I’ll say this firstly, nothing will ever replace my iMac when it comes to editing photographs. Even more so since I’ve upgraded to 8gb Ram. Photomatix seems instant when processing an 11 image HDR. Lightroom has also become a lot quicker and even though I don’t use it much, photoshop is now a beast. But for a while I’ve been hoping to get my hands on an apple iPad. Before I had the chance to try the whole range out, I knew for certain tat only the iPad 2 or Retina would do castin the mini aside. But once I actually went and spent some time with them, the iPad mini came out trumps. It’s weight, size, power and screen were perfect. So was the price. So once I had it, I knew that I would have to get a good photo edit program.
As of now, I do not have the camera connect kit so I use Dropbox on my iMac to get photos I wan to my iPad. The two apps I have downloaded are iPhoto and Photoshop Touch. I had already purchased iPhoto on my iPhone for £2.99 some time ago so it synced straight to my iPad. Photoshop touch set me back £6.99. As with the is version, iPhoto only edits JPEG and to my surprise Photoshop touch won’t use NEF files or RAW files. However you can use and save work as psd or png files.
First up, iPhoto. I love the journal feature within this app.
It has some nice features and looks great. It takes your usual editing features and adds some nice animations and ways to pick your edit. Quite expected from apple. But finally there are some great ways to edit your photo and end up with a good looking final image. Not bad for 3 quid!
Next, on to Photoshop Touch. Instantly disappointed with not being able to import from Dropbox and no use of raw files. But since ps touch isn’t supposed to replace the desktop, then the disappointment quickly faded.
This again was a recognisable app. I personally don’t have cs6 but from looking at YouTube tutorial videos where cs6 is used, you can see why ps touch looks like it does. Pretty sexy if I can say! Because of my initial disappointment, expectation was at a minimal and had started regretting parting with £6.99. If I hadn’t have had the £20 App Store voucher from my sis in law for my birthday then I might have been to tight.
I first played around with the preset features and tested out the curves feature. All good so far.
Then came the lens flare feature. You’ll see the finished product of this fun feature on the final image of this post.
But I was taken back by how great this app is when using the clone tool! I have yet to try the other features on the left hand bar but if they are as good as the clone, then I’m pleased.
Here’s the original image with a great big mound of mud exactly where I don’t want it to be. In the next image it’s no where to be seen!
I’m still using and playing around with the featurs on both of these apps and finding each one to have different ways of being fun and creatively inspiring. Here’s a finished image from ps touch where I added the sunburst and flare. Obviously generated to some but just good enough to look real for the others!
Matthew Watkins Photography 