If you carry an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you also carry a great platform for displaying your artwork. While photographers such as Scott Bourne claim that they sold artwork straight after showing it on their iPhone, this has never happened to me. But I’ve shown my images in a number of casual settings, often by accident, since the topic just came up. Thus, it pays (literally and figuratively) to be prepared.
So how do you best showcase your artwork on an iPhone? Here are some tips:
Resize your images: The iPhone’s native resolution is 480 x 320 pixels at 163ppi. Since it allows you to zoom in, I resize my images to 960 x 640 pixels at 163ppi. You could make them even bigger, but since the iPhone’s storage space is limited, there’s a tradeoff between better resolution and more images.
Create portfolios: Similar to any showing of your artwork, create portfolios centering around subjects, trips or events, then pick only the best images. Store these as separte portfolios, then transfer them to your iPhone. When you show your artwork in a more ad-hoc or casual setting, people don’t have the time to look at 300 pictures. Thus, I typically pick between 10 and 20 pictures for a portfolio.
Adjust for the iPhone screen: The iPhone screen is not color-calibrated and to my eye, it’s very contrasty. Thus, I have to adjust my images, so they display at their best on the iPhone. Unfortunately, this is a manual process – there’s no one-setting-fits-all slider, button or action you can use in Photoshop. However, if you use a sequence of images in a portfolio that were all taken under similar lighting conditions, Photoshop
, Aperture and Lightroom make it easy to apply adjustments to a set of images, so you do not have to do this manually for every single image.
What other tricks do you use to best show your images on an iPhone?
If you want an even easier way to burn backup copies of your images in the field, check out EZDigiMagic’s portable storage solutions. They allow you to copy your memory cards straight to CD or DVD. They are battery-operated, so you can backup anywhere. Some even come with 2″ color displays, so you can preview your images. And some have TV-Out playback for viewing your images on a big screen. And all feature USB 2.0 connectors so you can later transfer the contents of your memory cards or your burnt DVDs to your computer at home.
While we have not tested these, this product line seems to be a very flexible backup and image management solution for your needs while in the field.
Prices starting at $249, Amazon: from $249.00
LaCie’s Rugged external hard drive series has long been a favorite for many photographers. Despite the dorky orange color, they are offered with single (USB) and triple (USB, Firewire 400 and 800) interface, can be operated in bus-powered mode, are fast and hold lots of pictures with capacities up to 500GB.
Recently, LaCie announced the LaCie Rugged XL hard drive with a capacity of 1TB. Suited for speed-intensive applications or for large-scale backups, the LaCie Rugged XL is compatible with both Mac and PC environments. In addition, it supports two key interfaces: Hi-Speed USB for universal compatibility, and the extreme speed of eSATA 3Gb/s. The new drive also includes a complete software bundle for easy formatting with LaCie Setup Assistant, as well as Genie Backup Assistant software for Windows users and Intego Backup Assistant software for Mac users.
Price:
LaCie Rugged 500GB: 165.99, Amazon: 147.99
LaCie Rugged XL: to be announced
The i-Visor Pro LS case not only allows you to transport your laptop computer safely from place to place, but it also doubles as a visor hood that enables you to view your monitor easily under even the brightest lighting conditions. This latest model features an added back compartment, waterproof zippers, plenty of extra pouches for hard drive back-ups and cables, and straps that will allow you to mount the case to a platform on a tripod or light stand. This case is constructed of a rugged ballistics outer fabric over a padded rigid core, is easy to use and quick to set up. It will accommodate up to a 17″ laptop.
Price: $149.99, Amazon: $149.99
Let’s face it – a lot of pictures taken with an iPhone and posted straight to Flickr or Facebook don’t look very good. But help is available for some quick adjustments through Tiffen’s Photo Fx. Simply take a picture, open Photo Fx, choose one of the 26 filters, use the sliders on the bottom to make your adjustments, then save the picture before posting it. It is a very simple and quick process which can yield quite dramatic improvements over your straight-out-of-your-iPhone pictures. Also handy is their before/after toggle, so you can always compare how the improvements look over the original. Of course, you can apply multiple filters on the same picture.
Supported filters include: Black and White, Black Pro-Mist®, Center Spot, Color-Grad® , Color Spot, Day for Night, Enhancer, Fog, Glow, Halo, High Contrast, Infrared, Looks, Night Vision, Old Photo, Polarizer, Pro-Mist®, Reflector, Star, Soft/FX®, Tint, Two Strip, Three Strip, Ultra Contrast and Vignette.
Our verdict: Highly recommended!
Price: $2.99 (introductory), later $3.99
CameraBits released version 4.6 of its popular PhotoMechanic software from beta at PMA today. The long list of changes since 4.5.x include a slick folder-watching Live Ingest function, a full-resolution loupe in the Contact Sheet view, additional upload templates for Amazon S3, Flickr, SmugMug and others, expanded GPS support, an option to export all program preferences for import into Photo Mechanic on another computer and much, much more. It is still very good at fast imports of images from your camera to a PC or a Mac. In addition, it allows for quick sorting, tagging and the creation of contact sheets in a color managed environment. The new version also adds support for the latest DSLRs.
Price: $150
Today, SanDisk announced the release of new versions of its popular ImageMate card reader line, featuring higher transfer speed, upgraded software applications and smaller and sleeker designs.
The All-In-One memory card reader can reach speeds of up to 34 megabytes per second (MB/s)1 when using a SanDisk Extreme® IV 45MB/s CompactFlash® card, and the Multi-Card reader is capable of up to 30MB/s2 read and 27 MB/s write data transfer rates when using a SanDisk Extreme® III 30MB/s Edition SDHC™ card. Sporting a stylish glossy black and metallic silver design, each reader’s tripod base is detachable, creating instant portability. In addition, SanDisk’s updated ImageMate software bundle enables customers to utilize the advanced features of both readers, simplifying the most common tasks that they want to perform—transferring photos to a PC, archiving and sharing them.
Having had very good experiences with previous versions of the ImageMate, we will acquire some and post a Field Tested review!
Price starting at $20, Amazon from $14.60
Here’s a very nifty program: Vincent Cheung released version 2 of his ShapeCollage program, which allows you to easily create a collage of different photos which you can then arrange in the shape you want. Simply pick your images, drag them into shape collage, choose your shape or create one and you are done. Upload the collage to your blog or website, save it as a separate image then import it into Photoshop — there are no boundaries. Let your creativity reign.
Sure, there are other ways to create collages and shapes of collages, but not as easily as in ShapeCollage. Give it a try and see yourself how easy it is to be creative!
Highly recommended!
Price: free
Tiffen released version 2 of its Dfx software, which allows you to reproduce many of the most popular filters you used to use in the field. Overall, the new version includes more than 2,000 standard and special-effects filters, which can be used as-is or even customized and saved for future use. Some of these filters have been part of our workflow and have consistently produced superior results without going through a steep learning curve. While not inexpensive, these filters can save you endless hours trying to re-create a special look or effect in Photoshop.
Some filter examples: Ambient Light, Close-up Lens, Hazem High Contrast, Warm and Cool Polarizers or Wide Angle Lens.
Highly recommended!
Standalone price: $99.95, Amazon: $99.95
Photoshop plugin: $299.95, Amazon: $299.95
Aperture plugin: $299.95, Amazon: $274.85
Today, Western Digital announced a new version of its My Book World Edition. Featuring sizes of 1TB and 2TB, these My Books are ready to be plugged directly into your router. With the click of a few buttons, the storage device can then be configured. As always, it comes with bundled backup-software that can be installed on your Mac or your PC. Given the good experience we have with our Western Digital drives, we have high hopes for this one.
Price: $449.00 (2TB), Amazon: $393.33
