Sitting in a lawn chair outside the Spokane Apple Store last week, I pondered the absurdity of my week-long quest to buy an iPad 2. Arriving at 5 a.m. netted me the sixth spot in line and an eventual 16-gig wifi slate of glass and aluminum.
Did I really need another digital device to supplement all the other Apple products that grace my home and workspace? No, of course not. But using the iPad 2 this past week has made me giddy with excitement as I discover one new feature or application after another. It’s interesting, when I demonstrate to people who have never seen or touched one, how utterly amazed they are. Suffice to say this multimedia device is smokin’ hot. There are enough glowing reviews on the Web that I don’t need to pontificate much more.
A great tool for photojournalists
The one thing I really wanted to do with my iPad 2 was edit and send photos from the field back to the newspaper. I couldn’t find much info from other photojournalists about what applications would help me replace Photo Mechanic and Photoshop on my laptop. Nor could I find anyone who was using the iPad to send their photos via FTP (file transfer protocol) back to their newspapers. I can happily announce that during my first photo assignment today I did just that.
My first stop last week was to the Apple iPad App Store where I found this amazing little program called Photogene. It allows me to crop, tone, caption and send my photos all from a three dollar application. The best part is that it has a built in FTP, so I can send my photos directly into our Merlin archive system.
Here was my workflow today:
- Shot a photo of a woman in a job-training program working in the kitchen of a restaurant.
- Ordered lunch, sat down at a table and plugged in the Apple camera connection cable between the iPad and the USB port on my Nikon D3s. It immediately displayed all the. jpg’s in the iPad’s photo browser. By touching a photo, it marks it so you don’t have to bring in every image on your card. I hit “Import Selected” and the files were quickly downloaded from the camera.
- I open Photogene and select the photo I want to edit. The workflow now is super simple. I crop my photo, and then toned the image. Toning is done using sliders for exposure, color temperature, saturation etc. There are a ton of other adjustments from noise reduction to selective color channels. It even has a digital histogram and curves adjustment tools.
- On to the metadata tab, I clicked “IPTC” and added caption info and filled out the other metadata fields that are needed to archive the photo for later.
- Finally, I hit the export button and chose “FTP” from the menu (You can also send directly to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr or email.) I already have all the info such as IP address and password stored, so I just add the file name (make sure there are no spaces) and upload the photo using my ATT MiFi . A minute later it was ready for an editor to move to the desk.
Some observations
Will the iPad 2 replace a laptop? Probably not. I think the iPad is perfect if you need to move a couple of photos from your car during a breaking news event. It’s not be ideal for slogging 300 photos from a high school basketball game.
You need to buy the Camera Connection Kit from Apple ($30.00), which includes an SD card reader and an Apple connector to mini USB cord. I wish there was a CF card reader, but the cable works as advertised.
Typing a caption is easy, but it is all on one line that gets obscured as you type past the field boundary. A bigger caption field for photojournalists is a must have.
Get the PhotoSync application ($1.99). It lets you transfer photos to and from your iPhone, computer and iPad wirelessly. It also lets you bypass the iTunes software, which is not really intended for photos.
I also bought the pro upgrade for eight dollars. It adds a few more things that professionals need such as applying star ratings, adding personal watermarks to exported images, saving your FTP settings, adjusting RGB curves individually, and controlling JPEG export settings.
If any other photojournalists are using an iPad to edit photos please share your experiences in comments below!
Mastering Multimedia 