GreenVolcanoSoftware
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Flickr faster with Flickit Pro
I love Flickr (and alliteration, apparently). That is, I love Flickr on my desktop, and often on my Apple TV. I've never really been in love with the mobile experience, mostly due to long wait times and cumbersome navigation. When Mike Bernardo from Green Volcano Software contacted me about Flickit Pro, his Flickr app for the iPhone, I was definitely game to try it. I bought a copy the same day in the hopes that it would bring a little joy to my mobile Flickring. We've played with Photon before, so we know that Green Volcano knows how to make photo handling fluid and fast. That interface dexterity carries over to the iPhone app. I was impressed by the overall aesthetics, and as I played with it I quickly confirmed that it wasn't just eye candy. There are little details that made me smile, and then ask, "Why all apps don't do things like this?" My favorite of these interface gems has to be the ability to zoom a photo in quite far, drag it to the edge and hold it a sec, and watch it suck back down and load the next image. Whether or not you dislike the usual double-tap-before-you-slide on most iPhone photo browsers as much as I do, it's still a great feature and demonstrates some serious attention to detail. The speed is impressive, the background loading isn't cumbersome or even noticeable, and the overall experience left a great impression. It was $3.99US well spent. There's a free version, Flickit (without the Pro), but I haven't tried it. I assume it's a cool app, but if you're a Flickr fanatic (or really like well-designed apps), check out Flickit Pro. I put together a little gallery below, so in case you don't buy that whole "nice interface" spiel, you can dive in and see for yourself. %Gallery-87534%
Blazing fast image viewing with Photon 1.0.2
Photon just loaded 839 JPEG image previews for me in under 2 seconds. That's expletive worthy speed. And when it loads the full image, it's just as fast, even with RAW format images. And it loads every pixel of a RAW image. If you set the preview mode to fit-to-screen, clicking the image gives you a loupe-style zoom to full resolution. It reads photos–from folders or directly from cameras/memory cards–with a feature they call "Instant Import". I plugged in a camera and by the time I had looked back at the screen, it had recorded all of the images on the card. Photon serves one purpose, but serves it well. It helps you do a rough cut of large batches of images before heading into Lightroom or Aperture for more advanced procedures. It lacks any form of image flagging, has limited viewing of metadata fields (the columns in the HUD aren't individually expandable or adjustable) and no search feature of any kind. It basically provides a very fast, very streamlined interface for creating collections ("stacks") of images and–once you've bought the full version–exporting them with options to convert the format to jpg, png, psd and more. It does provide histograms, which is handy for deciding on which RAW images you're planning to keep. A demo of Photon is available for download, and costs $49 to purchase. That's shown as a markdown from $69, but I'm unsure if that's a limited-time offer.
