The first Apple iPad commercial was broadcast last night during the Oscars.

Link at Apple.com

UTube link

Four weeks till launch on April 3rd.

My new happy app is PhotoTropedelic - 60s Pop Art in your pocket.

PhotoTropedelic is just too much fun. I've been cranking out wild 60s era graphics for almost two weeks now. Then last night, after working on this photo of the LA Theater with Happy sign, I was jolted back to the present. I have to write up a column on this $1.99 app.

Ok this is a good 5 star iPhone app. In fact, PhotoTropedelic has a control to add up to 170 stars to a pic. Now which app can beat that?



Photo of Jack in the Box antenna ball with flowers given the star treatment with PhotoTropedelic.

This list of features if very basic:

1-5 Detail Levels

Tropedelic or Image colors

4, 6, 8, 11, 16 or 22 colors

0-170 Stars

On/off controls for: Circles, Rays, Gradient, Color Merge, and Mirror left to right.

But its in the mixture of these controls that leads to either very wild or only slightly wild posterized images.

The workflow is very straightforward. From the main menu, first go into the Change Setting menu and pick the combination of the above features you want to try. Then either take a photo or pick a photo from the camera role.

PhotoTropedelic immediately begins the process of applying the settings to the image. At the end, it automatically saves a jpg version back to the camera role. In addition, PhotoTropedelic saves a PNG and PDF version.

Once saved, you have the options of reviewing the image, changing the settings and run again on same image, or move onto another image.

In no time my camera role was full of different PhotoTropedelic versions of the same photo. I did notice about a ten percent failure rate where the app would lock up and not save the image. But no problem, rerunning the same image with the same settings will output the same results. I tested this, getting the same result several times.

Output size seems to vary either 768 x 1023 pixel or full 900 x 1200 pixel. But this large size is nice when compared to the downsized 300-400 pixel size output done by many iPhone creative photo apps.


Frame grab on my Safari window to download PDF or PNG versions of my images.

Then there is the PDF output.

Unlike most other iPhone photo apps, PhotoTropedelic saves a PNG and PDF version of the images that can be downloaded to your computer through a wireless ftp feature.

Guess what, PDF is a vector based version of the image. It can be opened in a program like Adobe Illustrator and enlarged to any size. Just for laughs, I opened one PDF in Photoshop. After the graphic was rasterized it was 50 megs.

Bottom line. With PhotoTropedelic, I can now make billboard size graphics on a $1.99 iphone app.

Version one of PhotoTropedelic always included a watermark for the product. After many complaints, the version 1.1 release removed the watermark.

About 50% of the 75 reviews on iTunes give this app 5 stars. I suspect this app will continue to be developed onto the iPad. Also the developer, Larry Weinberg has a good web site with examples. There is also a good active flickr and facebook community.

PhotoTropedelic web site.


The PhotoTropedelic PDF version of Tiger, my cat, can be made into a poster or bigger.

While cruising iTunes for photo iPhone apps, up popped RetroCamera's cool logo based on an old 120/220 film camera.

Then I was completely hooked by RetroCamera's screenshot examples and long list of features: 28 types of color or grayscale film, noise controls, contrast sliders, 15 types of textures, 19 types of frames and blur controls.

And all this is in the free version too - except the RetroCamera Logo is put into every image. So for $1.99 I purchased the app.




Then the fun began. I did a couple retro looking images and uploaded to my Flickr account. When I checked Flickr, oops, the final images were only 320x480 pixels - the old size used by many very early digital cameras. Now this was taking retro too far.

Where was my 1200x1600 iPhone photos?

Answer - gone.

NEVER USE THIS APP TO SHOOT ORIGINAL iPhone images. It only saves them at 320x480 pixels.

This app is ONLY for post-processing. Now I understand why it is so stable and never crashes; RetroCamera is only working on a small file. Other apps I am using work with full files and if too many steps, lock up my iPhone.

So I went hog wild. On this image of Victor the Dog, I cropped, rotated, tried many film types, added noise, contrast, added multiple textures, tried several frames, added additional contrast, added more noise and finally saved. I lost count of the number of changes I applied - no crash.

Since Victor the Dog, left, is a very retro image, upsizing really doesn't hurt the image. I posted two versions on my Flickr page.

flickr link

RetroCamera has many mixed reviews. It averages 3 stars in its ratings - same as I am giving it. The tiny output size cost it two stars.

Developer CLBITZ Ubiquitous Communications Inc., only has a single page web site and is based in Japan. The paid version is currently 1.1. The free version is currently 1.2. On the Free Version iTunes page, high resolution is scheduled as a feature in a future version.


January iPhone rainbow photo given 35-mm film look with RetroCarmera.

Let's see, I have used this app for a couple months, how do I like it? Ah - I shoot EVERY IMAGE on my iPhone 3G with this app and never use the original iPhone Camera app.

This free app will live forever on my iPhone 3G for one feature - Tap Anywhere Shutter. When I first opened 321 Photo, I accidently touched the screen and got my first foot shot. Cool, no more searching for that small red shutter button as the moment got away. Now I concentrate on the subject, frame and touch the screen. Makes shooting candids a snap.

Yes, 321 Photo has other features: Continuous Shooting Mode, Steadycam, three second Countdown Times, Autosave, full Rotation Support and Vibration Feedback for silent operation. You can also review images in the Camera Roll from within the app.

The Steadycam feature is unusual. When in use, 321 Photo waits until you hold the iPhone still as possible before firing the shutter. Great feature for low-light situations.

OK, I admit these features are on other iPhone photography apps. But early on I was hooked by this FREE app.



There are two major bummers to this app. First it does not support video or tap to focus on the iPhone 3Gs. Second, location and other meta-data is not saved with images taken with 321 Photo.

Actually there is a third downside. I find myself taking images of my stomach, foot , knee and pocket just by accidently touching the iPhone screen when 321 Photo is on. I have ten times the number of butt photos vs butt calls.

The current version only has five reviews on iTunes. When reviews from previous versions are included - some 279 - only about 25% are giving 321 Photo 4 or 5 stars. If you own a 3Gs model, I would skip this app. If, like me, you have a 3G model, this is your app.

The developer, Room1337 Ventures, has a small but useful web site.

Bottom line: great replacement camera app for 3G model, not for 3Gs.


With 321 Photo I got this pic of Woody before he ducked under the table. He was trying to sneak a snack during the Super Bowl while no one was looking.

Photo at the Satwiwa Native American Indian Culture Center near Newbury Park taken on Monday with iPhone. The photo was cropped, saturation added, sharpened and border added with Photoshop.com Mobile.

When I got my iPhone last fall, the first photography app I added was the free Photoshop.com Mobile from Adobe.

As a 19 year user of Photoshop, I assumed it would be the default photo processing App on the iPhone.

Wrong.

Photoshop.com Mobile is nothing like its big brother. Its just one of hundreds of free or inexpensive photography Apps available for the iPhone. But it is one of the better free Apps!

Adobe released Photoshop.com Mobile to help build up its Photoshop.com web site. But for other users like me, its a good quick post processing App for my iPhone pics.

List of top features:

Basics: Crop, Straighten, Rotate and Flip.

Color: Exposure, Saturation, Tint, Black and White, Contrast

Filters: Sketch, Soft Focus, Sharpen

Effects: Vibrant, Pop, Border, Vignette Blur, Warm Vintage, Rainbow, White Glow, Soft Black and White

Borders: Rectangle, Rounded, Oval, Soft Edge, Vignette, Rough Edge, Halftone and Film emulsion

What I really appreciate is the ability to edit in both vertical and horizontal modes on the iPhone.

Yes there are plenty of iPhone photo apps with larger feature sets. But I keep coming back to Photoshop.com Mobile for its ease of use and stability - never crashes.

At the iTunes store there are over 3500 reviews of the current version of Photoshop.com Mobile. About 40% of the reviews are giving it five stars. Me, I am going with a 4. I just expected more from the makers of Photoshop.

p.s. - Adobe the iPad is coming. Are you ready with a real versions of Photoshop and Lightroom?


This recent iPhone photo of a black propane grill was converted to black and white, given tint, over-sharpened, and had a border applied all in Photoshop.com Mobile.

Good idea, but concept flawed I believe by iPhone hardware limitations.

My first test of this app was a complete failure. On one of my recent dinner walk in downtown Los Angeles I took some street scenes images. Being a dark and stormy night, I knew I was pushing my iPhone 3G camera. The images in standard mode, 1600x1200 pixels, were easily save to the Camera Role. But in 5.0 MPX Mode the app crashed every time while saving the image. Not a single 5.0 MPX Mode image was successfully saved.

I did power down my iPhone and restart. This trick did not make a difference. In 5.0 MPX mode, the app still crashed.

5 Megapixel Camera works by up-sampling the original iPhone pic. It adds pixels between existing pixels and assigns the new pixel a value by averaging the original neighboring pixels. I suspect the grain and high contrast of the night images gave 5 Megapixel fits.


Examples posted on iTunes store that go my attention to 5 Megapixel Camera.

On my 2nd try during flat daylight lighting - mixed results. I tried to shoot a normal 1200x1600 pixel normal image and match it with a similar photo shot at 1920x2560 pixel. Again 5 Megapixel Camera locked up about half the time when trying to save. Bummer.

And when the 5.0 MPX image did save - it took 15 - 20 seconds. After opening up the images on my computer, I could see the additional detail.

But the 5 megapixel feature seems to push the processing power of my 3G model iPhone. Way too many crashes. So I will go back to up-sampling in Photoshop. A much more reliable workflow.

5 Megapixel Camera does have other useful features. The main three I find useful are self-timer Countdown Mode, Time-Lapse Mode and the Big Button Shutter which turns the entire screen into the shutter.

The App has had several hundred reviews. About 50% give this app 5 stars. Most of the others 1 star. I also gave it a single star.

Why - the main feature crashes on my 3G iPhone and I could not troubleshoot this bug since the the developer CrowdCafe web site/support site is not up and running.

My suspicion is that this app works fine on the 3Gs model iPhone but does not on older models. This would explain why many reviewers love the app and the rest don't. But there is no way to check this theory of mine.

The bad: Takes about 20 seconds to up-sample and save a 1920x2560 image -when the process does not crash. Also the CrowdCafe web site and camera support web site are not up and running.

The good: Has several useful features like "Big Button" that turns the entire screen into a shutter, Time Lapse photography and self-timer Countdown Mode.

One Star out of five.

5 Megapixel Camera is currently 99 cents at the App Store in iTunes.


When 5 Megapixel was able to save an image I got good results. Enlargement of 2 megapixel image is on left, 5 megapixel version on right.

One of my sons put me on to this iPhone App. iVideoCamera adds video to the non-video iPhone 3G model. Unlike the more expensive iPhone 3Gs, the 3G model does not support video out of the box.

So instead of buying the 3Gs, I paid a total of 99 cents to shoot video.

What was most surprising, my first attempt actually produced a video on YouTube.

During one of my dinner breaks, I visited the Los Angeles Police Department Memorial Wall. For three minutes and 45 seconds I rambled along about the memorial and iVideoCamera. Once done, I saved the video to the iPhone cameraroll, then uploaded to YouTube.

The only problem came when trying to connect to YouTube. I had to try three times to connect. For the third time, I moved farther away from the large LAPD building to see if I could get better AT&T reception. It worked, but on the AT&T network took about 15 minutes to upload.

The video quality was not good, but most of the blame is on me, not the software. The current version captures unlimited video at ten frames a second at 160 x 213 resolution. Guess what, if you move and pan, you get blur. When I held my iPhone study I got a decent image.

I tried two more short videos this last week with better results. These two videos were shot at the lower quality setting. Higher quality 320x426 resolution is possible for clips lasting about 30 seconds.





The finished video can be uploaded to several web sites like YouTube. The app has a large number of reviews - some 2700 for this version. Most reviews either love the app or hate it, not much of a middle ground.

Most complaints are about low frames per second or small resolution. I ignored these because for 99 cents on a non-video camera, what do you expect.

The one common complaint is a bug mentioned by numerous reviewers - they could not upload to facebook.

The one feature I would like see improved is easy exporting to my desktop computer. Currently I have to ftp the file on my home wifi network. But once set up through Transmit, I was able easily able to move several videos to my desktop.

iVideoCamera is developed and sold by Laan Labs at http://labs.laan.com/.

The iPad looks like a hit, but not for me. I am planning to wait a year or two for additional features and better software like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. Otherwise I have no use for the iPad.

The key features I liked were the external keyboard and case.



Is the iPad a computer, left, or a book, right? The new dock for the iPad, left includes a keyboard that turns the iPad into a computer. The new case, right, makes it into a book. Either way the new iPad and these accessories will attract a lot of interest from educators. I suspect iPads will be scooped up by school districts, resulting in declining MacBook sales.

The bad: no video conference camera, video output, USB ports or multitasking.

The good: price. At $499, the iPad is half the price I was expecting.

I will take a pass on the original iPad. I need a better way to import and export images (USB ports) and software multitasking to easily jump between programs. I will stick with my trusty MacBook.