Tag: iOS

Do Not Disturb While Driving

Do Not Disturb While Driving is my most anticipated feature in iOS 11.

While this feature is enabled, the iPhone stops pushing most notifications. Emergency alerts, timers, and alarms can break through. You can optionally allow the phone to reply to incoming text messages with an explanation (and a way to break through if it’s really important).

Incoming calls are allowed to come through, but only when the iPhone is connected to a hands-free accessory like a headset or the car’s built-in audio system. Otherwise, the phone behaves like the normal Do Not Disturb—it will allow in the favorites you specify and repeated calls from the same person within three minutes.

Foodie is an app for foodies to take photos of food

Foodie is a camera app designed to help users take better photos of food. The app is quite simple to use. After launching the app, the user chooses a filter -- there are 24 from which to choose -- and snaps an image. Each filter is designed for a particular food type; e.g. YOU for breakfast items like egg and RO for alcoholic beverages. That's how I have interpreted the hard to see icons.

The Foodie camera has an auto-blurring function that blurs the background to focus the food item's image. The app automatically recognizes food as the subject and defocuses the surrounding area to simulate a large aperture lens's narrow depth of field. Most high-end restaurants tend to be high on ambience, which in many cases means low on light. The Foodie app can control the iPhone's flash using it to provide continuous lighting.

The user can also import existing images from the iPhone photo library.

bacon and toast on plate
Sunday 21 February, 2016 | Apple iPhone 6 | iPhone 6 back camera 4.15mm f/2.2

A lot of people like to shoot food images from directly above. Foodie has a feature that changes the shutter button from black to yellow when the iPhone is horizontal to aid the shooter in getting the perfect shot. The app automatically saves captured images to the iPhone Photos app and shares to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

  • App name: Foodie
  • Supported devices: Android, iPhone
  • Cost: Free
  • Developer and operator: LINE Corporation
growler of beer, cake, pint of ale
Sunday 21 February, 2016 | Apple iPhone 6 | iPhone 6 back camera 4.15mm f/2.2

Photo Editing on iOS is a mess

Why I think the iPhone and iPad are useless image editing machines. #iOS

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I edit a lot of images on my iPhone 6. Most of them are images taken on the phone with the native camera app or imported and then edited in one of the several apps. Sometimes I used the non-destructive editing tools and the "Edit In.." feature to edit my images via third-party editing tools that I access right from the Photos app.

The challenge is that only a few of the popular third-party editing tools or filter apps support this feature. Here is the list of third-party non-destructive editing tools and filter apps that support "Edit In..".

  • Afterlight
  • Photoshop Express
  • Litely
  • Camera+
  • ProCam

Here are the other apps I have installed in a "Darkroom" folder on my iPhone.

  • Adobe Lightroom
  • Snapseed
  • RNI Films
  • AnalogFilm
  • VSCOcam
  • Darkroom
  • Prime
  • Photogene
  • Filters

If more apps were supported, my iPhone editing workflow would be simple. I would snap an image in the native camera app, then use the "Edit In..." feature of Photos to non-destructive edit or apply a filter.

But instead, my workflow involves snapping a photo in the native camera app, launching one of the filter and editing apps, opening the image in that app, making changes, and exporting a JPEG version of the edited image to Photos. If I want to use multiple apps to edit images, I end up importing and exporting copies of each successive image.

iOS edits JPEG images only. JPEG is a lossy compressed image format. Did you know that each time a JPEG image is edited and saved, it's re-compressed and image detail is lost? Only a few iOS photo editing apps — Afterlight and Darkroom are the standouts — use the “Edit in …” share sheet for non-destructive editing. Doing more than minimalist editing on an iPad or iPhone requires repeated import/exporting of JPEG images. I end up with several copies of the same image in various Photos folders.

Some editing and filter apps, such as Snapseed, Darkroom and Prime, allow the user to do non-destructive editing of images. However, the images have to be opened from Photos directly via those apps. Other than these three apps, I don't know of any other apps that allow this.

The situation is worse if I want to edit images taken with a DSLR or other interchangeable lens camera. The Apple Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader will import standard photo formats, including JPEG and RAW, but iOS doesn’t allow the photographer to edit RAW images. Just JPEG. I shoot images in RAW only. That makes the iPad almost useless to take on a photo excursion. Unless I set my Nikon to capture images in RAW and JPEG, I will not be able to make edits in the field. I guess Apple expects me to buy high-capacity SD cards or assumes that users only shoot JPEG. What's the point of editing the JPEG version of a RAW if I can't sync the changes back to the RAW image?

So I solved this problem by first importing my images to Adobe Lightroom on my iMac and then syncing them over to my iPad for editing in Adobe apps.

Here are the three Adobe iOS apps I use for photo editing RAW DSLR image on the iPad/iPhone.

The workflow is simple. I copy the DSLR images I want to work on into a specified collection in Adobe Lightroom. I then wait for the photos to sync to Adobe Creative Cloud. When I feel that the images have been copied, I launch the Adobe Lightroom Mobile app on my iPad. I wait for the photos to sync down to the iPad from Creative Cloud and then start working on minor edits and adjustments. If I need to do a bit more advanced editing — remove objects, work with layers etc. — I push the image to Adobe Fix or Adobe Mix. Adobe Fix/Mix pulls over the image with all current Lightroom edits. When I have finished my edit, the changes are synced back to Adobe Creative Cloud and available in Adobe Lightroom on my iMac.

Using these apps to edit the images in Adobe Lightroom requires a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud and sufficient storage on an iPad or iPhone. On a 64GB iPhone, this isn't a problem, but I have already exhausted the storage on my 32GB iPad. Before I start editing images on my iPad, I spend some time, removing unnecessary synced folders and images from Adobe Lightroom Mobile.

I can use the share sheet to export images from Adobe Lightroom mobile to other iOS editing apps, but none of the changes syncs back to Lightroom. The "Edit In..." feature only works with other Adobe apps.

If the photographer is willing to shoot and edit JPEG images only, is happy with reduced image quality, doesn't mind the extra administrative tasks of removing old edits, then the iPad and iPhone could be used as a mobile editing studio. But for me, using my iPad or iPhone as a serious mobile editing platform has too many limitations.