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Review: Photosmith App for iPad (Lightroom plugin)
Pupator
Registered Users Posts: 2,322 Major grins
I spent some time with Photosmith this afternoon. It's an iPad app that interfaces (via plugin) with LR3. You can import pictures (jpeg, Canon raw, Nikon raw) to the iPad via Apple's camera connection kit. From the App you can organize them into collections, edit metadata, add tags, flags, and ratings. You cannot edit the images for color, brightness, cropping, etc.
Here are my initial (admittedly limited experience) thoughts:
* You still import the photos (with the camera connection kit) via the Photos app on the iPad. There you see all the photos on the card and can select all or some to import. After importing it will ask you if you want to leave the imported files on the card or delete them.
* Once the import is complete you open Photosmith and the pictures appear in a smart collection called "Last import." You can leave them there or create a new collection (what I did), select the pictures you want, and drag them (drag and drop) into the new collection you made.
* You can view the individual photos in that collection in an interface quite similar to Lightroom. It's nice. From there you can tag (with one of the 5 colors), reject, edit metadata, and caption/keyword the images.
* The "reject" tag DOES NOT sync to Lightroom. If you tag a photo as rejected, when you sync with LR the app will simply NOT send the photo to LR. This is good for me because it saves time by not syncing photos that I'm going to delete anyway. If this is a problem for you, I recommend tagging all your "rejects" as purple. Then they'll sync to LR with the purple tag and you'll know within LR that you intended to reject them and can do so in bulk.
* To transfer the pictures to the computer, you have to first install the plugin available on the Photosmith website (for free). I have not tried the wifi sync yet because I imagine it is much slower than USB and I was working with 17-19MB nef files. Plug in the iPad to the computer and open Photosmith (on the iPad). In Lightroom, open the Photosmith plugin and choose the sync options you want (what folder to save to, etc.). Hit sync and the nef files are copied to the directory you selected on your HDD (the collection syncs as well).
* It properly copied over my nef files, as well as the color tags I put on the images. It properly DID NOT copy over the nef files I had rejected on the iPad.
* Once I saw that the images were correctly in Lightroom, I went into the Photos app on the iPad, selected all the images from the previous import, and deleted them. It would be nice if Photosmith could delete the files automatically after they're exported to the computer.
* As a last step, I went into Photosmith and deleted the collection I had just made. Even though the pictures were no longer on the iPad they were still visible in Photosmith (obviously cached somewhere - I have some concerns about how big this cache file could get).
Overall I'm pleased with the app. There are certainly some features missing. Some are likely because of limitations with the API; others are hopefully because they just haven't thought about them or gotten around to them yet. The app is good as it is and seems to have great potential.
Here are my initial (admittedly limited experience) thoughts:
* You still import the photos (with the camera connection kit) via the Photos app on the iPad. There you see all the photos on the card and can select all or some to import. After importing it will ask you if you want to leave the imported files on the card or delete them.
* Once the import is complete you open Photosmith and the pictures appear in a smart collection called "Last import." You can leave them there or create a new collection (what I did), select the pictures you want, and drag them (drag and drop) into the new collection you made.
* You can view the individual photos in that collection in an interface quite similar to Lightroom. It's nice. From there you can tag (with one of the 5 colors), reject, edit metadata, and caption/keyword the images.
* The "reject" tag DOES NOT sync to Lightroom. If you tag a photo as rejected, when you sync with LR the app will simply NOT send the photo to LR. This is good for me because it saves time by not syncing photos that I'm going to delete anyway. If this is a problem for you, I recommend tagging all your "rejects" as purple. Then they'll sync to LR with the purple tag and you'll know within LR that you intended to reject them and can do so in bulk.
* To transfer the pictures to the computer, you have to first install the plugin available on the Photosmith website (for free). I have not tried the wifi sync yet because I imagine it is much slower than USB and I was working with 17-19MB nef files. Plug in the iPad to the computer and open Photosmith (on the iPad). In Lightroom, open the Photosmith plugin and choose the sync options you want (what folder to save to, etc.). Hit sync and the nef files are copied to the directory you selected on your HDD (the collection syncs as well).
* It properly copied over my nef files, as well as the color tags I put on the images. It properly DID NOT copy over the nef files I had rejected on the iPad.
* Once I saw that the images were correctly in Lightroom, I went into the Photos app on the iPad, selected all the images from the previous import, and deleted them. It would be nice if Photosmith could delete the files automatically after they're exported to the computer.
* As a last step, I went into Photosmith and deleted the collection I had just made. Even though the pictures were no longer on the iPad they were still visible in Photosmith (obviously cached somewhere - I have some concerns about how big this cache file could get).
Overall I'm pleased with the app. There are certainly some features missing. Some are likely because of limitations with the API; others are hopefully because they just haven't thought about them or gotten around to them yet. The app is good as it is and seems to have great potential.
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