doesn’t make sense.
How about you? How are you and iPad getting along? Share you comments below!
My guess is that one of the “killer” photography combinations this year will be the Canon PowerShot S90 and the Apple iPad. They’re both beautiful devices – the trick will be combining their capabilities to enable great photography on the go – in an ultra-portable combination.
As it turns out, I own both already. My iPad arrived just over a week ago – and I’ve been having great fun with it – but I’ve not been able to put it to serious use in a photography sense. The problem: at the moment, there’s no easy way to get shots off of my S90 and into the iPad.
I’ve ordered the iPad Camera Connection Kit – but it’s scheduled to ship in “late April”. The kit offers both USB and SD card input for the iPad – and says it supports “standard photo formats, including JPEG and RAW.”
I’d like to think that sometime soon, a great camera like the S90 or its successor and the iPad would simply be able to sync wirelessly when in close proximity. And, I should be able to do that without any clumsy add-on adapters/accessories. Then we’d really be cooking – and the iPad would begin to become the dream machine for photographers on the go.
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